Livy wrote this history of Rome in the late first century BC. Book 23 of Livy's history of Rome is set in Italy the year after Cannae. Hannibal had destroyed the largest army Rome ever raised on the Apulian plain in the south; the Senate refused ransom for the captured, and the city was asking whether it still existed.

Hannibal winters in Capua, a rich city near Naples that had switched sides after Cannae, and Livy treats its luxury as a second enemy. Rome enrolls boys, arms slaves as volunteers, and takes gold from widows and from the temples. Hiero, the old king of Syracuse in Sicily, dies; his boy-heir toys with Carthage. Spain still sends Carthage silver and horses. Greek ports in the south of Italy are the next prizes. Hannibal cannot pull enough of Italy away to finish the war, and Rome cannot yet drive him out. In the Scipio household a different kind of commander is being prepared. This is the year after the abyss, when a people finds it can still bleed and still refuse to yield.