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Ab Urbe Condita, books 21-22 - 22

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   Book XXII SPRING was now drawing on, and accordingly Hannibal moved out of his winter encampment. He had tried before this to cross the Apennines, but had failed because of the intolerable cold. And the delay had been attended with the greatest danger and anxiety; for when the Gauls, whom the hope of spoil and pillage had excited to revolt, perceived that instead of harrying and plundering the fields of others, their own lands were the seat of war and were burdened with the winter quarters of both armies, they turned their hatred back again from the Romans upon Hannibal. But though their leaders laid many a plot against him, their treachery to one another saved him, for they gave him information of these conspiracies with the same inconstancy with which they had conspired. Moreover, changing now his dress and now his headgear, he protected himself against their plots by the uncertainty which this gave rise to. Still, the fear of such plots was another reason for quitting his winter quarters early. About the same time, on the Ides of March, Gnaeus Servilius entered on his consulship at Rome. On his then referring the state of the nation to the senate for discussion, their anger at Gaius Flaminius was renewed. They had chosen two consuls, they said, but had only one; for what proper authority or right of auspices did Flaminius possess? Magistrates, they urged, carried with them this prerogative when they set out from home —from their own and the nation's hearth —after celebrating the Latin Festival, sacrificing on the Alban Mount and duly offering up their vows on the Capitol; but a private citizen could neither take the auspices with him, nor, if he had left Rome without them, receive them new from the beginning on foreign soil. Men's fears were augmented by the prodigies reported simultaneously from many places: that in Sicily the javelins of several soldiers had taken fire, and that in Sardinia, as a horseman was making the round of the night-watch, the same thing had happened to the truncheon which he held in his hand; that many fires had blazed up on the shore; that two shields had sweated blood; that certain soldiers had been struck with lightning; that the sun's disk had seemed to be contracted; that glowing stones had fallen from the sky at Praeneste; that at Arpi bucklers had appeared in the sky and the sun had seemed to be fighting with the moon; that at Capena two moons had risen in the daytime; that the waters of Caere had flowed mixed with blood, and that bloodstains had appeared in the water that trickled from the spring of Hercules itself; that at Antium, when some men were reaping, bloody ears of corn had fallen into their basket; that at Falerii the sky had seemed to be rent as it were with a great fissure; and through the opening a bright light had shone; and that lots had shrunk and that one had fallen out without being touched, on which was written, Mavors brandishes his spear; that in Rome, about the same time, the statue of Mars on the Appian Way and the images of the wolves had sweated; that at Capua there had been the appearance of a sky on fire and of a moon that fell in the midst of a shower of rain. Afterwards less memorable prodigies were also given credence: that certain folk had found their goats to have got woolly fleeces; that a hen had changed into a cock and a cock into a hen. When the consul had laid these reports before the senate exactly as they had come to him and had introduced into the House the men who vouched for their truth, he consulted the Fathers regarding their religious import. It was voted that these prodigies should be expiated, in part with greater, in part with lesser victims, and that a supplication should be held for three days at all the couches of the gods; as for the rest, when the decemvirs should have inspected the Books, such rites were to be observed as they should declare, in accordance with the sacred verses, to be pleasing to the gods. Being so admonished by the decemvirs, they decreed that the first gift should be made to Jupiter, a golden thunderbolt weighing fifty pounds; and that Juno and Minerva should be given offerings of silver; that Juno Regina on the Aventine and Juno Sospita at Lanuvium should receive a sacrifice of greater victims, and that the matrons, each contributing as much as she could afford, should make up a sum of money and carry it as a gift to Juno Regina on the Aventine and there celebrate a lectisternium ; and that even the very freed-women should contribute money, in proportion to their abilities, for an offering to Feronia. These measures being taken, the decemvirs sacrificed at Ardea in the market-place with the greater victims. Finally-the month was now December —victims were slain at the temple of Saturn in Rome and a lectisternium was ordered-this time senators administered the rite —and a public feast, and throughout the City for a day and a night Saturnalia was cried, and the people were bidden to keep that day as a holiday and observe it in perpetuity. While the consul was occupied at Rome in appeasing the gods and levying troops, Hannibal, who had left his winter quarters, heard that Flaminius, the other consul, had already arrived at Arretium; and so, though another route, longer, to be sure, but less difficult, was pointed out to him, he took the shorter, though the marshes, which the river Arno had lately flooded to an unusual extent. He ordered the Spaniards and the Africans and all the flower of his veteran army, taking their own baggage with them so as not to want the necessities of life wherever they might be forced to halt, to march in the van; the Gauls to follow them and form the centre of the column; and the cavalry to fall in behind. Mago and the Numidian light horse were to bring up the rear, their principal duty being to keep the Gauls in order, in case they should weary of the long and painful march —for the race is ill adapted to such hardships —and attempt to steal away or refuse to go forward. Those in front only asked that their guides lead on before. Through deep and well-nigh bottomless quagmires left by the flood, almost engulfed in the mud into which they plunged, they nevertheless followed on after their standards. But the Gauls could neither keep from falling when they slipped, nor regain their footing, once they had plunged into a hole; the flesh was neither sustained by the spirit nor the spirit by hope. Some could hardly drag their tired limbs along; others, their courage yielding once for all to their weariness, dropped down and died amongst the baggage-animals, for these too were lying all about. What distressed them most of all was the want of sleep, which they had now endured for four days and three nights. And since everything was under water and they could find no dry spot on which to stretch their weary bodies, they would pile their packs in the flood and lie down on these; or the heaps of sumpter-animals that were everywhere strewn about along the line of march would afford a makeshift bed —for all they asked was a place that stood out above the water, where they could snatch a little sleep. Hannibal himself, whose eyes were suffering in the first place from the trying spring weather, alternating betwixt hot and cold, rode upon the sole surviving elephant, that he might be higher above the water. But lack of sleep, damp nights, and the air of the marshes affected his head, and since he had neither place nor time for employing remedies, he lost the sight of one of his eyes. Many men and beasts had perished miserably, when at last he got out from the marshes, and pitching his camp on the first dry ground available, ascertained from scouts whom he had sent on ahead that the Roman army lay around the walls of Arretium. He then went to work with all possible diligence to learn the plans and temper of the consul, the lie of the land and the roads, his resources for provisioning the army —everything, in short, which it was important to find out. The district was one of the most fertile in Italy, for the Etruscan plains between Faesulae and Arretium abound in corn and flocks and all sorts of provisions. The consul had been proud and headstrong since his former consulship, and lacked all proper reverence, not only for the laws and for the senate's majesty, but even for the gods. This native rashness had been nourished by the success which Fortune had bestowed on him in political and military enterprises. It was therefore sufficiently apparent that, seeking no counsel, either divine or human, he would manage everything with recklessness and headlong haste; but to make him incline the more towards his characteristic faults, the Phoenician planned to provoke and exasperate him. Leaving the enemy therefore on his left, and looking out for an opportunity to ambush him, he proceeded to lay waste the heart of Etruria and exhibited to the consul from afar all the havoc that fire and sword could possibly effect. Flaminius, even had his enemy sat still, was not the man to have sat still himself; but now, when he saw the farms of the allies being harried and pillaged almost under his own eyes, he felt it as a personal disgrace that the Phoenician should be roaming through the midst of Italy, and marching, with no one to dispute his passage, to assault the very walls of Rome. In the council of war the rest were all for safe in preference to showy measures: he should wait, they said, for his colleague to come up, in order that they might unite their forces and conduct the war with a common policy and resolution; meantime, he should employ his cavalry and skirmishers to check the enemy's widespread, unrestricted pillaging. Enraged by this advice, Flaminius flung out of the council, and having given the signal at once for marching and for fighting, exclaimed, Ay, truly! Let us sit still under the walls of Arretium, for here are our native city and our household gods; let Hannibal slip through our fingers and ravage Italy, and, laying waste and burning everything, march clear to Rome; and let us not move from this spot, till the Fathers, as once they summoned Camillus from Veii, shall summon Gaius Flaminius from Arretium. Uttering these scornful words he bade pluck up the standards quickly, and vaulted upon his horse, when suddenly the charger stumbled, and unseating the consul threw him over his head. The dismay which this occasioned in all who were present, as an evil omen for beginning the campaign, was intensified on its being reported that, although the standard-bearer was exerting all his might, the standard could not be pulled up. Rounding upon the messenger the consul cried, Do you bring me a dispatch too from the senate, forbidding me to fight? Go, tell them to dig the standard out, if their hands are too numb with fear to pull it up! The column then began to advance, though the higher officers, besides disapproving of the consul's plan, were terrified by the double prodigy. The soldiers, most of them, rejoiced in the temerity of their commander: their hopes ran high: the grounds for hoping they did not scrutinize. Hannibal laid waste the land between the city of Cortona and Lake Trasumennus with every circumstance of cruelty known to war, in order the more to whet his enemy's anger and prompt him to avenge the sufferings of his allies. And now he had reached a spot designed by nature for an ambuscade, where Trasumennus approaches closest to the mountains of Cortona. Between them is nothing but a very narrow track, as though room had been left expressly for this purpose; the ground then widens into a little plain; beyond this the hills rise steeply. At this point he laid out a camp in the open, for himself and his African and Spanish troops only; the Baliares and the rest of his light-armed forces he led round behind the mountains; the cavalry he stationed near the entrance to the defile, where some hillocks formed a convenient screen for them, so that when the Romans should have entered the pass, they might block the road, and trap the entire army between the lake and the mountains. Flaminius had reached the lake at sunset; the next morning, without reconnoitring, and scarcely waiting for broad daylight, he passed through the defile. As the column began to spread out on the more open ground, they caught sight of those enemies only who were right in front of them; the ambush in their rear and that above them they failed to perceive. The Phoenician had now gained his object, the Romans were hemmed in between the mountains and the lake and their escape cut off by his own troops, when he made the signal for all his forces to attack at once. As they charged down, each at the nearest point, their onset was all the more sudden and unforeseen inasmuch as the mist from the lake lay less thickly on the heights than on the plain, and the attacking columns had been clearly visible to one another from the various hills and had therefore delivered their charge at more nearly the same instant. From the shouting that arose on every side the Romans learned, before they could clearly see, that they were surrounded; and they were already engaged on their front and flank before they could properly form up or get out their arms and draw their swords. Amidst the general consternation the consul himself displayed —if allowance be made for the terrifying circumstances —considerable coolness. He brought such order as time and place permitted out of the confusion in the ranks, where the men were all turning different ways to face the various shouts; and wherever he could go and make himself heard, he tried to encourage them and bade them stand and fight. Their position, he said, was one from which vows and supplications to the gods could not extricate them, but only their own brave exertions: it was the sword that opened a way through embattled enemies, and the less men feared, the less, in general, was their danger. But the din and confusion were so great that neither advice nor orders could be heard, and so far were the men from knowing their proper standards companies and places, that they had hardly enough spirit to arm and prepare themselves to fight, and some were borne down while more encumbered than protected by their armour. Indeed the fog was so thick that ears were of more use than eyes, and the groans of the wounded, the sound of blows on body or armour and the mingled shouts and screams of assailants and assailed made them turn and gaze, now this way and now that. Some, as they sought to escape, were swept into a crowd of combatants and held there; others, trying to get back into the fight, were turned aside by a throng of fugitives. When attempts to break through had resulted everywhere in failure and they found themselves shut in on the flanks by the mountains and the lake, and in front and rear by the enemy; when it became apparent that their only hope of safety lay in their right arms and their swords; then every man became his own commander and urged himself to action, and the battle began all over again. It was no ordered battle, with the troops marshalled in triple line, nor did the vanguard fight before the standards and the rest of the army behind them, neither did each soldier keep to his proper legion cohort and maniple: it was chance that grouped them, and every man's own valour assigned him his post in van or rear; and such was the frenzy of their eagerness and so absorbed were they in fighting, that an earthquake, violent enough to overthrow large portions of many of the towns of Italy, turn swift streams from their courses, carry the sea up into rivers, and bring down mountains with great landslides, was not even felt by any of the combatants. The conflict lasted for about three hours, and was bitterly contested at every point; but nowhere did it rage so fiercely as about the consul. He was attended by the bravest of his soldiers and stoutly lent a hand himself, wherever he saw the Romans hard pressed and in dire straits. His arms made him conspicuous, and the enemy attacked and his own people defended him with the greatest fury, until an Insubrian horseman, named Ducarius, who recognized the consul also by his face, cried out to his countrymen, Behold the man who massacred our legions and laid waste our fields and our city! Now will I offer him up as a sacrifice to the shades of our fellow citizens so foully slain! Then clapping spurs to his horse, he dashed through the very thick of his enemies, and first cutting down the armour-bearer, who had thrown himself in the way of his onset, transfixed the consul with his spear, but could not despoil him, for the veterans interposed their shields and kept him off. A great part of the Romans now began to run; neither lake nor mountains could any longer check the panic; defiles and precipices were all alike to them, as they rushed blindly to escape, and arms and men came down pell-mell together. Many, having no room to flee, waded out into the shallow water at the margin of the lake, and kept on till only their heads and shoulders were above the surface. Some were driven by their unreasoning panic even to attempt escape by swimming; but this was an endless, desperate undertaking, and either their hearts failed them and they sank in the deep water, or else, exhausted to no purpose, they struggled back with difficulty to the shoals, and were cut down on every hand by the horsemen, who rode into the water after them. Some six thousand of those in the van made a valiant thrust through the enemy that barred their way, and got out of the defile without knowing anything of what was going on behind them. Taking up their stand on some rising ground, whence they could only hear the shouting and the clash of arms, they could neither know nor make out, for the murk, which way the victory was going. It was not until the battle was decided, that the mist dissolved with the growing heat of the sun and revealed the day, when the clear light on hill and plain showed that all was lost and the Roman army shamefully discomfited. And so, lest they should be seen afar and the enemy's cavalry be sent against them, they hurriedly pulled up their standards and marched off as fast as they could go. On the following day, when besides their other misfortunes they were threatened also with the extremity of hunger, Maharbal —who with all the cavalry had overtaken them in the night —pledged his word that if they delivered up their arms, he would let them go, with a single garment each, and they surrendered. This pledge Hannibal observed with true Punic reverence and threw them all into chains. Such was the famous battle of Trasumennus, a disaster memorable as few others have been in Roman history. Fifteen thousand Romans were killed on the field; ten thousand, scattered in flight over all Etruria, made their way by different roads to the City. Two thousand five hundred of the enemy fell in the battle and many perished subsequently of their wounds. Some writers multiply the losses on both sides: I myself, besides that I would not idly exaggerate anything —a vice to which historians are in general all too prone —have taken Fabius, who lived at the time of this war, as my authority, in preference to any other. Hannibal dismissed scot-free the prisoners of the Latin name and gave the Romans into captivity. Having issued orders that the bodies of his own dead should be sorted out from the heaps of their enemies and buried, he would have given the body of Flaminius burial also, but though he-caused it to be searched for with great diligence, he could not find it. At Rome the first tidings of this defeat brought the citizens into the Forum in a frightened and tumultuous throng, while the matrons wandered about the streets and demanded of all they met what sudden disaster had been reported and how it was going with the army. And when the crowd, like some vast public assembly, turned to the Comitium and the senate-house and called for the magistrates, at last, as the sun was almost going down, Marcus Pomponius, the praetor, said, A great battle has been fought, and we were beaten. And although they learned nothing more definite from him, still they picked up a rumour here and a rumour there, and returning to their homes brought word that the consul and a great part of his soldiers had been slain: that only a few survived, either dispersed as fugitives throughout Etruria or taken prisoners by the enemy. The vicissitudes of the defeated army were no more various than the apprehensions which preyed upon the minds of those whose relatives had served under Gaius Flaminius, the consul. They were ignorant of how those dear to each of them were faring, nor did anyone really know what to hope or fear. On the next and on several succeeding days the City gates were thronged with a crowd in which the women almost outnumbered the men, waiting for some kinsman, or for news of him. Surrounding anybody who came along, they plied him with questions, nor could they tear themselves away —especially from those they were acquainted with —until they had enquired into every detail. Very different were the expressions you would have noted in their countenances, according as the tidings they received were glad or sorrowful, when they moved away from their informants and returned to their homes, surrounded by friends, congratulating or consoling them. The women especially exhibited extremes of joy and grief; one, on suddenly meeting her son safe and sound at the very gate, expired, they say, in his embrace; another, whose son had been falsely reported dead, sat sorrowing at home, and no sooner beheld him entering the house, than she died of excessive joy. For some days the praetors kept the senate in session in the Curia, from sunrise until sunset, deliberating with what possible commander or what forces they could withstand the victorious Phoenicians. They had not yet fully determined what to do, when, lo! another disaster was reported, for which they were quite unprepared. Four thousand horse under the propraetor Gaius Centenius had been sent by the Consul Servilius to join his colleague; but on hearing of the battle at Trasumennus they had turned aside into Umbria, and had there fallen into the hands of Hannibal. The news of this affair affected people variously: some, whose thoughts were taken up with a greater sorrow, regarded this fresh loss of the cavalry as trivial in comparison with their former losses; others refused to judge of the misfortune as an isolated fact, but held that, just as when a man was sick, any disorder, however slight, was felt more than a worse one would be by a healthy man, so now, when the state was sick and suffering, any untoward occurrence should be gauged not by its intrinsic importance but by the enfeebled condition of the commonwealth, which could endure no aggravation. And so the citizens had recourse to a remedy that had now for a long time neither been employed nor needed —the creation of a dictator. And because the consul, who alone was supposed to possess the power to nominate one, was absent, and because it was no easy matter, when Italy was beset with Punic arms, to get a courier or a letter through to him, they did what had never been done until that day, and created a dictator by popular election. Their choice fell on Quintus Fabius Maximus, and Marcus Minucius Rufus they made master of the horse. To them the senate entrusted the task of strengthening the walls and towers of the City, of disposing its defences as to them seemed good, and of breaking down the bridges over the rivers: they would have to fight for their City and their homes, since they had not been able to save Italy. Hannibal marched straight on through Umbria as far as Spoletium. But when, after systematically ravaging the country, he attempted to storm the town, he was repulsed with heavy losses; and conjecturing from the strength of a single colony which he had unsuccessfully attacked how vast an undertaking the City of Rome would be, he turned aside into the Picentine territory, a land not only abounding in all kinds of produce, but filled with livestock, which his greedy and impoverished men gathered in from far and wide. He remained in camp there for some days, while his soldiers recovered from the marches they had made in wintry weather and through swamps, and from the battle, which, however successful its outcome, had been no light or easy adventure. After allowing sufficient rest to his soldiers, who delighted more in booty and rapine than in quiet and repose, he resumed his march and laid waste the Praetutian and Hadrian fields, and after these the lands of the Marsi, Marrucini and Paeligni, and the nearest part of Apulia, in the vicinity of Arpi and Luceria. Gnaeus Servilius, the consul, had engaged in skirmishes with the Gauls and had taken one insignificant town by assault, when he learned of the destruction of his colleague and the army, and being now alarmed for the safety of the capital, lest he should be absent in the very crisis of its peril, set out for Rome. Quintus Fabius Maximus, dictator now for the second time, convened the senate on the day he entered upon his office. Taking up first the question of religion, he convinced the Fathers that the consul Flaminius had erred more through his neglect of the ceremonies and the auspices than through his recklessness and ignorance; and asserting that they ought to enquire of the gods themselves how the displeasure of the gods might be appeased, prevailed with them to do what is rarely done except when dreadful prodigies have been announced, and order the decemvirs to consult the Sibylline books. When the decemvirs had inspected the Books of Fate, they reported to the Fathers that the vow which had been made to Mars on account of this war had not been duly performed, and must be performed afresh and on an ampler scale; that great games must be vowed to Jupiter, and temples to Venus Erycina and to Mens ; and finally that a supplication and lectisternium must be celebrated in honour of the gods, and a Sacred Spring be vowed, if they proved victorious and the state remained as it had been before the outbreak of hostilities. The senate, seeing that Fabius would be occupied with the conduct of the war, commanded Marcus Aemilius the praetor, as the college of pontifices had recommended, to see that all these measures were promptly put into effect. When the senate had passed these resolutions, the praetor consulted the college, and Lucius Cornelius Lentulus, the Pontifex Maximus, gave his opinion that first of all a popular vote must be taken about the Sacred Spring; for it could not be vowed without the authorization of the people. The question was put to them in this form: Do you will and so order that these things be done in the manner following? If the Republic of the Roman People, the Quirites, shall be preserved for the next five years —as I would wish it preserved —in these wars, to wit, the war of the Roman People with the People of Carthage and the wars with the Gauls on this side of the Alps, let the Roman People, the Quirites, offer up in indefeasible sacrifice to Jupiter what the spring shall have produced of swine, sheep, goats and cattle —which shall not have been consecrated to some other deity —beginning with the day which the senate and the People shall have designated. Let him who shall make a sacrifice do so at such time and by such rite as shall seem good to him; in what manner soever he does it, let it be accounted duly done. If the animal which he ought to sacrifice dies, let it be deemed unconsecrate and let no guilt attach to him; if any shall hurt it or slay it unawares, let it be no sin; if any shall steal it, let no guilt attach to the People nor to him from whom it shall have been stolen; if he shall sacrifice unwittingly on a black day, let the sacrifice be deemed to have been duly made; by night or by day, if slave or freeman perform the sacrifice, let it be deemed to have been duly made; if sacrifice shall be performed before the senate and the People shall have ordered it to be performed, let the People be absolved therefrom and free of obligation. For the same cause great games were vowed, to cost three hundred and thirty-three thousand, three hundred and thirty-three and a third bronze asses, and, besides, a sacrifice to Jupiter of three hundred oxen, and of white oxen and the other customary victims to many other gods. When the vows had been duly pronounced, a supplication was decreed, and was performed not only by the urban population, with their wives and children, but by such country folk besides, as, having some fortune of their own, were beginning to feel concern for the Commonwealth. A lectisternium was then celebrated during three days under the supervision of the decemvirs who had charge of sacrifices. Six couches were displayed: one for Jupiter and Juno, a second for Neptune and Minerva, a third for Mars and Venus, a fourth for Apollo and Diana, a fifth for Vulcan and Vesta, a sixth for Mercury and Ceres. The temples were then vowed —that to Venus Erycina by Quintus Fabius Maximus the dictator, because the Books of Fate had given out that he whose authority in the state was paramount should make the vow; and the temple to Mens by the praetor Titus Otacilius. Religious duties being thus acquitted, the dictator turned to affairs of war and state, and called upon the senate to decide with what and how many legions the victorious enemy should be faced. It was voted that he should take over the army of Gnaeus Servilius, the consul; that he should enroll, besides, from the citizens and the allies, as many horsemen and foot-soldiers as seemed good to him; and with regard to all other questions should act as he deemed conducive to the welfare of the state. Fabius announced that he should add two legions to the army that Servilius had commanded. These legions he enlisted, through his master of the horse, and commanded them to assemble at Tibur on a given day. He also issued an edict that those who dwelt in unfortified towns and hamlets should remove to places of safety; and that all the inhabitants of that district where Hannibal was likely to be marching should abandon their farms, first burning the buildings and destroying the crops, that there might be no supplies for him of any kind. He himself went out by the Flaminian way to meet the consul and his army, and when, close to the Tiber near Ocriculum, he came in sight of the column and saw the consul riding towards him at the head of his cavalry, he dispatched an orderly to bid the consul appear before the dictator without lictors. The consul obeyed, and their meeting vividly impressed the greatness of the dictatorship on citizens and allies, who had now, with the lapse of years, almost forgotten that supreme authority. Just then a dispatch was delivered from the City, announcing that ships of burden with supplies from Ostia for the army in Spain had been captured by the Punic fleet off the port of Cosa. Accordingly, the consul was ordered to set out at once for Ostia and, manning such ships as were at Rome or Ostia with soldiers and naval allies, to pursue the enemy's fleet and protect the coasts of Italy. A vast number of men had been enrolled in Rome; even freedmen who had children and were of military age had taken the oath. Of this urban levy those who were less than thirty-five years old were sent on board the ships; the others were left to garrison the City. The dictator, after taking over the consul's army from Fulvius Flaccus, his lieutenant, marched through the Sabine country to Tibur, where he had given the new levies notice to assemble on a certain day. From Tibur he marched to Praeneste, and striking across the country came out into the Latin Way, and then, reconnoitring the roads with the utmost circumspection, advanced in the direction of the enemy, though resolved nowhere to commit himself to fortune, except in so far as necessity might compel him. On the day when Fabius first encamped in sight of the enemy, not far from Arpi, the Phoenician promptly led out his forces into line and offered battle. But when he perceived that all was quiet on the other side, and could hear no sounds of commotion in their camp, he went back to his quarters, exclaiming scornfully that the boasted martial spirit of the Romans was broken at last, that the war was fought and won, that they had openly bade valour and renown farewell; but in the silence of his heart he was troubled by the thought that he would have a general to deal with by no means like Flaminius or Sempronius, since the Romans, schooled by their misfortunes, had now at last sought out a leader to match Hannibal. The prudence of the dictator was indeed an immediate source of worry to him, but, possessing as yet no experience of his firmness, he began to provoke and try his temper by frequent shifting of his camp and by pillaging the lands of the allies before his very eyes. Now he would march off rapidly and disappear; and now would lie in wait at some turn of the road, in hopes to cut the Romans off when they had descended on to level ground. Fabius kept leading his troops along the heights, at a moderate distance from the enemy, so as neither to lose touch nor yet come to blows with him. He would keep his men in camp, except for such necessary duties as obliged their leaving it; when they went out for wood and fodder, they were neither few in number nor dispersed; a corps of cavalry and skirmishers drawn up and ready for sudden onsets made everything safe for his own men and dangerous for the scattered pillagers of the enemy. He refused to stake all on a general engagement, and yet by means of little skirmishes, undertaken from a safe position and with a place of refuge close at hand, he at length accustomed his soldiers, disheartened by their former defeats, to be less diffident of their own courage and good fortune. But even Hannibal was not more vexed by these prudent measures than was the master of the horse, who was only withheld from plunging the nation into ruin by his subordinate authority. Violent and hasty in his opinions and of unbridled tongue, he spoke of Fabius —at first in the hearing of a few, but after a time quite openly to everybody —not as deliberate but as slothful, not as cautious but as timid, inventing faults that neighboured on his virtues; and exalted himself by disparaging his superior —an infamous practice, which has grown in favour from the all too great prosperity of many who have followed it. Hannibal, leaving the Hirpini, crossed over into Samnium, laid waste the lands of Beneventum, and captured the city of Telesia. He even deliberately sought to vex the Roman general, for he hoped that by so often insulting and distressing his allies he might anger him and induce him to come down and fight on equal terms. Amongst the numerous allies of Italian stock who had been made prisoners by Hannibal at Trasumennus and afterwards released were three Campanian knights, whom he had even then enticed with gifts and promises to procure for him the goodwill of their countrymen. These men now informed him that if he would bring his army into Campania the opportunity would be afforded him of taking Capua. It was a weighty undertaking for such men to enter into, and Hannibal hesitated, now trusting and again distrusting them, but in the end they persuaded him to march from Samnium into Campania. He warned them again and again to confirm their words with deeds, and dismissed them with orders to come back to him with more people, including some of their leading men. He then ordered his guide to conduct him to the territory of Casinum, for he had been told by those who knew the country that if he occupied that pass he could keep the Romans from marching to the aid of their allies. But the difficulty experienced by Carthaginians in pronouncing Latin names caused the guide to understand Casilinum instead of Casinum; and quitting the proper road he led him down through the districts of Allifae, Caiatia and Cales into the Plain of Stella. There Hannibal, looking round on the mountains and rivers that enclosed the plain, called up the guide and asked him where in the world he was. And only when the guide had answered that he should lodge that night in Casilinum, did he perceive at last how the man had blundered, and that Casinum lay far off in another direction. Whereupon he scourged the guide, and, to terrify the others, crucified him, and going into camp behind entrenchments, dispatched Maharbal with the cavalry to ravage the Falernian countryside. The devastation extended even to the Baths of Sinuessa. The Numidians wrought great havoc and spread dismay and terror more widely still; yet this terror, even though all the country blazed with war, did not cause the allies to waver in their loyalty, assuredly because the rule under which they were governed was just and temperate, nor did they refuse —and that is the only guarantee of loyalty —to yield obedience to their betters. But when Hannibal had encamped by the river Volturnus, and the fairest district in all Italy was in flames, and the smoke went curling up from burning farm-houses, while Fabius continued to march along the ridges of Mount Massicus, there was almost a new outburst of sedition. For the disaffected had kept quiet for several days, believing that the army, which had been moving more rapidly than usual, was hastening to preserve Campania from devastation. But when they reached the farthest extremity of the range, and saw the enemy down below them setting fire to the farms of the Falernian district and the colony of Sinuessa, and yet no word was uttered about fighting, Minucius cried, Are we come here as to a spectacle, that we may gratify our eyes with the slaughter of our friends and the burning of their homes? If nothing else can awaken us to a sense of shame, do we feel none when we behold these fellow citizens of ours whom our fathers sent as colonists to Sinuessa to secure this frontier from the Samnite enemy? It is not our Samnite neighbours who are wasting it now, but Phoenician invaders, who have been suffered to come all this way, from the farthest, limits of the world, by our delays and slothfulness. So greatly, alas! do we degenerate from our fathers that we behold overrun with enemies and in the possession of Numidians and Moors that coast past which they could not see the Punic navies cruising without feeling that their empire was disgraced. When, a little while ago, Saguntum was besieged, we appealed indignantly, not to men only, but to treaties and to the gods; but now that Hannibal is scaling the walls of a Roman colony, we look on with indifference. The smoke from burning farm-houses and fields comes into our eyes and mouths; our ears are ringing with the lamentations of our allies, who invoke our aid more often than that of Heaven; and here we are, leading our army —like a flock of sheep —through summer pastures and by devious mountain trails, and hiding ourselves in clouds and forests. If Marcus Furius had tried to recover Rome from the Gauls by wandering thus over mountain heights and passes, even as this new Camillus, this wonderful dictator to whom we have turned in our distress, is planning to recover Italy from Hannibal, the Gauls would be in Rome to-day; and I fear that if we linger thus, our fathers will so often have preserved it only for Hannibal and the Phoenicians. But that brave man and true Roman, on the day that the news was brought to Veii of his being appointed dictator, by command of the people in pursuance of a senatorial resolution —though Janiculum was high enough for him to have sat there and enjoyed a prospect of the enemy —came down into the plain, and on that very day, in the midst of the City —where now the Gallic Pyres are —and again on the following day, this side of Gabii, cut the legions of the Gauls to pieces. What! When, many years later, at the Caudine Forks, our Samnite foe had sent us under the yoke, was it, pray, by scouring the heights of Samnium, or by pressing Luceria hard and laying siege to it, and by challenging the victorious enemy, that Lucius Papirius Cursor struck off the yoke from Roman necks and imposed it on the haughty Samnite? What else was it than swiftness that gave the victory, not long since, to Gaius Lutatius, who bore down upon the enemy's fleet, laden deep with stores and hampered with its own munitions and equipment, on the day after he sighted it? It is folly to think that a war can be won by sitting still or making vows; you must arm and go down into the field, and do battle, man to man! Rome's greatness has come from daring and from doing; not from these sluggish policies that timid folk term cautious. When Minucius held forth in this fashion, like a general encouraging his troops, a crowd of tribunes and Roman knights would gather round him, and his fiery words even reached the ears of the common soldiers; and if the election of their general had rested with the men, they showed unmistakably that Minucius would have been preferred to Fabius. But Fabius, watching his own men no less carefully than the enemy, proved first that it was not in them to overcome his resolution. Though he knew full well that his policy of waiting was in bad repute, not only in his camp but by this time in Rome as well, he held doggedly to the same line of conduct and dragged out the remainder of the summer; so that Hannibal, disappointed in his hopes of the battle which he had made every effort to bring on, was now looking round for a place to winter in; for the country where he was, though a land of plenty for the time being, could not support him permanently, being taken up with orchards and vineyards, and planted everywhere with agreeable rather than necessary fruits. Fabius was informed of this by his scouts. Feeling certain that Hannibal would leave the Falernian district, by the same passes through which he had entered it, he posted a fair-sized garrison on Mount Callicula and another in Casilinum. (The river Volturnus runs through this town, which marks the boundary between the Falernian district and Campania). The main army he led back by the same ridges, after sending on Lucius Hostilius Mancinus with four hundred cavalry of the allies to reconnoitre. Mancinus was one of the crowd of young officers who often listened to the blustering speeches of the master of the horse. He advanced at first as if making a reconnaissance, with the object of observing the enemy from a safe distance. But when he saw the Numidians roaming about through the villages, and had even seized the opportunity to cut off a few of them, his heart was suddenly filled with the lust of combat, and he forgot the instructions of the dictator, who had bade him proceed as far as was compatible with safety, and retire before the enemy should see him. The Numidians, first one troop and then another, by charging and then retreating, drew him on almost to their very camp and wore out his horses and his men. Then Carthalo, the commander of all the enemy's cavalry, swooped down upon the Romans at a gallop, and routing them before he had got within a javelin-throw, pursued them as they fled for nearly five miles at one stretch. As soon as Mancinus perceived that the enemy would not give over the pursuit, and that he could not hope to get away, he rallied his men and led them back into the fight, though overmatched in every particular. Accordingly, he himself and the best of his troopers were surrounded and slain, and the rest in a scattered flight made their way first to Cales, and thence, by well-nigh impassable trails, to the dictator. It happened that on that day Minucius had joined Fabius. He had been sent to secure the pass which contracts above Tarracina into a narrow gorge close to the sea, to prevent the Phoenician from taking the Appian Way from Sinuessa into Roman territory. Combining their forces, the dictator and the master of the horse camped on the road where Hannibal was going to march. The enemy was two miles away. Next day the Phoenicians were on the march, filling the road which lay between the two camps. The Romans had formed up just under their rampart and had clearly the advantage of position. None the less did Hannibal advance with his light infantry and cavalry, to provoke them into fighting. At one point after another the Phoenicians attacked, dashing up and then retreating. The Roman line stood firm. The battle was long drawn out and was more to the liking of the dictator than of Hannibal. Two hundred fell on the Roman side, and eight hundred of the enemy. Hannibal now seemed to be hemmed in, the road to Casilinum being blocked. The Romans had Capua and Samnium at their backs and all their wealthy allies to furnish them with provisions; but the Phoenicians faced the prospect of passing the winter between the cliffs of Formiae and the sands and marshes of Liternum, and amid tangled forests. Hannibal did not fail to perceive that his own strategy was being turned against him. Accordingly, since he could not get out by way of Casilinum, but must take to the mountains and cross the ridge of Callicula, fearing lest the Romans should assail his troops as they were marching through the gorges, he resolved to approach the mountains under cover of darkness in the forepart of the night, after first contriving a terrifying exhibition, to cheat the enemy's eyes. Preparations for the ruse were made as follows. Pine-knots, collected from all the country round, and bundles of twigs and dry branches were tied to the horns of cattle, of which —counting those that were broken in and those that were not —they possessed, among their other rustic spoils, a considerable number. Of these, they got together about two thousand head, and Hasdrubal was commissioned to drive this herd in the night, with their horns ablaze, on to the mountains, and particularly —if it should be feasible —above the pass held by the enemy. In the dusk of evening the Carthaginians broke camp in silence, driving on the cattle a little way before the standards. When they reached the foothills and the narrow roads, the signal was immediately given to set fire to the horns and drive the herd up the mountain. And their very-fear, as the flames at once shot up from their heads, and the heat, that soon penetrated to the quick at the base of their horns, made the cattle as wild as though they had gone crazy. As they suddenly rushed this way and that, all the bushes far and near seemed to be burning, as if the woods and mountains had been set on fire; and when they shook their heads, they only fanned the blaze and made it: look as if men were running about in all directions. When the troops who had been posted to hold the pass caught sight of certain-fires on the mountain-tops above them, they thought that they were surrounded and forsook their station. Where the fewest flames were flashing —for this seemed the safest way —they made for the summits of the ridges, but nevertheless fell in with some of the cattle which had strayed from their herds. And at first, when they saw them afar, breathing fire, as they supposed, they were dazed by the wonder of it, and stood stock still; but afterwards, perceiving it to be a trick devised by men, they concluded that it was an ambush and took to their heels in greater confusion than before. They also ran into some light-armed soldiers of the enemy; the darkness, however, by equalizing their fears, kept both sides there till daylight without either beginning the battle. In the meanwhile Hannibal had conveyed his entire army through the pass — surprising some of his enemies in the pass itself —and had pitched his camp in the district of Allifae. Fabius heard the din, but believing it to be an ambush, and disliking, in any case, to fight at night, kept his men within their works. At break of day there was a battle under the ridge. The- Romans had cut off the light-armed troops of the enemy from the others, and possessing some superiority in numbers, would easily have overpowered them, had it not been for the arrival of a cohort of Spaniards, which Hannibal had sent back expressly to forestall them. These troops were more used to mountains, and better suited to skirmishing amid rocks and crags, and being more agile and more lightly armed, they had no difficulty —thanks to the nature of the fighting —in getting the better of an enemy whose heavy armour and stationary tactics were adapted to level ground. Thus the struggle had been far from equal, when they parted and made off for their respective camps. Hardly any of the Spaniards had been hurt, but the Romans had lost a considerable number of their men. Fabius, too, broke camp, and marching through the pass established himself in a lofty and naturally strong position above Allifae. Hannibal now feigned a movement upon Rome by way of Samnium, and marched back right to the land of the Paeligni, pillaging as he went. Fabius led his troops along the ridges between the enemy's army and the City, neither shunning his foe nor coming to grips with him. From the Paelignian country the Phoenician turned, and marched back towards Apulia till he came to Gereonium, a town which its own inhabitants had abandoned in their alarm at the collapse of a part of its walls. The dictator encamped in the country about Larinum, and being summoned thence to Rome on religious business, commanded, counselled, and all but entreated the master of the horse to put more trust in prudence than in fortune, and rather to imitate his strategy than that of Sempronius and Flaminius. He was not to suppose, said Fabius, that nothing had been accomplished, because almost the whole summer had been tediously spent in baffling the enemy;. physicians too sometimes found rest more efficacious than motion and activity;, it was no small matter to have ceased to be defeated by an enemy who had so often been victorious, and to have breathed again after a series of disasters. When he had thus fore-warned the master of the horse —but all in vain —he set out for Rome. At the beginning of the summer in which these operations were carried on, war was also begun in Spain by land and sea. To the number of ships, all rigged and fitted out, which Hasdrubal had taken over from his brother he added ten, and entrusted the fleet of forty sail to Himilco; and then, setting out from Carthage, he made his ships keep near the land and led his army along the shore, prepared to do battle with whatever part of their forces tile Romans might bring against him. When Gnaeus Scipio learned that the enemy had left his winter quarters, he was minded at first to do the same; but on second thoughts concluded not to risk a battle on land, in view of the enormous number of auxiliaries with which rumour credited the Carthaginian, and embarking some of his best troops, went out to meet the enemy with a fleet of five and thirty ships. On the second day out of Tarraco he came to an anchorage ten miles from the mouth of the river Ebro. Thence he dispatched two Massiliot scouting vessels, who reported that the Punic fleet was lying in the mouth of the river and their camp established on the bank. Accordingly, in order to take them off their guard and unprepared, while at the same time spreading a universal panic, he weighed anchor and proceeded towards the enemy. The Spaniards have numerous towers built on heights, which they use both as watch-towers and also for protection against pirates. From one of these the hostile ships were first descried, and on a signal being made to Hasdrubal, the alarm broke out on land and in the camp before it reached the sea and the ships; for no one had yet heard the beat of the oars or other nautical sounds, nor had the promontories yet disclosed the fleet to view, when suddenly one galloper-after another, sent off by Hasdrubal, dashed up to the sailors, who were strolling about the beach or resting in their tents and thinking of nothing so little as of the enemy or of fighting on that day, and bade them board their ships in haste and arm themselves, for the Roman fleet was even then close to the harbour. These orders the gallopers who had been sent out carried far and wide, and presently Hasdrubal himself appeared on the scene with his entire army, and all was noise and confusion as the rowers and soldiers rushed down together to their ships, as though their object were rather to flee the shore than to enter battle. Hardly were they all on board, when some cast off the hawsers and swung out on to their anchors, and others —that nothing might detain them —cut the anchor cables, and, in the hurry and excessive haste with which everything was done, the soldiers' gear interfered with the sailors in the performance of their tasks, and the confusion of the sailors kept the soldiers from taking and fitting on their armour. By this time the Romans were not only drawing near, but had already formed their ships in order of battle. The result was that the Phoenicians were dismayed alike by the enemy's attack and by their own confusion, and after making rather a pretence of fighting than actually engaging, turned about and ran for it. With a line so extended —and many ships came up at the same time —they were quite unable to get into the river's mouth against the current, but rowed in anywhere to the land; and getting ashore, some through shoals and others on a dry beach, some with their arms and some without, they fled to the battle-line of their friends, which was drawn up along the shore. Two, however, of the Punic ships had been taken in the first attack and four had been sunk. The Romans, although the land was in the possession of the enemy, whose line of battle could be seen extending all along the shore, continued without the slightest hesitation to press their pursuit of the terror-stricken fleet, and, attaching cables to the stern of every vessel which had neither broken its prow on the beach nor grounded its keel in the shoals, they towed it out to sea, until they had captured some twenty-five of the forty ships. Nor was this the most brilliant feature of the victory, but the fact that the Romans in one easy battle had made themselves the masters of all that coast. So they spread their sails for Onusa, where they disembarked and stormed and sacked the city, and thence laid a course for Carthage, and after devastating all the country round about, ended by setting fire even to the buildings that adjoined the walls and gates. Then the fleet —heavy-laden now with plunder —sailed to Longuntica, where they found a great quantity of esparto-grass, which Hasdrubal had got together for the use of his ships. Of this they took what they needed and burned all the rest. And they not only cruised along the mainland, but crossed over to the island of Ebusus. There they endeavoured strenuously for two days, but without success, to capture the chief city of the island. And when they saw that their hopes were vain and their time was being wasted, they betook themselves to pillaging the country-side, and after sacking and burning several villages, returned to their ships with more booty than they had collected from the mainland. Here envoys from the Baliaric islands came to Scipio to sue for peace. The fleet now put about and returned to the northern part of the province, and thither flocked ambassadors from all the communities on this side of the Ebro and even from many places in farthest Spain; but the communities that gave hostages and really came under the rule and government of Rome were more than a hundred and twenty. Feeling, therefore, sufficiently strong on land, as well as on the sea, the Roman general advanced as far as the pass of Castulo. Hasdrubal retired into Lusitania, nearer the ocean. It looked as if the rest of the summer would be undisturbed, and so it would have been as far as the Phoenicians were concerned. But, besides that the Spaniards themselves are constitutionally restless and eager for change, no sooner had the Romans withdrawn from the pass to the seacoast, than Mandonius and Indibilis —the latter had formerly been a chieftain of the Ilergetes —roused up their countrymen and invaded the peaceful territories of Rome's allies, on a marauding expedition. To oppose them Scipio dispatched a tribune of the soldiers with light-armed auxiliaries. They easily routed the enemy —a mere hastily-organized militia —slaying a thousand of them, making some prisoners, and disarming the greater part. Nevertheless, this outbreak induced Hasdrubal, who was retreating towards the ocean, to turn back and cross the Ebro, for the purpose of protecting his allies. The Phoenicians were in camp in the country of the Ilergavonenses, the Romans near Nova Classis, when tidings came which gave at once a new turn to the campaign. The Celtiberians, who had sent their leading men to treat with the Romans and had given hostages, incited by a message from Scipio, rose up in arms and invaded the Carthaginian province with a powerful army. They captured three towns by assault, and afterwards twice engaged successfully in battle with Hasdrubal himself, slaying some fifteen thousand of their enemies, and taking four thousand prisoners, with many military standards. Such was the position of affairs in Spain when Publius Scipio came into the province. The senate had prolonged his command after the consulship and had sent him out with thirty men-ofwar and eight thousand soldiers and a great convoy of supplies. This fleet, which the number of cargo-vessels swelled to an enormous size, caused great rejoicing amongst the Romans and their allies, when it was made out in the offing and standing in dropped anchor in the harbour of Tarraco. There Scipio disembarked his troops and set out to join his brother; and from that time forward they carried on the war with perfect harmony of temper and of purpose. Accordingly, while the Carthaginians were taken up with the Celtiberian campaign, they lost no time in crossing the Ebro, and seeing nothing of any enemy, marched directly on Saguntum, where it was said that hostages from all over Spain were being guarded in the citadel by a small garrison, to whose keeping they had been consigned by Hannibal. It was this pledge alone that checked the inclination of all the Spanish states to ally themselves with Rome, for fear that the blood of their own children might expiate the guilt of their defection. From this constraint Spain was released by the machinations —more clever than honest —of one man. Abelux was his name, and he was a noble Spaniard of Saguntum. Loyal hitherto to the Phoenicians, he had now —as barbarians are for the most part prone to do — altered his allegiance with the alteration in their fortunes. But reflecting that a deserter who went over to the enemy without betraying to them something of great moment was but a single worthless and dishonoured individual, he proposed to benefit his new allies to the utmost extent of his ability. And considering everything that fortune could put into his power, he inclined for choice to deliver up the hostages, believing that this was the one thing that would most effectively secure for the Romans the friendship of the Spanish leaders. But since he knew that the men guarding the hostages would do nothing without the orders of Bostar, the governor, he artfully approached Bostar himself, who was encamped outside the city, on the very shore, to preclude the approach of the Romans from that quarter. Taking him on one side, he explained the situation, as though the other had no knowledge of it. Fear, he said, had until then kept the Spaniards down, because the Romans were a long way off; now the Roman camp was on this side of the Ebro, a sure stronghold and asylum for any who wished a change; those, accordingly, who were not bound by fear must be secured by kindness and generosity. When Bostar asked in amazement what this gift could be that should suddenly be of so great value, Send back the hostages to their homes, said Abelux. That will at once be grateful personally to their parents, who are the people of most consequence in their own states, and to their tribes in general. Everyone wishes to be trusted: confide in people, and almost always you confirm their confidence in you. The task of restoring the hostages to their homes I request for myself, that I may work, as well as counsel, for the furtherance of my plan, and to an act that is gracious in itself lend such added grace as I am able. Once he had brought Bostar round —for his wits were not as sharp as those of most Phoenicians —he departed secretly by night for the enemy's outposts, and encountering certain Spanish auxiliaries, who conducted him to Scipio, disclosed his plan, and when he had given pledges and received them, and had agreed upon a time and place for turning over the hostages, returned to Saguntum. The following day he spent with Bostar, receiving instructions how to carry out the enterprise, and left him with the understanding that he was to go at night, in order to elude the enemy's sentinels. At the hour agreed on with the Romans he wakened the boys' custodians, and led them all, as if unwittingly, into the trap prepared by his own treachery. They were then conducted to the Roman camp. The remainder of the plan for the restoration of the hostages to their friends was carried out, through the agency of Abelux, exactly as he and Bostar had agreed, and everything was done as it would have been if he had been acting in the name of the Carthaginians. The gratitude which the Romans won under such circumstances was much greater than the Carthaginians would have enjoyed. For the Carthaginians had been found to be harsh and arrogant in the hour of their prosperity, and their gentleness might have appeared as the result of misfortune and timidity; but the Romans on first coming thither —and till then they were unknown —had begun with an act of clemency and liberality, and Abelux was held to have shown discernment, and not without reason to have changed his friends. The Spaniards were therefore all with one accord intending to revolt, and would have drawn the sword at once, if winter had not intervened and compelled both Romans and Carthaginians to retire to their quarters. Such was the course of events in Spain in the second summer of the Punic war. In Italy meanwhile the defeated Romans had been afforded a little breathing space by Fabius's wise policy of holding back. This policy, though it occasioned Hannibal no small anxiety —for he saw that the Romans had finally chosen a military leader who waged war as reason and not as blind chance dictated —yet incurred the scorn of Fabius's fellow citizens, both soldiers and civilians, especially when his absence had been followed, thanks to the rashness of the master of the horse, by a battle which may truthfully be characterized as having ended with more rejoicing than success. Two things, moreover, increased the dictator's unpopularity. One was a crafty ruse of Hannibal's. Some deserters having pointed out to him the dictator's farm, he razed to the ground all the buildings in its neighbourhood, but ordered that this one place should be preserved from fire and sword and every kind of hostile violence, in order that it might appear that Fabius was in this way being rewarded for some secret compact. The other was something that he did himself, which, though perhaps open to criticism in the first place —because he had not waited for the authorization of the senate —redounded in the upshot, and in no uncertain manner, greatly to his fame. In exchanging prisoners the Roman and Phoenician generals had followed the example set in the first Punic war and had agreed that the side which recovered more men than it restored should pay for each two pounds and a half of silver. The Romans recovered two hundred and forty-seven more than the Phoenicians, but the senate, though the matter was often discussed, was slow in voting the money owing for them, on the ground that the dictator had not consulted them; till finally Fabius sent his son Quintus to Rome to sell the farm which the enemy had spared, and discharged the nation's obligation at his own expense. Hannibal lay encamped under the walls of Gereonium, where he had left a few buildings standing, to serve as granaries, when he captured and burned the city. From there he would send two-thirds of his army to gather corn; the other third, ready to march, he kept at the post under his own command, with the twofold object of protecting the camp and of guarding lest any attack be made upon his foragers. The Roman army was at that time in the neighbourhood of Larinum. Minucius, the master of the horse, was in command, for the dictator, as has been said before, had departed for the City. The camp had been established on a high hill in a position of security, but was now brought down to level ground; and more vigorous measures were being discussed —in keeping with the temper of the general —for attacking the enemy's scattered foragers, or his camp, which was left but lightly garrisoned. Hannibal saw well enough that the change in leaders had brought a change in strategy, and that the Romans were likely to be more bold than prudent. But though the enemy was close at hand, he himself did something that would almost seem incredible, and sent out a third part of his troops to forage, retaining two-thirds in his camp; then he brought the camp itself up nearer the enemy, about two miles away from Gereonium, to a hill in full sight of the Romans, that they might know that he was watching to protect his foragers, if they should be at all molested. He then observed a hill even nearer the Romans and threatening their very camp; but since, if he should attempt to take it openly by daylight, the Romans, who had a shorter way to go, would doubtless get ahead of him, he sent some Numidians secretly in the night, and they seized the hill. They were holding the place next day, when the Romans, despising their scanty numbers, dislodged them and transferred their own camp thither. There was now, at all events, but a very little space between rampart and rampart, and this the Romans had pretty well covered with their troops, which they had drawn up in line of battle. At the same time they had sent out their cavalry and skirmishers from the side of the camp which was farthest from the enemy, and these had fallen upon the scattered foragers, whom they routed with great slaughter. Still, Hannibal did not dare to fight a battle, for his forces were so small that he was hardly able to defend his camp, if the Romans should assault it, and he now began to wage war by the arts of Fabius, inaction and delay, and had withdrawn his troops to their former camp, which lay under the walls of Gereonium. Some writers relate that there was even a regular pitched battle, in which the Phoenicians were driven from the field at the first encounter and pursued all the way to their camp, from which they sallied and quickly dismayed the Romans in their turn; but that Numerius Decimius the Samnite then came up and restored the day. They say that Decimius, who was the person of most consequence both for family and fortune, not only in his own town of Bovianum but in all Samnium, was on his way to the camp, by the dictator's order, at the head of eight thousand foot and five hundred horse, when, appearing on Hannibal's rear, he was mistaken by both armies for reinforcements coming up with Quintus Fabius from Rome. Hannibal, fearing some trap as well, drew back his men, and the Romans, pressing forward and assisted by the Samnites, carried, that same day, two redoubts. Six thousand of the enemy were slain and fully five thousand Romans. Nevertheless, though the losses had been so nearly equal, a foolish tale was carried to Rome of an extraordinary victory, with a letter from the master of the horse that was more foolish still. These events were the occasion of many speeches both in the senate and in the popular assembly. The citizens rejoiced, and only the dictator refused to credit either rumour or dispatch, and declared that even though the story were all true, he feared success more than adversity. Then Marcus Metilius, tribune of the plebs, cried out that this was past all bearing: not only had the dictator prevented a successful engagement being fought while he was present, but he even objected now that the victory was won, and persisted in drawing out the war and wasting time, in order the longer to remain in office, and to continue, both at Rome and in the army, in sole possession of authority; for one of the consuls had fallen in battle, and the other —under the pretext of pursuing the Punic fleet —had been sent a great way off from Italy; the two praetors were employed in Sicily and Sardinia, neither of which required a praetor at this time; and Marcus Minucius, the master of the horse, that he might not see the enemy or carry out any military operation, had been kept almost a prisoner. Thus it had actually come to pass that not only Samnium —whose territories, as though they lay beyond the Ebro, had already been surrendered to the Phoenicians —but Campania, and the districts both of Cales and Falerii had been utterly laid waste; while the dictator sat still at Casilinum and used the legions of the Roman People to protect his own estate. The army — eager as it was to fight —and the master of the horse had virtually been cooped up and confined within the rampart; and their swords, as though they had been captured enemies, had been taken from them. At last, when the dictator had gone away, they had come out from behind their works, as if released from a blockade, and had routed and put to flight their enemies. For all these reasons, if their ancient spirit had still animated the Roman plebs, he would boldly have proposed the abrogation of Quintus Fabius's command; as it was, he should move the adoption of a moderate measure, to wit, the elevation of the master of the horse to a footing of equality with the dictator. Yet, even so, they must not let Fabius rejoin his army till he had first installed a consul in the place of Gaius Flaminius. The dictator refrained from making speeches to the people, in a cause that was far from popular. Even the senate listened coldly when he spoke in high terms of the enemy, and charging the reverses of the past two years to the rashness and ignorance of the Roman generals, declared that the master of the horse must answer to him for having fought against his orders. If his authority and strategy should be paramount, he would soon let people know that with a good commander fortune was of little moment; that mind and reason were in control; and that to have preserved the army in its hour of danger, yet without disgrace, was more glorious than to have slain many thousands of the enemy. After making several speeches to this purport, yet without effect, and presiding over the election of Marcus Atilius Regulus to the consulship, that he might not take a personal part in the dispute about the command, on the day preceding the bringing forward of the resolution he left by night for the army. When at break of day the plebs assembled in their council, though at heart they were inclined to dislike the dictator and to favour the master of the horse, yet they wanted sufficient courage to come forward and advocate a course which most of them approved, so that the motion, despite its exceeding popularity, lacked support. One man alone was found to urge the passage of the bill. This was Gaius Terentius Varro, praetor of the year before, whose antecedents were not merely base but even sordid. It is said that his father had been a butcher, who peddled his wares himself, and that he had employed this very son about the menial tasks associated with that calling. The young man had no sooner inherited from his father the money gained in this kind of occupation than he felt encouraged to hope for a more liberal career, and resolved to enter public life; and by declaiming on behalf of ignoble men and causes against the property and reputation of persons of the better sort achieved first notoriety and then office. He had held the quaestorship and both aedileships —plebeian and curule —and finally even the praetorship. He now ventured to aspire to the consulship, and with considerable shrewdness sought to capture the favour of the populace by exploiting their animosity against the dictator, with the result that he alone reaped all the popularity growing out of the plebiscite. Everyone, whether in Rome or with the army, whether friend or foe, looked on the passing of this bill as an insult to the dictator —everyone, that is, but the dictator himself, who with the same unruffled spirit with which he had borne the slanders uttered against him before the multitude by his adversaries now bore the injustice of the infuriated people. While still on the way he received a dispatch from the senate about the equal division of command, but fairly confident that though the authority of the commanders had been equalized, their abilities had not, he returned to the army with a spirit that neither fellow citizens nor enemies could daunt. As for Minucius, success and the favour of the crowd had already made him well-nigh insufferable. But now, at all events, he cast away all modesty and moderation and boasted of his triumph not only over Hannibal but over Quintus Fabius as well: that wonderful leader, to whom his countrymen had turned in their distress as a match for Hannibal, had by vote of the people been reduced to a level —the superior with his subordinate, the dictator with his master of the horse; and this action, to which history could afford no parallel, had been taken in that very state in which masters of the horse had been used to tremble and shudder at the rods and axes of the dictator; so conspicuous had been his own success and courage. He would therefore follow up his good fortune, if the dictator persisted in that dilatory and inactive course which gods and men had united in condemning. Accordingly, on the day of his first meeting with Quintus Fabius, he said that the very first thing to be settled was the manner in which they should exercise the joint command: he himself thought that the best way would be for each to have supreme command and authority either every other day, or, if longer periods seemed preferable, for equally apportioned times, to the end that he might be a match for the enemy not only in strategy but in numbers also, if he should meet with a favourable opportunity for fighting. This proposal by no means suited Quintus Fabius, for he saw that everything which his rash colleague should have got control of would be controlled by Fortune: he had been made, he said, to share the supreme command with another, not deprived of it; he would therefore never voluntarily relinquish that share which he possessed of the power to guide the campaign prudently; he would not divide with Minucius the times or days of commanding, but would divide the army, and in accordance with his own plans would save what he could, since he was not permitted to save everything. In this way he brought about a division of the legions, such as was customary between consuls. The first and fourth fell to Minucius, the second and third to Fabius. In like manner they divided equally the cavalry and auxiliaries, both allies and Latins. The master of the horse chose that their camps, too, should be separated. All this caused Hannibal a twofold joy, for, fully acquainted as he was with whatever went on amongst his enemies both from much information brought in by deserters and from the discoveries of his own spies, he reckoned on entrapping the uncontrolled rashness of Minucius after his own fashion, while he saw that the sagacity of Fabius had been deprived of half its strength. There was a hill between the camp of Minucius and that of the Phoenicians, and it was certain that he who occupied it would place his enemy in a rather bad position. This Hannibal was desirous not so much of capturing without a struggle —though this would have been worth while —as of using to bring on a battle with Minucius, who would sally forth, as he well knew, to oppose him. It appeared at first sight that none of the ground between could be used for an ambush, since it not only had nothing on it in the shape of trees, but was nowhere so much as screened with brambles. But in fact it was formed by nature for covering an ambuscade —all the more because in a bare valley no such trap could be suspected —for in its windings there were hollow cliffs, so large that some of them would hold two hundred soldiers. In these lurking-places Hannibal concealed five thousand foot and horse —as many in each as could readily lie in wait there. Lest, however, the movement of anyone who might carelessly step out or the glint of arms should betray the ruse, in a valley so bare and open, he dispatched a small party at dawn to seize the hill already mentioned and draw off the enemy's attention. The Romans no sooner descried them than they laughed at their small numbers, and everybody asked to be assigned the duty of dislodging the Carthaginians and capturing the place. Their general himself, as fatuous and rash as anyone, called the men to arms and railed at the enemy with idle threats. First he ordered out the light infantry; then he sent the cavalry off in a solid column; finally, when he saw that the enemy too were bringing up supports, he set forth with his legions in battle array. Hannibal likewise, as the struggle waxed hotter and his men were sore bested, sent in reinforcement after reinforcement, horse and foot, till he now had a regular army in the field, and both sides were engaged with all their forces. The Roman light infantry, as they were advancing from the lower ground on to the height which the enemy had already occupied, was the first to suffer a repulse, and as they were driven downhill, caused a panic among the cavalry, which was coming up behind them, and fled to the standards of the legions. These alone maintained their line undaunted, when all the rest were in full flight, and it looked as if, had the battle been a regular front-to-front engagement, they would have proved fully equal to their enemy —so encouraged had they been by the successful action a few days before. But the men in ambush, suddenly springing out and charging them on both flanks and in the rear, worked such havoc and alarm that not one of them had any courage left for fighting or any hope in flight. There it is, said Fabius, when first the cries of the frightened soldiers were heard, and then the confusion in the distant battle-line became discernible; misfortune has not overtaken rashness more quickly than I feared. Though made equal to Fabius in authority, he finds Hannibal his superior, both in courage and in fortune. But another time will do for upbraiding and resentment; for the present, march out from your trenches, and let us wrest from the enemy his victory and from our fellow citizens a confession of their blunder. By this time large numbers of the Romans had either been slain or were casting about for a way to escape, when suddenly Fabius and his army appeared, as though they had come down from heaven to help them; and before they got within a javelin's range or struck a blow, had checked both the headlong flight of the Romans and the reckless fury of the enemy's attack. Those who had quitted their ranks and dispersed this way and that came running up on every side to the unbroken line; those who had retreated in a body faced about to meet the enemy and, forming a circle, at first slowly retreated, but presently, being more compactly drawn together, stood their ground. And now the beaten army and the fresh one had pretty much united into a single line and were ready to advance against the enemy, when Hannibal sounded the recall, declaring openly that he had beaten Minucius, but that Fabius had beaten him. When the troops had got back to their camps, towards the close of a day of such varied fortune, Minucius called his men together and thus addressed them: Soldiers, I have often heard that the best man is he who can himself advise us what is profitable; the next best he who listens to good advice; but that he who can neither counsel well nor obey: another has the meanest capacity of all. Since to us the first rank of intelligence and capacity has been denied, let us hold fast to the second or middle state, and while we are learning to command, make up our minds to obey a man of wisdom. Let us join our camp to that of Fabius; and when we have brought our standards to his tent, and I have given him the name of 'Father' —as befits his goodness to us and his great position —you, soldiers, will salute as 'patrons' those whose hands and swords just now protected you; and, if nothing else, this day shall at least have conferred on us the, glory of possessing thankful hearts. The moment the signal was given, the order to pack was shouted round. Setting forth they marched in column to the dictator's camp, to the astonishment of Fabius himself and all who were about. When they had planted their ensigns before the tribunal, the master of the horse advanced in front of the rest and called upon Fabius by the name of Father, and his entire army saluted the soldiers who had gathered round them as their patrons. Then Minucius said, To my parents, Dictator, with whom I have just made you equal in name, which is all that speech can do, I owe only my life; to you I owe not merely my own safety but the safety of all of these. Accordingly I am the first to reject and repeal that plebiscite which has been more onerous to me than honourable, and to place myself again under your command and auspices and restore to you these standards and these legions; and may good fortune come of it to you and to me and to these your armies, to the preserved and the preserver. Lay aside, I pray, your just resentment, and bid me retain my post of master of the horse and these their own proper companies and ranks. Then hands were clasped, and the assembly being dismissed, the soldiers were kindly and hospitably entertained, alike by friends and strangers, and a day which a little earlier had been very gloomy and almost accurst was turned into one of rejoicing. In Rome, when the report of this affair came in, and was later confirmed by letters not only from both commanders, but from the soldiers generally in both armies, all men joined in lauding Maximus to the skies. With Hannibal and the hostile Phoenicians his renown was equally great; then for the first time they realized that they were fighting with Romans and in Italy. For during the past two years they had so despised the Roman generals and soldiers that they could hardly believe that they were at war with the same nation as that of which they had heard such terrifying stories from their fathers. And Hannibal is said to have remarked, as he was returning from the field, that at last that cloud which had long been hovering about the mountain-tops had broken in a storm of rain. While these things were happening in Italy, Gnaeus Servilius Geminus the consul, with a fleet of a hundred and twenty ships, sailed round Sardinia and Corsica, and after taking hostages from both, bore away for Africa. Before descending on the mainland, he plundered the island of Menix; and after accepting ten talents of silver, which the people of Cercina gave him, to induce him not to burn and pillage their territory also, he sailed in to the coast of Africa and disembarked his troops. Soldiers and naval allies went off to pillage the country-side and dispersed as freely as if they were plundering desert islands. And so they quickly fell into an ambush, and losing contact with each other, and knowing nothing of the country, were set upon by large bands of their enemies, who knew it well, and driven back to their ships in a bloody and disgraceful rout. Fully a thousand men were lost, including the quaestor, Tiberius Sempronius Blaesus. Moorings were cast off in a hurry, and the fleet, leaving the shore behind it lined with enemies, stood away for Sicily. At Lilybaeum it was handed over to the praetor Titus Otacilius, to be conducted by his lieutenant, Publius Cincius, back to Rome. The consul himself proceeded overland through Sicily to the straits, where he crossed into Italy, in obedience to a dispatch from Quintus Fabius. The dictator had sent for Servilius, and for Marcus Atilius his colleague, to take over his armies, for his six months' tenure of authority was drawing to a close. Nearly all the annalists state that Fabius was dictator in his campaign against Hannibal; Coelius even writes that he was the first to be created dictator by the people. But Coelius and the rest forget that only the consul Gnaeus Servilius, who was then far away in his province of Gaul, had the right of naming a dictator. It was because the nation, appalled by their great disaster, could not put up with so long a delay that resort was had to the popular election of an acting dictator. Thereafter the general's successes and his great renown, and the additions which his descendants made to the inscription which accompanies his portrait, led easily to the belief that one who had in fact been made acting dictator had been dictator. The consuls —Atilius taking over the army of Fabius and Geminus Servilius that of Minucius —constructed a winter camp betimes, and carried on the war for the rest of the autumn with the greatest harmony, on the lines laid down by Fabius. As often as Hannibal went out to forage, they were sure to appear, at one place or another, harassing his march and cutting off the stragglers: a general engagement, which the enemy sought with all the arts at his command, they declined to risk; and Hannibal was driven to such extremity of want, that if he had not thought that his departure would necessarily look like flight, he would have gone back into Gaul. For he had given up all hope of supporting his army in those regions, if the next consuls should make use of the same strategy. Winter had already brought the fighting about Gereonium to a standstill, when envoys from Neapolis arrived in Rome. Bringing forty massive golden bowls into the senate-house, they delivered themselves to this effect: that they knew that the treasury of the Roman People was becoming exhausted by the war, and since it was being waged no less in behalf of the cities and lands of the allies than for the capital and citadel of Italy —the City of Rome —and for its empire, the Neapolitans had deemed it right to employ the gold which their ancestors had bequeathed them, whether for the adornment of their temples or as a subsidy in time of need, to assist the Roman People; had they thought themselves capable of helping with their persons, they would have offered these with the same heartiness; it would gratify them if the Roman senators and people would look on all the possessions of the Neapolitans as their own, and consider that their gift deserved a willing acceptance, as being greater and of more account in respect of the friendliness and good-will of the givers than in actual value. The envoys received a vote of thanks for this generosity and thoughtfulness, and the bowl of least weight was accepted. At about this time a Carthaginian spy who for two years had eluded capture was caught in Rome, and after his hands had been cut off, was allowed to go; and five and twenty slaves were crucified, on the charge of having conspired in the Campus Martius. The informer was rewarded with freedom and twenty thousand sesterces. Ambassadors were dispatched to Philip, King of the Macedonians, to demand the person of Demetrius of Pharus, who, beaten in war, had fled to him for refuge; and others to expostulate with the Ligurians, because they had aided the Phoenician with supplies and men, and at the same time to observe at close range what was going on amongst the Boi and the Insubres. Ambassadors were likewise sent to King Pineus in Illyria, to demand a tribute which was overdue, or, in case he wished the time extended, to take hostages. So far were the Romans, though bearing upon their shoulders the burden of a mighty war, from permitting any concern of theirs to escape them, in however remote a part of the world it lay. They were troubled, too, that the contract for the temple of Concord, which the praetor Lucius Manlius had vowed two years before in Gaul, during the mutiny of the soldiers, had hitherto not been let. Accordingly the city praetor, Marcus Aemilius, appointed for the purpose two commissioners, Gaius Pupius and Caeso Quinctius Flamininus, who arranged to have the temple built on the Citadel. The same praetor, acting on instructions from the senate, wrote to the consuls, requesting that, if it seemed good to them, one of them would come to Rome to hold an election of consuls, and promising to appoint the comitia for the day which they should designate. To this the consuls answered that they could not withdraw from the presence of the enemy without detriment to the republic; it would therefore be better that the election be conducted by an interrex than that one of the consuls be called away from the seat of war. To the senators it seemed preferable that the consuls should appoint a dictator to preside at the election. They appointed Lucius Veturius Philo, who named Marcus Pomponius Matho master of the horse. There was a flaw in their appointment and they were commanded on the fourteenth day to resign their magistracy, whereupon the state reverted to an interregnum. The authority of the consuls was extended for a year. To be interrex the Fathers named Gaius Claudius Cento, the son of Appius, and after him Publius Cornelius Asina. The latter conducted an election, which was marked by a bitter struggle between patricians and plebeians. Gaius Terentius Varro had endeared himself to the plebeians —the class to which he himself belonged —by invectives against the leading men and the usual tricks of the demagogue. The blow he had struck at the influence and dictatorial authority of Fabius brought him the glory which is won by defaming others, and the rabble was now striving to raise him to the consulship, while the patricians opposed the attempt with all their might, lest men should acquire the custom of assailing them as a means of rising to their level. Quintus Baebius B.C. 217 Herennius, a tribune of the plebs and kinsman of Gaius Terentius, railed not only at the senate but at the augurs too, because they had forbidden the dictator to accomplish the election, and by placing them in an unfavourable light, strengthened the candidacy of his friend. The nobles, he said, had been seeking war for many years, and it was they who had brought Hannibal into Italy. It was their machinations, too, that were spinning out the war, when it might be brought to a victorious conclusion. That four legions if united were able to hold their own in a general engagement had been shown in a successful battle fought by Marcus Minucius, when Fabius was absent. Notwithstanding this, two legions had just been exposed to be massacred by the enemy and subsequently rescued from the massacre, to the end that the names of Father and Patron might be conferred on one who had kept the Romans from conquering before keeping them from being conquered. After that the consuls had employed the arts of Fabius to prolong the war, when they were able to have ended it. The nobles had all made a compact to this effect; nor would his hearers see an end of the war until they had elected a true plebeian, a new man, to the consulship; for the plebeian nobles had already been admitted to the same rites as the others and had begun to look down on the plebs from the moment when they themselves had ceased to be looked down on by the patricians. Who could fail to see that their end and purpose in resorting to an interregnum had been to keep the election in the hands of the patricians? To this end both consuls had remained with their army in the field; to this end, later on, because a dictator had been named, against their wishes, for the purpose of holding an election, they had succeeded in having the augurs declare that there had been a flaw in his appointment. They had therefore the interregnum they desired. But at least one consulship belonged to the Roman plebs; and the people meant to keep it free, and bestow it on him who would rather win an early victory than remain long in command. When the plebs had been inflamed by these harangues, though there were three patrician candidates, Publius Cornelius Merenda, Lucius Manlius Volso, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, and two plebeians of families which had already been ennobled, namely, Gaius Atilius Serranus and Quintus Aelius Paetus, of whom one was a pontifex, the other an augur, Gaius Terentius was the only consul elected, and the assembly called to choose a colleague for him was therefore under his control. The nobles, finding that Varro's competitors had not been able to command the necessary strength, thereupon obliged Lucius Aemilius Paulus to stand, though he held out long and earnestly against their importunity. He had been consul together with Marcus Livius, and the condemnation of his colleague —from which he had not himself escaped unscathed —had embittered him against the plebs. On the next election day all those who had been Varro's rivals withdrew their names, the consul was given Paulus, rather as a competent opponent than as a colleague. The election of praetors then took place, and Marcus Pomponius Matho and Publius Furius Philus were chosen. To Philus the lot assigned the urban praetorship, for administering justice in Rome; to Pomponius the jurisdiction in suits between Roman citizens and foreigners. Two additional praetors were elected, Marcus Claudius Marcellus for Sicily, and Lucius Postumius Albinus for Gaul. These were all elected in their absence, and not one of them, except Terentius the consul, received a magistracy which he had not already filled before, a number of stout-hearted, active men being passed over because it seemed unwise at such a juncture to give any man an office to which he was new. The armies also were augmented. But how large were the additions of infantry and cavalry I should hardly venture to declare with any certainty —so greatly do historians differ in regard to the numbers and kinds of troops. Some say that ten thousand new soldiers were enlisted as replacements; others that four new legions were enrolled, so that they took the field with eight. Some assert that the legions were also increased in the numbers of their infantry and cavalry, and that each received an additional thousand foot and a hundred horse, bringing up the total of every one to five thousand foot and three hundred horse; and that double the number of horse and an equal number of foot were furnished by the allies. One thing is not disputed —that they proceeded with more energy and enthusiasm than in former years, because the dictator had given them ground for hoping that they would be able to defeat the enemy. Before, however, the new legions marched out from the City, the decemvirs were instructed to consult the Sacred Books, on account of a general alarm occasioned by strange portents. For a shower of stones had been reported as having fallen at Rome on the Aventine, and about the same time at Aricia; in the Sabine country the images of the gods, and at Caere the waters that flowed from the hot spring had been drenched with blood —a prodigy all the more alarming from its having occurred so often; and in the arched way which used to lead to the Campus Martius some men had been struck by lightning and killed. These prodigies were expiated as the Books directed. Ambassadors came from Paestum, bringing golden bowls to Rome. They were thanked, as the Neapolitans had been, but the gold was not accepted. About this time a fleet came in to Ostia from King Hiero with a great store of supplies. His envoys were introduced into the senate, where they told how the news of the destruction of Gaius Flaminius the consul and his army had so grieved the King that no disaster to himself or his own kingdom could have distressed him more. Accordingly, though well aware that the greatness of the Roman People was almost more astonishing in adversity than in prosperity, he had nevertheless sent them all those things with which good and faithful allies were wont to assist their friends in time of war, and he earnestly besought the Conscript Fathers not to refuse them. In the first place, for the omen's sake, they were bringing a golden Victory, weighing two hundred and twenty pounds, which they begged the Romans to accept and keep, and to regard it as their own for ever. They had also brought three hundred thousand measures of wheat and two hundred thousand of barley, that there might be no failure of provision; and whatever additional quantity were needed they stood ready to convey to any place which the senate might designate. For heavy foot and horse, the King knew that the Roman People employed none but Romans and Latins; but amongst the light-armed auxiliaries, he had seen in the camps of the Romans even foreigners; he had therefore sent a thousand archers and slingers, a force well adapted to cope with Moors and Baliares and other tribes that fought with missiles. To these gifts they added a piece of advice, that the praetor, namely, who might be assigned to Sicily should sail over with his fleet to Africa, so that the enemy, too, might have war on their own soil, whereby they would experience less freedom in dispatching aid to Hannibal. The senate, in replying to the royal emissaries, said that Hiero was a good man and a rare ally, who from the time when he became a friend of the Roman People had maintained an unswerving loyalty, and always and in every place had given generous assistance to the Roman cause. For this the Romans were grateful, as in duty bound. As for the gold, other states as well had proffered it, but the Roman People, though thankful for the kind intention, had not accepted it; the Victory and her omen they did accept; and to that goddess they dedicated and assigned the Capitol, the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, to be her seat. Established in that citadel of Rome she would be gracious and propitious, faithful and steadfast, to the Roman People. The slingers and archers and the corn were turned over to the consuls. Twenty-five quinqueremes were added to the fleet of fifty ships that was under the command of Titus Otacilius in Sicily, and permission was given him, if he deemed it advantageous to the state, to sail across to Africa. When they had finished with the levy, the consuls waited a few days for the soldiers from the allies and the Latins to come in. An oath was then administered to the soldiers by their tribunes — which was a thing that they had never done before. For until that day there had only been the general oath to assemble at the bidding of the consuls and not depart without their orders; then, after assembling, they would exchange a voluntary pledge amongst themselves —the cavalrymen in their decuries and the infantry in their centuries —that they would not abandon their ranks for flight or fear, but only to take up or seek a weapon, either to smite an enemy or to save a fellow citizen. This voluntary agreement amongst the men themselves was replaced by an oath administered formally by the tribunes. Before the troops marched from the City, the consul Varro uttered many truculent harangues. He declared that the war had been brought into Italy by the nobles, and would not cease to prey upon the nation's vitals, if they had many generals like Fabius; but that he himself would put an end to it on the day when he came within sight of the enemy. His colleague Paulus spoke but once, on the day before he left the City. His words were more truthful than agreeable to the people; but he said nothing harsh against Varro, except this: that he marvelled —and indeed how should he not? —that a general, who before he knew either his own or the enemy's army or the lie of the land or the character of the country, was already certain, ere he had yet laid aside the dress of a civilian, what measures he must adopt when in the field —he marvelled that such a general should even be able to predict the very day on which he would be giving battle to the enemy! For himself, he would not anticipate, before they ripened, those plans with which circumstances provided men but which men could not well impose on circumstances. He hoped that what was done with care and caution would turn out for the best: rashness was not only foolish but had hitherto been unfortunate as well It was quite apparently his own intention to choose a safe course rather than a hasty one; and, to confirm him in this resolution, Quintus Fabius Maximus is said to have addressed him, on his setting out, to this effect: — "If either, Lucius Aemilius, you had, as I should prefer, a colleague like yourself, or if you were like your colleague, my words would be superfluous. For, as two good consuls, even if I held my peace, you would act in all respects in accordance with the public interest and your own loyalty; and, as bad ones, you would neither take my words into your ears nor my advice into your hearts. As it is, when I see what your colleague is like and what you are like, it is to you alone that I must address myself: though I perceive that you will be a good man and good citizen to little purpose, if the state is lame on the other side and evil counsels enjoy the same rights and the same authority as good. For you err, Lucius Paulus, if you suppose that your struggle will be less with Gaius Terentius than with Hannibal. I am not sure that you may not find the one more dangerous as an opponent than the other as an enemy, and that with your enemy you will have to contend only in battle; with your opponent, everywhere and at all times. Against Hannibal and his legions you will have your cavalry and infantry to fight for you: when Varro takes the field, it will be to attack you with your own soldiers. "For the very omen's sake, I would not have you remember Gaius Flaminius! Yet Flaminius only began to rave when he had been made consul and was in his province and had joined his army; whereas Varro was mad before he sought the consulship, as he was thereafter during his canvass, and is now as consul, before he has ever beheld his camp or the enemy. And if a man can rouse such gusts of passion even now, by bragging of battles and of stricken fields among civilians, what think you he will do when surrounded by armed youths, where words are translated instantly into deeds? And yet, if he fights at once, as he declares that he intends to do, either I know nothing of military science, of the nature of this war, and of our enemy, or another place will be more notorious than Trasumennus for our overthrow. "It is no time to boast, when I am speaking to one man, and for my part I had rather go too far in despising than in seeking reputation; but the simple truth is that the only way of conducting a war with Hannibal is the way in which I have conducted it; and not only the event —that schoolmaster of fools —teaches us this, but the same reasoning which held good then will hold unchanged, so long as circumstances remain the same. It is in Italy, our home-land, that we are fighting; everywhere about us are fellow citizens and friends; they are helping us with arms, men, horses, and supplies, and will continue helping us —such proof of loyalty have they already given us in our adversity; each day that passes makes us better, wiser, more steadfast men. Hannibal, on the contrary, is in an alien and hostile country, where all his surroundings are inimical and threatening, far from home and native city; for him there is no peace, on either land or sea; no cities receive him, no walls protect him; nowhere does he see aught that he can call his own; he subsists on the plunder of each day; he has barely a third of that army which he led across the Ebro; more have perished by starvation than by the sword, and the few that are left have no longer any food. Can you doubt then that if we sit still we must gain the victory over one who is growing weaker every day and is destitute of provisions, of replacements, and of money? How long, before Gereonium, a pitiful fort in Apulia, as if it had been the walls of Carthage, has he —but of myself I will not boast, even to you. See how the consuls of last year, Servilius and Atilius, made a mock of him! This is the only way of safety, Lucius Paulus, and your fellow citizens will do more than your enemies to make it hard and dangerous for you. For your own soldiers will desire the same thing as the soldiers of the enemy; Varro, the Roman consul, will long for the same thing as Hannibal, the Phoenician commander-in-chief. Single-handed you will have to thwart two generals. But thwart them you will, if you stand out with sufficient firmness against rumours and men's idle talk, if neither the foolish applause bestowed upon your colleague nor your own unmerited disgrace shall move you. Truth, they say, is all too frequently eclipsed but never extinguished. He who scorns false glory shall possess the true. Let them call you timid, instead of cautious; slow, instead of circumspect; unwarlike, instead of experienced soldier. I had rather a wise enemy should fear you than foolish fellow citizens should praise you. He who dares all things will earn Hannibal's contempt; he who does nothing rashly will inspire him with fear. Yet I do not urge that you do nothing, but that reason and not fortune should be your guide. Be master always of yourself and all that is yours; be armed and watchful; be not wanting when opportunity presents itself to you, neither present an opportunity to your enemy. All things will be clear and definite to one who does not hurry. Haste is improvident and blind. In reply to this the consul spoke in no very cheerful strain, admitting rather that what Fabius said was true than that it was easy of accomplishment. The dictator had found his master of the horse intolerable: what power or influence then would a consul have over a turbulent and headstrong colleague? In his former consulship he had escaped badly burnt from the flames of popular resentment; he hoped that everything would turn out for the best; but if any misfortune should befall, he would sooner expose his life to the swords of the enemy than to the suffrages of his angry fellow citizens. Immediately after this conference they say that Paulus set out, escorted by the foremost senators: the plebeian consul was escorted by his own friends, the plebeians —in point of numbers the more imposing throng, though it contained no persons of distinction. When they got to the camp, the new forces were united with the old and the camp was divided into two, with the new and smaller one nearer Hannibal, while the greater part of the army and all the choicest troops were in the old one. Of the consuls of the year before, Marcus Atilius pleaded the excuse of age and was sent back to Rome; Geminus Servilius was put in command of the smaller camp, having under him a Roman legion and two thousand infantry and cavalry of the allies. Hannibal, though lie perceived that the forces of his enemies were augmented by a half, was nevertheless greatly rejoiced at the coming of the consuls. For not only were the spoils exhausted on which his men had subsisted from day to day, but there was not even any district left for them to spoil; for when it appeared that the farms were no longer safe, the corn had everywhere been carried into the walled towns, and in consequence there was barely grain enough left —as was afterwards discovered —to last ten days, and the Spaniards, for want of food, had made ready to desert, if the Romans had only waited till the time was ripe. But even Fortune furnished material to the recklessness and over-hasty temper of the consul. The repulse of a foraging party had led to a general mellay, which came about from the soldiers rushing forward to attack the enemy, rather than from any plan or orders on the part of the generals; and in this the Phoenicians by no means held their own. About seventeen hundred of them were slain and not more than a hundred of Romans and allies. But the consul Paulus, who was in command that day —for they commanded on alternate days —was fearful of an ambuscade and checked the victors in their headlong pursuit, despite the angry remonstrances of Varro, who cried out that they had let the enemy slip through their hands and that they might have brought the war to a conclusion if they had not relaxed their efforts. Hannibal was not greatly disconcerted by this reverse; indeed he rejoiced that the hook should have been baited, as it were, for the rashness of the more impetuous consul, and especially for that of the new soldiers. All the circumstances of his enemies were as familiar to him as his own: that their generals were unlike each other and were at loggerheads, and that nearly two-thirds of their army consisted of recruits. Believing, therefore, that place and time were favourable for a ruse, he left his camp full of every sort of public and of private riches, and putting himself at the head of his troops, who carried nothing but their weapons, marched over the nearest ridge, drew up the infantry in ambush on the left, and the cavalry on the right, and made the baggage-train pass through the valley between, intending to fall upon the enemy whilst they were preoccupied and encumbered with the pillage of the camp, which would seem to them to have been deserted by its owners. He left a large number of fires burning, as though he had sought by means of this illusory appearance of an encampment to hold the consuls to their positions —as he had cheated Fabius the year before —till he could gain as long a start as possible in his retreat. When day came, first the fact that the outposts had been withdrawn, and afterwards —as they came nearer —the unwonted silence filled the Romans with amazement. Then, as it became quite evident that there was no one in the camp, there was a rush of men to the headquarters of the consuls, announcing that the enemy had retreated in such trepidation as to quit the camp without striking their tents, and had even left a great number of fires burning to conceal their flight. Next they began to clamour for the order to advance and to pursue the enemy and plunder the camp without delay, and one of the consuls behaved like a member of the mob of soldiers. Paulus kept insisting on the need for watchfulness and circumspection, and finally, when there was no other way in which he could withstand the mutiny and the leader of the mutiny, he sent the praefect Marius Statilius with a troop of Lucanian horse to reconnoitre. Riding up to the gates, Statilius commanded the others to wait outside the trenches, and himself with two horsemen entered the camp. After making a thorough and careful examination he reported that there was undoubtedly some treachery afoot. The fires, he said, had been left on the side of the camp that faced the Romans; the tents were open and all kinds of valuables were left exposed to view; here and there he had seen silver carelessly flung down in the lanes, as if to tempt a pillager. The report, which had been made with the purpose of checking the soldiers' greed, only inflamed it, and they began to shout that if the signal were not given, they would go without any leaders. But there was no lack of a leader; for Varro at once gave the command to start. Paulus himself wished to delay; and when the sacred fowls had refused their sanction, he gave orders to notify his colleague, who was just setting forth with the standards from the gate. Varro was greatly vexed at this, but the recent disaster of Flaminius and the memorable defeat at sea of the consul Claudius, in the first Punic War made him fearful of offending the heavenly powers. On that day, it might almost be said, the very gods put off, but did not prevent, the calamity that impended over the Romans: for it chanced that when the consul ordered the standards back into the camp and the soldiers were refusing to obey him, two slaves appeared on the scene, one belonging to a Formian, the other to a Sidicinian knight. They had been captured by the Numidians, along with other foragers, in the consulship of Servilius and Atilius, and on that day had escaped back to their masters. Being conducted to the consuls, they stated that Hannibal's entire army was lying in ambush just over the nearest hills. Their opportune arrival restored the authority of the consuls, when one of them, by running after popularity, and by unprincipled indulgence, had impaired their prestige —beginning with his own —amongst the soldiers. Hannibal, perceiving that the Romans, although they had acted ill-advisedly, had not proceeded to the extremity of rashness, returned to the camp, his stratagem having been detected and rendered idle. There, however, the scarcity of corn forbade his remaining many days, and new plans were daily forming, not only amongst the soldiers, the mingled offscourings of every race on earth, but even in the mind of the general himself. For when the men, with murmurs at first and afterwards with loud clamours, demanded their arrears of pay, and complained at first of the scarcity of corn, and finally of being starved; and when the report went round that the mercenaries —particularly those of Spanish blood —had resolved on going over to the enemy; they say that even Hannibal himself had thoughts of abandoning all his infantry and saving himself and his cavalry by escaping into Gaul. Such being the projects that were entertained in camp and such the temper of his soldiers, he decided to move from his present quarters to Apulia, where the climate was warmer and in consequence of this the harvest earlier; at the same time it would be the more difficult, the greater their distance from the enemy, for those of his followers who were fickle to desert. He set out in the night, after making up some fires, as before, and leaving a few tents standing where they would be seen, so that the Romans might be withheld from following him through fear of an ambush, as before. But when the same Lucanian, Statilius, had made a thorough reconnaissance beyond the camp and on the other side of the mountains, and had reported seeing the enemy on the march a long way off, then the question of pursuing him began to be debated. The consuls were each of the same mind as they had always been; but Varro had the support of almost everybody, Paulus of none except Servilius, the consul of the year before. The will of the majority prevailed, and they set forward, under the urge of destiny, to make Cannae famous for the calamity which there befell the Romans. This was the village near which Hannibal had pitched his camp, with his back to the Volturnus, a wind that brings clouds of dust over the drought-parched plains. Such a disposition was very convenient for the camp itself and bound to be particularly salutary when the troops formed up for battle, facing in the opposite direction, with the wind blowing only on their backs, and ready to fight with enemies half-blinded by the dust driven into their faces. The consuls, after making a sufficient reconnaissance of the roads, followed the Phoenicians until they came to Cannae, where, having the enemy in view, they divided their forces, as they had done before, and fortified two camps, at about the same distance from one another as at Gereonium. The river Aufidus, flowing past both their camps, was readily accessible to water-carriers at such spots as were convenient for each, though not without fighting; it was, however, from the smaller camp, which was situated across the Aufidus, that the Romans could fetch water more freely, since the enemy had no troops posted on the further bank. Hannibal had conceived a hope that the consuls would give him an opportunity of fighting in a place that was formed by nature for a cavalry action, in which arm he was invincible. He therefore drew out his men in battle array and ordered the Numidians to make a sally and provoke the enemy. This caused the camp of the Romans to be once more the scene of strife amongst the soldiers and dissension between the consuls. Paulus cast in Varro's teeth the recklessness of Sempronius and Flaminius; Varro retorted that Fabius was a specious example for timid and slothful generals, and called on gods and men to witness that it was through no fault of his that Hannibal had by now acquired as it were a prescriptive right to Italy, for he was kept in fetters by his colleague, and the soldiers, enraged as they were and eager to fight, were deprived of swords and arms. Paulus rejoined that if anything untoward should befall the legions, recklessly abandoned to an ill-advised and rash engagement, he would himself be guiltless of all blame, but would share in all the consequences; let Varro, he said, see to it, that where tongues were bold and ready, hands —when it came to fighting —were no less so. While they wasted time, rather quarrelling than consulting, Hannibal withdrew the rest of his troops, whom he had kept in line till far on in the day, into his camp, and sent the Numidians across the river to attack the men from the smaller Roman camp who were fetching water. They had hardly come out upon the other bank when their shouts and tumult sent that unorganized rabble flying, and they rode on till they came to the party that was stationed in front of the rampart, and almost to the very gates. So wholly outrageous, however, did it seem that by now even a Roman camp should be terrorized by irregular auxiliaries, that only one thing kept the Romans from crossing the river forthwith and giving battle —the fact that Paulus happened then to be in command. The next morning, therefore, Varro, whom the lot had made commander for that day, hung out the signal, without saying a word of the matter to his colleague, and, making his troops fall in, led them over the river. Paulus followed him, for he could more easily disapprove the plan than deprive it of his help. Once across, they joined to their own the forces which they had kept in the smaller camp, and marshalled their battle-line as follows: on the right wing —the one nearer the river —they placed the Roman cavalry, and next them the Roman foot; the left wing had on the outside the cavalry of the allies; and nearer the centre, in contact with the Roman legions, the infantry of the allies. The slingers and other light-armed auxiliaries were formed up in front. The consuls had charge of the wings, Terentius of the left, Aemilius of the right; and Geminus Servilius was entrusted with the centre. Hannibal crossed the river at break of day, after sending ahead of him the Baliares and the other light-armed troops, and posted each corps in line of battle, in the order in which he had brought it over. The Gallic and Spanish horse were next the river, on the left wing, facing the Roman cavalry; the right wing was assigned to the Numidian horse; the centre was composed of infantry, so arranged as to have the Africans at both ends, and between them Gauls and Spaniards. The Africans might have passed for an array of Romans, equipped as they were with arms captured partly at the Trebia but mostly at Lake Trasumennus. The Gauls and the Spaniards had shields of almost the same shape; their swords were different in use and in appearance, those of the Gauls being very long and pointless, whilst the Spaniards, who attacked as a rule more by thrusting than by striking, had pointed ones that were short and handy. These tribes were more terrifying to look on than the others, because of the size of their bodies and the display they made of them. The Gauls were naked from the navel up; the Spaniards had formed up wearing crimson-bordered linen tunics that shone with a dazzling whiteness. The total number of the infantry who then took their place in line was forty thousand, of the cavalry ten thousand. The generals commanding on the wings were Hasdrubal on the left, Maharbal on the right; Hannibal himself, with his brother Mago, had the centre. The sun —whether they had so placed themselves on purpose or stood as they did by accident —was, very conveniently for both sides, on their flanks, the Romans looking south, the Phoenicians north. A wind —which those who live in those parts call Volturnus —beginning to blow against the Romans carried clouds of dust right into their faces and prevented them from seeing anything. With a shout the auxiliaries rushed forward and the battle began between the light-armed troops. Then the Gallic and Spanish horse which formed the left wing engaged with the Roman right in a combat very unlike a cavalry action. For they had to charge front to front, there being no room to move out round the flank, for the river shut them in on one side and the ranks of infantry on the other. Both parties pushed straight ahead, and as the horses came to a standstill, packed together in the throng, the riders began to grapple with their enemies and drag them from their seats. They were fighting on foot now, for the most part; but sharp though the struggle was, it was soon over, and the defeated Roman cavalry turned and fled. Towards the end of the cavalry engagement the infantry got into action. At first they were evenly matched in strength and courage, as long as the Gauls and Spaniards maintained their ranks; but at last the Romans, by prolonged and frequent efforts, pushing forward with an even front and a dense line, drove in the wedge-like formation which projected from the enemy's line, for it was too thin to be strong; and then, as the Gauls and Spaniards gave way and fell back in confusion, pressed forward and without once stopping forced their way through the crowd of fleeing, panic-stricken foes, till they reached first the centre and ultimately —for they met with no resistance —the African supports. These had been used to form the two wings, which had been drawn back, while the centre, where the Gauls and Spaniards had been stationed, projected somewhat. When this wedge was first driven back so far as to straighten the front, and then, continuing to yield, even left a hollow in the centre, the Africans had already begun a flanking movement on either side, and as the Romans rushed incautiously in between, they enveloped them, and presently, extending their wings, crescent-wise, even closed in on their rear. From this moment the Romans, who had gained one battle to no purpose, gave over the pursuit and slaughter of the Gauls and Spaniards and began a new fight with the Africans. In this they were at a twofold disadvantage: they were shut in, while their enemies ranged on every side of them; they were tired, and faced troops that were fresh and strong. By this time the Roman left, where the cavalry of the allies had taken position facing the Numidians, was also engaged, though the fighting was at first but sluggish. It began with a Punic ruse. About five hundred Numidians, who, in addition to their customary arms and missiles, carried swords concealed under their corslets, pretended to desert. Riding over from their own side, with their bucklers at their backs, they suddenly dismounted and threw down bucklers and javelins at the feet of their enemies. Being received into the midst of their ranks they were conducted to the rear and ordered to fall in behind. And while the battle was getting under way at every point, they kept quite still; but no sooner were the minds and eyes of all absorbed in the struggle, than they snatched up the shields which lay strewn about everywhere amongst the heaps of slain, and assailing the Romans from behind and striking at their backs and hamstrings, effected a great slaughter and a terror and confusion that were even greater. And now in one place there was a panic rout and in another an obstinate though hopeless struggle, when Hasdrubal, who commanded in that part of the field, withdrew the Numidians from the centre —since they fought but half-heartedly against men who met them face to face —and dispatching them in pursuit of the scattered fugitives, sent in the Spanish and Gallic cavalry to help the Africans, who were now almost exhausted, though more with slaying than with fighting. In the other part of the field Paulus, although he had received a severe wound from a sling at the very outset of the battle, nevertheless repeatedly opposed himself to Hannibal, with his men in close formation, and at several points restored the fight. He was guarded by Roman cavalry, who finally let their horses go, as the consul was growing too weak even to control his horse. At this Hannibal, being told by someone that the consul had ordered his troopers to dismount, is said to have exclaimed: How much better if he had handed them over to me in fetters! The dismounted horsemen fought as men no longer doubting that the enemy must be victorious. They were beaten, but chose rather to die where they stood than to run away; and the victors, angry that their victory was thus delayed, cut them down, when they could not rout them. But they routed them at last, when only a few were left, exhausted with fighting and with wounds. The survivors were now all dispersed, and those who could attempted to regain their horses and escape. Gnaeus Lentulus, a tribune of the soldiers, as he rode by on his horse, caught sight of the consul sitting on a stone and covered with blood. Lucius Aemilius, he cried, on whom the gods ought to look down in mercy, as the only man without guilt in this day's disaster, take this horse, while you have still a little strength remaining and I can attend you and raise you up and guard you. Make not this battle calamitous by a consul's death; even without that there are tears and grief enough. To this the consul answered, All honour, Cornelius, to your manhood! But waste not in unavailing pity the little time you have to escape the enemy. Go, and tell the senators in public session to fortify the City of Rome and garrison it strongly before the victorious enemy draws near: in private say to Quintus Fabius that Lucius Aemilius has lived till this hour and now dies remembering his precepts. As for me, let me breathe my last in the midst of my slaughtered soldiers, lest either for a second time I be brought to trial after being consul, or else stand forth the accuser of my colleague, blaming another in defence of my own innocence. While they were speaking, there came up with them first a crowd of fleeing Romans, and then the enemy, who overwhelmed the consul, without knowing who he was, beneath a rain of missiles. Lentulus, thanks to his horse, escaped in the confusion. The rout was now everywhere complete. Seven thousand men escaped into the smaller camp, ten thousand into the larger, and about two thousand into the village of Cannae itself. These last were immediately cut off by Carthalo and his cavalry, for the village was not fortified. The other consul, whether by accident or by design, had not joined any throng of fugitives, but fled to Venusia with some fifty horsemen. It is said that forty-five thousand five hundred foot and two thousand seven hundred horse were slain, in an almost equal proportion of citizens and allies. In the number were the quaestors of both consuls, Lucius Atilius and Lucius Furius Bibaculus, and twenty-nine military tribunes, some of consular rank, some of praetorian or aedilician —amongst others are mentioned Gnaeus Servilius Geminus and Marcus Minucius, who had been master of the horse in the preceding years and consul several years before —and besides these, eighty senators or men who had held offices which would have given them the right to be elected to the senate, but had volunteered to serve as soldiers in the legions. The prisoners taken in this battle are said to have numbered three thousand foot-soldiers and fifteen hundred horsemen. Such was the battle of Cannae, a calamity as memorable as that suffered at the Allia, and though less grave in its results —because the enemy failed to follow up his victory —yet for the slaughter of the army even more grievous and disgraceful. For the flight at the Allia, though it betrayed the City, saved the army: at Cannae the consul who fled was accompanied by a scant fifty men; the other, dying, had well-nigh the entire army with him. In the two Roman camps the crowd was half-armed and destitute of leaders. The men in the larger camp sent a messenger bidding those in the smaller one come over to them in the night, while the enemy, exhausted by the fighting and by the feasting that had followed on their triumph, were sunk in sleep: they would then set out in one body for Canusium. This plan some were for totally rejecting. Why, they asked, did not those who summoned them come themselves to the smaller camp, where they could just as well effect a junction? Clearly because the ground between was covered with enemies and they preferred to expose to such danger the persons of others rather than their own. Some were not so much displeased with the plan as wanting in resolution. Then said the military tribune Publius Sempronius Tuditanus: "So you had rather be captured by the greediest and most cruel of foes, and be appraised at so much a head by those who ask, 'Are you a Roman citizen or a Latin ally?' in order that from the insults and misery you suffer, the other may win distinction? 'Not so!' each man will answer, if you are indeed fellow citizens of Lucius Aemilius the consul, who preferred an honourable death to life with ignominy, and of all those heroes who lie in heaps around him! But before daylight surprises us and the enemy blocks our way in greater force, let us break out through these men that are clamouring in disorder and confusion at our gates. With a sword and a stout heart a man may pass through enemies, be they never so thick. In close formation you may scatter this loose and unorganized force as though there were nothing in your way. Follow me, then, as many of you as desire safety for yourselves and for the commonwealth! "Uttering these words he grasped his sword, and, forming a column, strode away through the midst of the enemy; and when the Numidians hurled missiles at their right sides, which were unprotected, they shifted their shields to the right and so got through, about six hundred of them, to the larger camp; and thence, after being joined by the other great body of men, they made their way at once without loss to Canusium. These things the conquered did rather from the urge of such courage as each derived from his own nature or from chance than in consequence of their own deliberation or any man's authority. Hannibal's officers crowded round him with congratulations on his victory. The others all advised him, now that he had brought so great a war to a conclusion, to repose himself and to allow his weary soldiers to repose for the remainder of that day and the following night. But Maharbal, the commander of the cavalry, held that no time should be lost. Nay, he cried, that you may realize what has been accomplished by this battle, in five days you shall banquet in the Capitol! Follow after; I will precede you with the cavalry, that the Romans may know that you are there before they know that you are coming! To Hannibal the idea was too joyous and too vast for his mind at once to grasp it. And so, while praising Maharbal's goodwill, he declared that he must have time to deliberate regarding his advice. Then said Maharbal, In very truth the gods bestow not on the same man all their gifts; you know how to gain a victory, Hannibal: you know not how to use one. That day's delay is generally believed to have saved the City and the empire. The morning after, as soon as it was light, they pressed forward to collect the spoil and to gaze on a carnage that was ghastly even to enemies. There lay those thousands upon thousands of Romans, foot and horse indiscriminately mingled, as chance had brought them together in the battle or the rout. Here and there amidst the slain there started up a gory figure whose wounds had begun to throb with the chill of dawn, and was cut down by his enemies; some were discovered lying there alive, with thighs and tendons slashed, baring their necks and throats and bidding their conquerors drain the remnant of their blood. Others were found with their heads buried in holes dug in the ground. They had apparently made these pits for themselves, and heaping the dirt over their faces shut off their breath. But what most drew the attention of all beholders was a Numidian who was dragged out alive from under a dead Roman, but with mutilated nose and ears; for the Roman, unable to hold a weapon in his hands, had expired in a frenzy of rage, while rending the other with his teeth. After spending a good part of the day in gathering spoils, Hannibal proceeded to attack the smaller camp. The first thing that he did was to throw up an entrenchment which cut them off from the river. But they were all so tired out from fighting and lack of sleep, as well as from wounds, that they surrendered even sooner than he had expected. The terms agreed upon were as follows: they were to give up their arms and horses; the ransom was fixed at three hundred chariot-pieces for every Roman, two hundred for every ally, and one hundred for every slave; on the payment of this price they were to go free, with a single garment each. They then received their enemies into the camp and were all placed in custody, citizens being separated from allies. During the delay there, those in the larger camp who possessed sufficient strength and courage, amounting to four thousand foot and two hundred horse, had escaped, some in a body, others scattering —no less safely —over the country-side, and reached Canusium. The camp itself the wounded and timorous surrendered to the enemy on the same terms as the other. It yielded enormous spoils, and except for the horses and men and such silver as there was — which was mostly on the harness of the horses, for they then used very little plate, especially when in the field —the rest of the booty was all given up to pillage. He then commanded the bodies of his dead to be brought into one place for burial. It is said that they numbered about eight thousand of his bravest men. Some historians state that the Roman consul, too, was sought out and given burial. Those who escaped to Canusium were aided by an Apulian woman of birth and fortune named Busa. The townspeople had merely afforded them the protection of the walls and shelter, but she provided them with corn, clothing, and money for the way, in return for which munificence she was afterwards, on the conclusion of the war, voted honours by the senate. Now though there were four tribunes of the soldiers on the ground —Quintus Fabius Maximus of the first legion, whose father had been dictator the year before, Lucius Publicius Bibulus and Publius Cornelius Scipio of the second legion, and Appius Claudius Pulcher, who had very recently been aedile, of the third legion —the supreme command was by unanimous consent made over to Publius Scipio, the merest youth, and to Appius Claudius. These two were considering the general situation, in company with a few others, when Publius Furius Philus, the son of an ex-consul, came in and told them that they were idly entertaining a lost hope; the state was already given over and mourned as dead; some of the young nobles, of whom Marcus Caecilius Metellus was the chief, were looking to the sea and ships, proposing to abandon Italy and flee for refuge to some king. These evil tidings, dreadful in themselves and coming as a new distress on the top of so many disasters, stunned those who heard them with a dull amazement. But when they would have called a council to talk the matter over, young Scipio, the predestined leader in this war, declared that it was no matter for taking counsel: they must be bold and act, not deliberate, in the face of this great evil; let them take arms and go with him at once, as many as wished to save the state; no camp was so truly the camp of the enemy as one where such thoughts were rife. He proceeded, with only a few followers, to the quarters of Metellus, where he found a gathering of the young men of whom he had been informed. Raising his sword over their heads, as they sat in consultation, I solemnly swear, he said, that even as I myself shall not desert the republic of the Roman People, so likewise shall I suffer no other Roman citizen to do so; if I wittingly speak false, may Jupiter Optimus Maximus utterly destroy me, my house, my family, and my estate. Marcus Caecilius, I call on you and the others who are present to swear after these terms, and if any refuse to swear, let him know that against him this sword is drawn. Quaking as though they beheld the victorious Hannibal, all took the oath, and delivered themselves into the custody of Scipio. While this was happening at Canusium, about four thousand five hundred horse and foot, who had scattered over the country-side in flight, made their way to Venusia, to the consul. All these the inhabitants distributed amongst various families where they might be kindly received and cared for, and bestowed on each horseman a toga and a tunic and twenty-five chariot-pieces, and on each foot-soldier ten pieces, together with arms, where they were needed. In all other matters, too, they dealt hospitably by them, both as a town and as individuals, in their zeal that the People of Venusia should not lag behind a Canusian woman in friendly offices. But the great multitude was beginning to be too heavy a burden upon Busa —and indeed there were now as many as ten thousand men —and Appius and Scipio, when they learned that the other consul was alive, immediately dispatched a messenger to let him know what forces of infantry and cavalry they had with them, and at the same time to enquire whether he desired the army to be brought to Venusia or remain at Canusium. Varro transferred his own troops to Canusium; and they now had something resembling a consular army, and might look to defend themselves against the enemy, behind walls, at all events, if not in the field. But at Rome it was reported that not even these pitiful remnants of citizens and allies survived, but that the army with its two consuls was clean destroyed and all their forces blotted out. Never, save when the City had been captured, was there such terror and confusion within the walls of Rome. I shall therefore confess myself unequal to the task, nor attempt a narrative where the fullest description would fall short of the truth. The year before a consul and his army had been lost at Trasumennus, and now it was not merely one blow following another, but a calamity many times as great that was reported; two consuls and two consular armies had been lost, and there was no longer any Roman camp, or general, or soldier; Hannibal was master of Apulia, Samnium, and well-nigh the whole of Italy. Surely there was no other people that would not have been overwhelmed by a disaster of such vast proportions. Would you compare the disaster off the Aegatian islands, which the Carthaginians suffered in the sea-fight, by which their spirit was so broken that they relinquished Sicily and Sardinia and suffered themselves to become tax-payers and tributaries? or the defeat in Africa to which this very Hannibal afterwards succumbed? In no single aspect are they to be compared with this calamity, except that they were endured with less of fortitude. Publius Furius Philus and Marcus Pomponius, the praetors, called the senate together in the Curia Hostilia, to consult about the defence of Rome; for they made no doubt that the enemy, after wiping out their armies, would be advancing to besiege the City, which was all that remained to do to end the war. But when, amid dangers at once so immense and so incalculable, they failed to think of even any tolerable plan of action, and were deafened with the cries and lamentations of the women, both the living and the dead —in the lack as yet of any announcement —being indiscriminately mourned in almost every house, then Quintus Fabius Maximus urged that light-armed horsemen be sent out along the Appian and Latin ways, and questioning those they met — for some there would surely be who had dispersed and made off in the rout —bring back word of the fortunes of the consuls and the armies, and if the immortal gods, taking pity on the empire, had spared any remnant of the Roman name, where those forces were; whither Hannibal had gone after the battle, what his plans were, what he was doing and was likely to do. To discover and ascertain these facts was a task, he said, for active youths; what the Fathers themselves must do, since there were not magistrates enough, was this: quell the panic and confusion in the City; keep the matrons off the streets and compel them each to abide in her own home; restrain families from lamentation; procure silence throughout the City; see that bearers of any news were brought before the praetors —every man must wait at home for tidings that concerned himself; —and, besides this, post sentries at the gates, to keep anyone from leaving the City, and make the people rest all hope of safety on the safety of Rome and of its walls. When the tumult had died down, then the Fathers must be convened again and consider how to defend the City. After they had all voted for this proposal without debate, and the throng had been cleared out of the Forum by the magistrates, and the Fathers had dispersed in various directions to still the uproar, then at last came a dispatch from Gaius Terentius the consul, announcing that the consul Lucius Aemilius and his army had been destroyed; that he himself was at Canusium, collecting —as though after a storm at sea —the wreckage of that great disaster; that he had about ten thousand men, not organised or assigned to companies; that the Phoenician was sitting down at Cannae, haggling over the ransom of his prisoners and over the rest of the booty, exhibiting neither the spirit of a conqueror nor the behaviour of a great commander. Announcement was then made from house to house of the losses they had each sustained, and the entire City was so filled with lamentation that the annual rite of Ceres was allowed to lapse, since it may not be performed by mourners, nor was there at that time a single matron who was not bereaved. Accordingly, lest for this same reason other public or private rites might be neglected, the senate decreed that mourning should be limited to thirty days. But when the confusion in the City had subsided and the Fathers had been summoned back to the senate-house, another dispatch was brought in from Sicily, from the propraetor Titus Otacilius. He reported that Hiero's kingdom was being laid waste by a Punic fleet, and that when he would have responded to Hiero's appeal for help, he had got news of another fleet, that was standing off the Aegatian islands, all ready and equipped, so that when the Phoenicians should perceive that he had turned his back on them to go to the rescue of the Syracusan coast, they might instantly descend on Lilybaeum and the rest of the Roman province. A fleet was therefore necessary if they desired to protect the king, their ally, and Sicily. When the dispatches from the consul and the praetor had been read out, the senate voted to send Marcus Claudius, the praetor commanding the fleet at Ostia, to Canusium, and to write to the consul to turn the army over to him and come to Rome at the earliest moment compatible with the welfare of the state. They were terrified not only by the great disasters they had suffered, but also by a number of prodigies, and in particular because two Vestals, Opimia and Floronia, had in that year been convicted of unchastity. Of these one had been buried alive, as the custom is, near the Colline Gate, and the other had killed herself. Lucius Cantilius, a secretary to the pontiffs —one of those who are now called the lesser pontiffs —had been guilty with Floronia, and the Pontifex Maximus had him scourged in the Comitium so severely that he died under the blows. Since in the midst of so many misfortunes this pollution was, as happens at such times, converted into a portent, the decemvirs were commanded to consult the Books, and Quintus Fabius Pictor was dispatched to Delphi, to enquire of the oracle with what prayers and supplications they might propitiate the gods, and what would be the end of all their calamities. In the meantime, by the direction of the Books of Fate, some unusual sacrifices were offered; amongst others a Gaulish man and woman and a Greek man and woman were buried alive in the Cattle Market, in a place walled in with stone, which even before this time had been defiled with human victims, a sacrifice wholly alien to the Roman spirit. Deeming that the gods had now been sufficiently appeased, Marcus Claudius Marcellus sent fifteen hundred soldiers whom he had under him, enrolled for service with the fleet, from Ostia to Rome, to defend the City; and sending before him to Teanum Sidicinum the naval legion (to wit, the third ) under its tribunes, handed over the fleet to his colleague Publius Furius Philus and a few days later hastened by forced marches to Canusium. The senate then authorized the appointment of a dictator and Marcus Junius [Pera] was named to that office, with Tiberius Sempronius as master of the horse. Proclaiming a levy they enlisted the young men over seventeen and some who still wore the purple-bordered dress of boyhood. Of these they made up four legions and a thousand horse. They also sent men to the allies and the Latins to take over their soldiers, as by treaty provided. They gave orders that armour, weapons and other equipment should be made ready, and took down from the temples and porticoes the ancient spoils of enemies. The levy wore a strange appearance, for, owing to the scarcity of free men and the need of the hour, they bought, with money from the treasury, eight thousand young and stalwart slaves and armed them, first asking each if he were willing to serve. They preferred these slaves for soldiers, though they might have redeemed the prisoners of war at less expense. For Hannibal, after his great victory at Cannae, had been more concerned with the projects of a conqueror than with those of one who was still waging war. Mustering the prisoners and dividing them into two groups, he addressed a few kindly words to the allies and dismissed them without ransom, as he had done previously at the Trebia and Lake Trasumennus. He then called up the Romans also and spoke to them with a mildness he had never shown before. He was waging, he said, no war of extermination with them, but was contending for honour and dominion. His forerunners had yielded to the valour of the Romans, and he was striving to compel them in their turn to yield to his own good fortune and valour. He would therefore give them an opportunity to redeem the prisoners, and would fix their ransom at five hundred chariot-pieces for each horseman, three hundred for each foot-soldier, and a hundred for each slave. Although this was a rather large addition to the ransom which the horsemen had agreed to on surrendering, they joyfully accepted any terms of treaty. It was resolved that the prisoners should themselves elect ten representatives to go to the senate in Rome; nor did Hannibal take any other pledge of their good faith than their oath that they would return. Carthalo, a Carthaginian noble, was sent with them, so that, if he should see that the Romans inclined to peace, he might offer terms. The envoys had just left the camp when one of them, a fellow of thoroughly un-Roman character, returned to it —as if he had forgotten something —in order to free himself from his oath, and before dark had caught up with his companions. When the news reached Rome that they were coming, a lictor was sent to meet Carthalo on the way and warn him in the name of the Dictator to depart before nightfall out of Roman territory. As for the envoys of the prisoners, the dictator admitted them into the senate, where their leader spoke as follows: Marcus Junius and Conscript Fathers, none of us is unaware that no state ever held prisoners of war in less esteem than ours. But, unless we overrate our cause, there have never been men who came into the power of the enemy less deserving than ourselves of your neglect. For we did not yield up our swords through fear on the field of battle, but standing on the heaped bodies of the slain prolonged the combat almost until nightfall and then retired to our camp. The rest of the day and the succeeding night, though exhausted with fighting and with wounds, we defended the stockade. On the following day, surrounded by a victorious army and cut off from water, having no longer any hope of breaking through the throng of enemies, and thinking it no disgrace that when fifty thousand of our troops had been cut down, some few Roman soldiers should survive the battle of Cannae, we finally stipulated for a price at which we might be ransomed, and delivered to the enemy the arms in which there was no longer any help. Even our ancestors —so we had heard —redeemed themselves from the Gauls with gold; and your fathers, despite their fierce opposition to terms of peace, sent envoys to Tarentum to ransom prisoners. And yet neither the battle with the Gauls at the Allia nor that with Pyrrhus at Heraclea owed its unhappy fame so much to carnage as to craven flight. At Cannae the plains are covered with heaps of Roman corpses, and if we survive, it is only because our enemies' swords were dulled and their strength spent with slaughtering. There are some of us, too, who were never even in the battle, but were left to guard the camp, and on its surrender passed into the enemy's hands. Think not that I envy the good luck or circumstances of any fellow citizen or fellow soldier, nor would I raise myself by thrusting another down; but —unless there be a prize for fleetness of foot and running —it is not those who, without weapons for the most part and fleeing from the fight, never stopped until they reached Venusia or Canusium that can justly set themselves above us or boast that they are better defenders of the state than we. Both in them and in us you shall have good and valiant soldiers; but we shall be even more eager than they to defend our country, since we shall owe to your kindness our redemption and our restoration to that country. You are levying soldiers of every age and condition; I hear that eight thousand slaves are being armed. Our number is not less than that, and our ransom would be no more costly than their purchase; I make no comparison between our worth and theirs, for that would be to insult the name of Roman. One other point I would suggest, as meriting consideration, when you deliberate about this matter, Conscript Fathers: if haply you should incline to deal harshly by us —which we do not in the least deserve —to what enemy would you be leaving us? To a Pyrrhus, pray, who treated his prisoners like guests? or to a barbarian and Phoenician, of whom it can hardly be determined whether his avarice or cruelty be greater? If you could behold the fetters, the squalor, the degradation of your fellow-citizens, assuredly the sight would move you no less profoundly than if, on the other hand, you saw your legions lying slaughtered on the fields of Cannae. One thing you can see —the distress and tears of our kinsmen who are standing at the entrance of the Curia awaiting your decision. When these people are in such suspense and agony for us and for those who are absent, what think you the men themselves must feel whose life and liberty are hanging in the balance? If Hannibal —Heaven help me! — should himself be pleased, against his nature, to show us mercy, we should nevertheless deem life a worthless boon, if we had seemed to you unworthy of being ransomed. There once came back to Rome some prisoners whom Pyrrhus had allowed to go scot-free; but they came back in company with envoys, the first men of the state, whom you had sent to ransom them. Am I to come back to my country as a citizen not reckoned to be worth three hundred pieces? Every man, Conscript Fathers, has his own way of thinking. I know that my life and person are in jeopardy; but I am troubled more by the danger to my honour —lest we depart under your condemnation and rebuff; for the world will never believe that you were niggardly about the cost. As soon as he had finished speaking, the throng in the Comitium began to utter doleful cries, and holding out their hands to the Curia besought the senators to give them back their sons, their brothers, and their kinsmen. Even the women had been driven by their fear and destitute condition to mingle in the Forum with the crowd of men. The senate was cleared of strangers and the debate began. Opinions differed. Some were for ransoming the prisoners at the public cost; others would have no money disbursed by the state, but would not prohibit ransoming at the expense of individuals, and to such as might not have the money in hand proposed to grant loans from the treasury, guarding the people against loss by taking sureties and mortgages. Then Titus Manlius Torquatus, a man of an old-fashioned and, as it seemed to many, a too harsh austerity, was called upon for his opinion and spoke as follows: If, in pleading the cause of those who are in the hands of our enemies, their representatives had been content to ask that they be ransomed, I should have said my say in a few words, without reflecting upon any of them; for what else need I have done than warn you to hold fast to the tradition of our fathers and teach a lesson necessary for military discipline? But as it is, since they have almost boasted of having surrendered to the enemy, and have held that they are to be preferred not only to those who were captured by the enemy in battle, but also to those who made their way to Venusia and Canusium, and even to the consul, Gaius Terentius himself, I will not permit you to be ignorant, Conscript Fathers, of any part of their conduct there. And I wish that what I am going to say to you I might say at Canusium in the presence of the army itself, the most competent witness to any man's cowardice or valour, or that Sempronius, at least, were with us here, whose leadership if yonder men had followed, they would to-day be soldiers in a Roman camp, not prisoners in the hands of our enemies. But when the enemy, worn out with fighting, and rejoicing in their victory, had themselves for the most part gone back to their own camp and left the night free for a sally; though seven thousand armed men could have forced their way even through a close array of foes, they neither attempted to do this of themselves, nor yet were willing to follow another. During almost all that night Publius Sempronius Tuditanus ceased not to admonish and exhort them to let him lead them, while only a few of their enemies were near the camp, while everything was hushed and still, while the darkness might afford a cover for their enterprise. Before daylight, he declared, they could reach a place of safety among the towns of the allies. If he had said what, within the recollection of our grandsires, Publius Decius, tribune of the soldiers, said in Samnium; or what Marcus Calpurnius Flamma said, when we ourselves were young men, in the former Punic war, to three hundred volunteers whom he was leading to take a hill that rose in the very midst of the enemy: 'Soldiers, let us die, and by our death set free the beleaguered legions' —if Publius Sempronius had said this, I should have deemed you no true men, to say nothing of Romans, if none had come forward to share so brave an exploit. But instead he points out to you a road that leads to safety as surely as to fame. He proposes to restore you to your country, to your parents, to your wives and children. You lack even the spirit to be saved! What would you do then if your country called on you to die? Fifty thousand fellow Romans and allies lay slaughtered round you that very day. If so many brave examples could not move you, nothing ever will. If that dreadful carnage has not made life cheap, none ever will. Long for your country, whilst you are free and unattainted. Nay, rather, long for it whilst it is your country, whilst you are reckoned with its citizens. Too late now is your longing; you have forfeited your status, lost your civic rights, been made slaves of the Carthaginians. Do you think to return, for ransom, to that condition which you forfeited by cowardice and turpitude? You would not listen to Publius Sempronius, your fellow citizen, when he bade you arm and follow him; but you listened to Hannibal a little later, when he bade you betray the camp and surrender your arms. But why do I charge these men with cowardice when I could bring against them a charge of crime? For not only did they refuse to follow a man who gave them good advice, but they tried to thwart and hinder him; and those heroic men were forced to draw their swords and thrust the cowards from their path. Aye, Publius Sempronius must needs break through a band of Roman citizens before he could break through their enemies: Can their country wish to recover such citizens as these? If the others had resembled these, she would possess to-day no single citizen of all those who fought at Cannae. Out of seven thousand soldiers, six hundred were sufficiently courageous to force their way through and return to their country, free and armed. Nor did these six hundred encounter any opposition from the enemy; how safe then, think you, would have been their march, if they had amounted almost to two legions? You would have to-day under arms at Canusium, Conscript Fathers, twenty thousand brave and loyal men. But how can these men now be good and loyal citizens —for they themselves would hardly claim to be brave? Unless we are to believe that they helped their comrades to sally out, when in fact they tried to prevent the sally; or that they grudge not those men both the safety and the renown their courage has earned them, knowing, as they do, that fear and cowardice are the cause of their own disgraceful servitude. They had a good chance of escaping in the silence of the night, but preferred to hide in their tents and await both the day and the enemy. But perhaps, though they lacked the courage to sally forth, they had courage enough for a valiant defence of the camp? Perhaps they were besieged for several days and nights, and protected the rampart with their swords, and themselves with the rampart? and finally, after suffering the last extremities, when every support of life gave out and their strength was so impaired with hunger that they could now no longer hold up their shields, they were overcome by the necessities of human nature and not by arms? Nay, the sun was up when the enemy approached the rampart, and the day was not two hours old when, without once putting their fortune to the test of battle, they surrendered both their arms and their persons. Such, mark you, were the exploits these men performed during two days. When they ought to have stood fast in the line and fought, they fled to their tents; when they ought to have fought for their stockade, they surrendered the camp, worthless alike in the field and behind entrenchments. And you would have us ransom you? When it is time to sally from your camp, you hesitate and stop there; when it is needful that you stop and defend it with your swords, you hand over camp and swords and your own bodies to the enemy! No, Conscript Fathers, I would no more vote for ransoming these men than I would for giving those others up to Hannibal, who forced their way from the camp through the midst of enemies, and, by exerting the utmost valour, gave themselves back to their country. After the speech of Manlius, though most of the senators, too, had relatives amongst the prisoners, yet, besides the example of a state which had shown from of old the scantiest consideration for prisoners of war, they were also moved by the greatness of the sum required, not wishing either to exhaust the treasury, on which they had already made a heavy draft to purchase slaves and arm them for service, or to furnish Hannibal with money —the one thing of which he was rumoured to stand most in need. When the stern reply, that the prisoners would not be ransomed, had gone forth, and fresh sorrow had been added to the old, at the loss of so many of their fellow-citizens, the crowd attended the envoys to the gate with many tears and lamentations. One of them departed to his home, pretending to have freed himself from his oath when he deceitfully returned to the enemy's camp. As soon as this became known and was reported to the senators, they voted unanimously to arrest him and appointed guards to conduct him back to Hannibal. There is also another accounts of the prisoners of war: that ten envoys came at first, and that the senate, after hesitating whether or no to admit them to the City, admitted them, with the proviso that they should have no hearing. Later, on their delaying longer than anybody had anticipated, three additional envoys came, namely Lucius Scribonius and Gaius Calpurnius and Lucius Manlius; then at last a motion was made in the senate by a kinsman of Scribonius, who was tribune of plebs, that the prisoners be ransomed, but the motion was defeated; the three new envoys now returned to Hannibal, but the original ten remained in Rome, alleging that they had freed themselves of their obligation by going back to Hannibal's camp, after starting on their journey, under the pretext of reviewing the prisoners' names. A proposal to surrender them was hotly debated in the senate and was lost by only a few votes. However, under the next censors the ten were so overwhelmed with every species of reprobation and disgrace that some of them killed themselves forthwith, and the rest during all the remainder of their lives avoided not only the Forum, but, one might almost say, the light of day and the public streets. It is more amazing that the authorities should be so divergent than easy to make out the truth. For the rest, how greatly this disaster exceeded those that had gone before is plain from this: the loyalty of the allies, which had held firm until the day of Cannae, now began to waver, assuredly for no other reason than because they had lost all hope of the empire. Now these are the peoples that revolted: the Campanians, the Atellani, the Calatini, the Hirpini, a part of the Apulians, all the Samnites but the Pentri, all the Bruttii, the Lucanians, and besides these the Uzentini and almost all the Greeks on the coast, the Tarentines, the Metapontines, the Crotoniates and the Locri, together with all the Cisalpine Gauls. Yet these disasters and the falling away of the allies could not induce the Romans anywhere to mention peace, either before the consul came to Rome or after his coming had turned men's thoughts anew to the calamity which they had suffered. In that very hour there was such courage in the hearts of the citizens that when the consul was returning from that defeat for which he himself had been chiefly responsible, a crowd of all sorts and conditions went out to meet him on the way, and gave him thanks because he had not despaired of the state; whereas, had he been the commander of the Carthaginians, there was no punishment he would not have been compelled to suffer.

Perseus Latin. CTS URN phi0914.phi00122.perseus-eng1. Via the Perseus Digital Library / Open Greek and Latin TEI corpora. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source.