Hannibal's first major move after securing Capua as a base and ally (however passive in the latter role) was in the direction of the coast. As mentioned in the previous chapter, he made another military demonstration before the walls of Neapolis, to no effect, then turned toward Nola. In Nola the political situation was potentially more favorable to Hannibal than the stony hostility displayed by the Neapolitans. According to Livy, in Nola "the senate and especially its leading members stood loyally by the alliance with Rome. But the common people, as usual, were all for a change of government and for Hannibal."
It is difficult to know for certain whether the the division between a pro-Roman aristocracy and pro-Hannibal commonalty is as simple as Livy portrays it, or whether he is indulging "as usual" in his characteristic anti-populism. It is true that the Roman political order, at home and as supported and enforced among their allies, was consistantly oligarchic, and it was the non-oligarchs who might see most to gain in the overturning of that order. Events recounted below suggest, however, that the actual divisions in Nola were somewhat more complex, and the same was very probably true in other cities as well.
In any case, the Nolan senate sent to Rome to ask for support, and got it in the form of a Roman detachment under the praetor Mercellus Claudius, who reached the city after a roundabout march through the mountains in order to avoid an encounter with Hannibal's army--Fabian tactics now being forced on the Romans by sheer necessity. The Roman force managed to reach Nola without being intercepted, whereupon Hannibal turned temporarily aside from Nola and attacked Nucera. Nucera had no hope of holding out; instead, the entire population evidently abandoned the town, which was left for Hannibal's troops to plunder.
Hannibal now returned to Nola, apparently in hope that in spite of the Roman garrison ...