EDIT: A little background to the question for people saying scouting (and to clarify why I initially posted). This was my first thought as well, but in reading about Roman history, I’d found out that they were notoriously bad at scouting, as it was something that they felt was below them (and it cost them at Lake Trasimene). Thats when I realized I had no idea how these armies would actually find each other
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Most major ancient battles were [pitched battles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitched_battle) where both sides had camped out along the battlefield for a couple of days before finally going at it.
A lot of ancient tactics relied on tight formations so fighting your enemy in a dense forest because you just stumbled upon him was a non-starter because while his forces couldn’t mount an effective defense, your forces can’t mount an effective offense either.
The armies would have scouts, often light cavalry ahead of them searching out the enemy army, maybe harassing their flanks or baggage train(which could be 2-3x the size of the army!) and keeping track of where the enemy army was headed. When they found a nice spot for a fight like a valley with a big open field in the middle then the army would set up an encampment (baby fort) on one of the hillsides and the other would come along and set up on the other slope, but if you picked a really unfair terrain place they just wouldn’t set up camp and would keep on moving declining to engage you so if you thought you could beat them you would want to pick even terrain so they’d accept the challenge.
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