Chapter 2

The History of Rome, Books 09 to 26 (part 2)

A furious conflict now ensued, but with very unequal spirit [in the combatants]. Anger, hope, and ardour for conquest, hurried on the Romans to battle, thirsting for their enemy's blood; while the Samnites, for the most part reluctantly, as if compelled by necessity and religious dread, rather stood on their defence, than made an attack. Nor would they, familiarized as they were to defeats, through a course of so many years, have withstood the first shout and shock of the Romans, had not another fear, operating still more powerfully in their breasts, restrained them from flying. For they had before their eyes the whole scene exhibited at the secret sacrifice, the armed priests, the promiscuous carnage of men and cattle, the altars besmeared with the blood of victims and of their murdered countrymen, the dreadful curses, and the direful form of imprecation, drawn up for calling down perdition on their family and race. Prevented by these shackles from running away, they stood, more afraid of then countrymen than of the enemy. The Romans pushed on both the wings, and in the centre, and made great havoc among them, stupified as they were, through their fears of the gods and of men. A faint resistance is now made, as by men whom fear alone prevented from running away. The slaughter had now almost reached to their standards, when, on one side, appeared a cloud of dust, as if raised by the marching of a numerous army: it was Spurius Nautius, (some say Octavius Metius,) commander of the auxiliary cohorts: for these raised a greater quantity of dust than was proportioned to the number of men, the servants of the camp, mounted on the mules, trailing boughs of trees, full of leaves, along the ground. Through the light thus obscured, arms and standards were seen in front; behind, a higher and denser cloud of dust presented the appearance of horsemen bringing up the rear. This effectually deceived, not only the Samnites, but the Romans themselves: and the consul confirmed the mistake, by calling out among the foremost battalions, so that his voice reached also the enemy, that "Cominium was taken, and that his victorious colleague was approaching," bidding his men "now make haste to complete the defeat of the enemy, before the glory should fall to the share of the other army." This he said as he sat on horseback, and then ordered the tribunes and centurions to open passages for the horse. He had given previous directions to Trebonius and Caedicius, that, when they should see him waving the point of his spear aloft, they should incite the cavalry to charge the enemy with all possible violence. Every particular, as previously concerted, was executed with the utmost exactness. The passages were opened between the ranks, the cavalry darted through, and, with the points of their spears presented, rushed into the midst of the enemy's battalions, breaking down the ranks wherever they charged. Voluminius and Scipio seconded the blow, and taking advantage of the enemy's disorder, made a terrible slaughter. Thus attacked, the cohorts, called linteatae, regardless of all restraints from either gods or men, quitted their posts in confusion, the sworn and the unsworn all fled alike, no longer dreading aught but the enemies. The body of their infantry which survived the battle, were driven into the camp at Aquilonia. The nobility and cavalry directed their flight to Bovianum. The horse were pursued by the Roman horse, the infantry by their infantry, while the wings proceeded by different roads; the right, to the camp of the Samnites; the left to the city. Volumnius succeeded first in gaining possession of the camp. At the city, Scipio met a stouter resistance; not because the conquered troops there had gained courage, but because walls were a better defence against armed men than a rampart. From these they repelled the enemy with stones. Scipio, considering that unless the business were effected during their first panic, and before they could recover their spirits, the attack of so strong a town would be very tedious, asked his soldiers "if they could endure, without shame, that the other wing should already have taken the camp, and that they, after all their success, should be repulsed from the gates of the city?" Then, all of them loudly declaring their determination to the contrary, he himself advanced, the foremost, to the gate, with his shield raised over his head: the rest, following under the like cover of their shields conjoined, burst into the city, and dispersing the Samnites who were near the gate, took possession of the walls, but they ventured not to push forward into the interior of the city in consequence of the smallness of their number.

Of these transactions the consul was for some time ignorant; and was busily employed in calling home his troops, for the sun was now hastening to set, and the approach of night rendered every place suspicious and dangerous, even to victorious troops. Having rode forward a considerable way, he saw on the right the camp taken, and heard on the left a shouting in the city, with a confused noise of fighting, and cries of terror. This happened while the fight was going on at the gate. When, on riding up nearer, he saw his own men on the walls, and so much progress already made in the business, pleased at having gained, through the precipitate conduct of a few, an opportunity of striking an important blow, he ordered the troops, whom he had sent back to the camp, to be called out, and to march to the attack of the city: these, having made good their entrance on the nearest side, proceeded no farther, because night approached. Before morning, however, the town was abandoned by the enemy. There were slain of the Samnites on that day, at Aquilonia, thirty thousand three hundred and forty; taken, three thousand eight hundred and seventy, with ninety-seven military standards. One circumstance, respecting Papirius, is particularly mentioned by historians: that, hardly ever was any general seen in the field with a more cheerful countenance; whether this was owing to his natural temper or to his confidence of success. From the same firmness of mind it proceeded, that he did not suffer himself to be diverted from the war by the dispute about the auspices; and that, in the heat of the battle, when it was customary to vow temples to the immortal gods, he vowed to Jupiter the victorious, that if he should defeat the legions of the enemy, he would, before he tasted of any generous liquor, make a libation to him of a cup of wine and honey. This kind of vow proved acceptable to the gods, and they conducted the auspices to a fortunate issue.

Matters were conducted with the same success by the other consul at Cominium: leading up his forces to the walls, at the first dawn, he invested the city on every side, and posted strong guards opposite to the gates to prevent any sally being made. Just as he was giving the signal, the alarming message from his colleague, touching the march of the twenty Samnite cohorts, not only caused him to delay the assault, but obliged him to call off a part of his troops, when they were formed and ready to begin the attack. He ordered Decius Brutus Scaeva, a lieutenant-general, with the first legion, ten auxiliary cohorts, and the cavalry, to go and oppose the said detachment; and in whatever place he should meet the foe, there to stop and detain them, and even to engage in battle, should opportunity offer for it; at all events not to suffer those troops to approach Cominium. He then commanded the scaling ladders to be brought up to the walls, on every side of the city; and, under a fence of closed shields, advanced to the gates. Thus, at the same moment, the gates were broken open, and the assault made on every part of the walls. Though the Samnites, before they saw the assailants on the works, had possessed courage enough to oppose their approaches to the city, yet now, when the action was no longer carried on at a distance, nor with missile weapons, but in close fight; and when those, who had with difficulty gained the walls, having overcome the disadvantage of ground, which, they principally dreaded, fought with ease on equal ground, against an enemy inferior in strength, they all forsook the towers and walls, and being driven to the forum, they tried there for a short time, as a last effort, to retrieve the fortune of the fight; but soon throwing down their arms, surrendered to the consul, to the number of eleven thousand four hundred; four thousand three hundred and eighty were slain. Such was the course of events at Cominium, such at Aquilonia. In the middle space between the two cities, where a third battle had been expected, the enemy were not found; for, when they were within seven miles of Cominium, they were recalled by their countrymen, and had no part in either battle. At night-fall, when they were now within sight of their camp, and also of Aquilonia, shouts from both places reaching them with equal force induced them to halt; then, on the side of the camp, which had been set on fire by the Romans, the wide-spreading flames indicating with more certainty the disaster [which had happened], prevented their proceeding any farther. In that same spot, stretched on the ground at random under their arms, they passed the whole night in great inquietude, at one time wishing for, at another dreading the light. At the first dawn, while they were still undetermined to what quarter they should direct their march, they were obliged to betake themselves hastily to flight, being descried by the cavalry; who having gone in pursuit of the Samnites, that left the town in the night, saw the multitude unprotected either by a rampart or advanced guard. This party had likewise been perceived from the walls of Aquilonia, and the legionary cohorts now joined in the pursuit. The foot were unable to overtake them, but about two hundred and eighty of their rear guard were cut off by the cavalry. In their consternation they left behind them a great quantity of arms and eighteen military standards: they reached Bovianum with the rest of their party in safety, as far as could be expected after so disorderly a rout.

The joy of both Roman armies was enhanced by the success achieved on the other side. Each consul, with the approbation of his colleague, gave to his soldiers the plunder of the town which he had taken; and, when the houses were cleared, set them on fire. Thus, on the same day, Aquilonia and Cominium were both reduced to ashes. The consuls then united their camps, where mutual congratulations took place between them and between their soldiers. Here, in the view of the two armies, Carvilius bestowed on his men commendations and presents according to the desert of each; and Papirius likewise, whose troops had been engaged in a variety of actions, in the field, in the assault of the camp, and in that of the city, presented Spurius Nautius, Spurius Papirius, his nephew, four centurions, and a company of the spearmen, with bracelets and crowns of gold:--to Nautius, on account of his behaviour at the head of his detachment, when he had terrified the enemy with the appearance as of a numerous army; to young Papirius, on account of his zealous exertions with the cavalry, both in the battle and in harassing the Samnites in their flight by night, when they withdrew privately from Aquilonia; and to the centurions and company of soldiers, because they were the first who gained possession of the gate and wall of that town. All the horsemen he presented with gorgets and bracelets of silver, on account of their distinguished conduct on many occasions. As the time was now come for withdrawing the army out of Samnium, the expediency was considered, as to whether they should withdraw both, or at least one. It was concluded, that the lower the strength of the Samnites was reduced, the greater perseverance and vigour ought to be used in prosecuting the war, so that Samnium might be given up to the succeeding consuls perfectly subjected. As there was now no army of the enemy which could be supposed capable of disputing the field, there remained one mode of operations, the besieging of the cities; by the destruction of which, they might be enabled to enrich their soldiers with the spoil; and, at the same time, utterly to destroy the enemy, reduced to the necessity of fighting, their all being at stake. The consuls, therefore, after despatching letters to the senate and people of Rome, containing accounts of the services which they had performed, led away their legions to different quarters; Papirius going to attack Saepioura, Carvilius to Volana.

The letters of the consuls were heard with extraordinary exultation, both in the senate-house and in the assembly of the people; and, in a thanksgiving of four days' continuance, the public rejoicings were celebrated with zeal by individuals. These successes were not only important in themselves to the Roman people, but peculiarly seasonable; for it happened, that at the same time intelligence was brought that the Etrurians were again in arms. The reflection naturally occurred to people's minds, how it would have been possible, in case any misfortune had happened in Samnium, to have withstood the power of Etruria; which, being encouraged by the conspiracy of the Samnites, and seeing both the consuls, and the whole force of the Romans, employed against them, had made use of that juncture, in which the Romans had so much business on their hands, for reviving hostilities. Ambassadors from the allies, being introduced to the senate by the praetor Marcus Atilius, complained that their countries were wasted with fire and sword by the neighbouring Etrurians, because they had refused to revolt from the Romans; and they besought the conscript fathers to protect them from the violence and injustice of their common enemy. The ambassadors were answered,

that "the senate would take care that the allies should not repent their fidelity." That the "Etrurians should shortly be in the same situation with the Samnites." Notwithstanding which, the business respecting Etruria would have been prosecuted with less vigour, had not information been received, that the Faliscians likewise, who had for many years lived in friendship with Rome, had united their arms with those of the Etrurians. The consideration of the near vicinity of that nation quickened the attention of the senate; insomuch that they passed a decree that heralds should be sent to demand satisfaction: which being refused, war was declared against the Faliscians by direction of the senate, and order of the people; and the consuls were desired to determine, by lots, which of them should lead an army from Samnium into Etruria. Carvilius had, in the mean time, taken from the Samnites Volana, Palumbinum, and Herculaneum; Volana after a siege of a few days, Palumbinum the same day on which he approached the walls. At Herculaneum, it is true, the consul had two regular engagements without any decisive advantage on either side, and with greater loss on his side than on that of the enemy; but afterwards, encamping on the spot, he shut them up within their works. The town was besieged and taken. In these three towns were taken or slain ten thousand men, of whom the prisoners composed somewhat the greater part. On the consuls casting lots for the provinces, Etruria fell to Carvilius, to the great satisfaction of the soldiers, who could no longer bear the intensity of the cold in Samnium. Papirius was opposed at Saepinum with a more powerful force: he had to fight often in pitched battles, often on a march, and often under the walls of the city, against the eruptions of the enemy; and could neither besiege, nor engage them on equal terms; for the Samnites not only protected themselves by walls, but likewise protected their walls with numbers of men and arms. At length, after a great deal of fighting, he forced them to submit to a regular siege. This he carried on with vigour, and made himself master of the city by means of his works, and by storm. The rage of the soldiers on this occasion caused the greatest slaughter in the taking of the town; seven thousand four hundred fell by the sword; the number of the prisoners did not amount to three thousand. The spoil, of which the quantity was very great, the whole substance of the Samnites being collected in a few cities, was given up to the soldiers.

The snow had now entirely covered the face of the country, and they could no longer dispense with the shelter of houses: the consul therefore led home his troops from Samnium. While he was on his way to Rome, a triumph was decreed him with universal consent; and accordingly he triumphed while in office, and with extraordinary splendour, considering the circumstances of those times. The cavalry and infantry marched in the procession, adorned with presents. Great numbers of civic, vallar, and mural crowns were seen. The spoils of the Samnites were inspected with much curiosity, and compared, in respect of magnificence and beauty, with those taken by his father, which were well known, from being frequently exhibited as ornaments of the public places. Several prisoners of distinction, renowned for their own exploits and those of their ancestors, were led in the cavalcade. There were carried in the train two millions and thirty-three thousand asses in weight. This money was said to be produced by the sale of the prisoners. Of silver, taken in the cities, one thousand three hundred and thirty pounds. All the silver and brass were lodged in the treasury, no share of this part of the spoil being given to the soldiers. The ill humour in the commons was further exasperated, because the tax for the payment of the army was collected by contribution; whereas, said they, if the vain parade of conveying the produce of the spoil to the treasury had been disregarded, donations might have been made to the soldiers out of the spoil, and the pay of the army also supplied out of that fund. The temple of Quirinus, vowed by his father when dictator, (for that he himself had vowed it in the heat of battle, I do not find in any ancient writer, nor indeed could he in so short a time have finished the building of it,) the son, in the office of consul, dedicated and adorned with military spoils. And of these, so great was the abundance, that not only that temple and the forum were decorated with them, but some were also distributed among the allies and colonies in the neighbourhood, to serve as ornaments to their temples and public places. Immediately after his triumph, he led his army into winter quarters in the territory of Vescia; because that country was harassed by the Samnites. Meanwhile, in Etruria, the consul Carvilius having set about laying siege to Troilium, suffered four hundred and seventy of the richest inhabitants to depart; they had paid a large sum of money for permission to leave the place: the town, with the remaining multitude, he took by storm. He afterwards reduced, by force, five forts strongly situated, wherein were slain two thousand four hundred of the enemy, and not quite two thousand made prisoners. To the Faliscians, who sued for peace, he granted a truce for a year, on condition of their furnishing a hundred thousand asses in weight, and that year's pay for his army. This business completed, he returned home to a triumph, which, though it was less illustrious than that of his colleague, in respect of his share in the defeat of the Samnites, was yet raised to an equality with it, by his having put a termination to the war in Etruria. He carried into the treasury three hundred and ninety thousand asses in weight. Out of the remainder of the money accruing to the public from the spoils, he contracted for the building of a temple to Fors Fortuna, near to that dedicated to the same goddess by king Servius Tullius; and gave to the soldiers, out of the spoil, one hundred and two asses each, and double that sum to the centurions and horsemen, who received this donative the more gratefully, on account of the parsimony of his colleague.

The favour of the consul saved from a trial, before the people, Postumius; who, on a prosecution being commenced against him by Marcus Scantius, plebeian tribune, evaded, as was said, the jurisdiction of the people, by procuring the commission of lieutenant-general, so the indictment against him could only be held out as a threat, and not put in force. The The year having now elapsed, new plebeian tribunes had come unto office; and for these, in consequence of some irregularity on their appointments, others had been, within five days after, substituted in their room. The lustrum was closed this year by the censors Publius Cornelius Arvina and Caius Marcius Rutilus. The number of citizens rated was two hundred and sixty-two thousand three hundred and twenty-two. These were the twenty-sixth pair of censors since the first institution of that office; and this the nineteenth lustrum. In this year, persons who had been presented with crowns, in consideration of meritorious behaviour in war, first began to wear them at the exhibition of the Roman games. Then, for the first time, palms were conferred on the victors according to a custom introduced from Greece. In the same year the paving of the road from the temple of Mars to Bovillae was completed by the curule aediles, who exhibited those games out of fines levied on the farmers of the pastures. Lucius Papirius presided at the consular election, and returned consuls Quintus Fabius Gurges, son of Maximus, and Decius Junius Brutus Scaeva. Papirius himself was made praetor. This year, prosperous in many particulars, was scarcely sufficient to afford consolation for one calamity, a pestilence, which afflicted both the city and country: the mortality was prodigious. To discover what end, or what remedy, was appointed by the gods for that calamity, the books were consulted: in the books it was found that Aesculapius must be brought to Rome from Epidaurus. Nor were any steps taken that year in that matter, because the consuls were fully occupied in the war, except that a supplication was performed to Aesculapius for one day.

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Here ten books of the original are lost, making a chasm of seventy-five years. The translator's object being to publish the work of Livy only, he has not thought it his duty to attempt to supply this deficiency, either by a compilation of his own, or by transcribing or translating those of others. The leader, however, who may be desirous of knowing the events which took place during this interval, will find as complete a detail of them as can now be given, in Hooke's or Rollin's Roman History.The contents of the lost books have been preserved, and are as follows--

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BOOK XI.

[Y.R. 460. B.C. 292.] Fabius Gurges, consul, having fought an unsuccessful battle with the Samnites, the senate deliberate about dismissing him from the command of the army; are prevailed upon not to inflict that disgrace upon him, principally by the entreaties of his father, Fabius Maximus, and by his promising to join the army, and serve, in quality of lieutenant-general, under his son: which promise he performs, and the consul, aided by his counsel and co-operation, obtains a victory over the Samnites, and a triumph in consequence. C. Pontius, the general of the Samnites, led in triumph before the victor's carriage, and afterwards beheaded. A plague at Rome. [Y.R. 461. B.C. 291.] Ambassadors sent to Epidaurus, to bring from thence to Rome the statue of Aesculapius: a serpent, of itself, goes on board their ship; supposing it to be the abode of the deity, they bring it with them; and, upon its quitting their vessel, and swimming to the island in the Tiber, they consecrate there a temple to Aesculapius. L. Postumius, a man of consular rank, condemned for employing the soldiers under his command in working upon his farm. [Y.R. 462. B.C. 290] Curius Dentatus, consul, having subdued the Samnites, and the rebellious Sabines, triumphs twice during his year of office. [Y.R. 463. B.C. 289.] The colonies of Castrum, Sena, and Adria, established. Three judges of capital crimes now first appointed. A census and lustrum: the number of citizens found to be two hundred and seventy-three thousand. After a long-continued sedition, on account of debts, the commons secede to the Janiculum: [Y.R. 466. B.C. 286.] are brought back by Hortensius, dictator, who dies in office. Successful operations against the Volsinians and Lucanians, [Y.R. 468. B.C. 284.] against whom it was thought expedient to send succour to the Thuringians.

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BOOK XII.

[Y.R. 469. B.C. 283.] The Senonian Gauls having slain the Roman ambassadors, war is declared against them: they cut off L. Caecilius, praetor, with the legions under his command, [Y.R. 470. B.C. 282.] The Roman fleet plundered by the Tarentines, and the commander slain: ambassadors, sent to complain of this outrage, are ill-treated and sent back; whereupon war is declared against them. The Samnites revolt; against whom, together with the Lucanians, Bruttians, and Etruscans, several unsuccessful battles are fought by different generals. [Y.R. 471. B.C. 281.] Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, comes into Italy, to succour the Tarentines. A Campanian legion, sent, under the command of Decius Jubellius, to garrison Rhegium, murder the inhabitants, and seize the city.

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BOOK XIII.

[Y.R. 472. B.C. 280.] Valerius Laevinus, consul, engages with Pyrrhus, and is beaten, his soldiers being terrified at the unusual appearance of elephants. After the battle, Pyrrhus, viewing the bodies of the Romans who were slain, remarks, that they all of them lay with their faces turned towards their enemy. He proceeds towards Rome, ravaging the country as he goes along. C. Fabricius is sent by the senate to treat for the redemption of the prisoners: the king, in vain, attempts to bribe him to desert his country. The prisoners restored without ransom. Cineas, ambassador from Pyrrhus to the senate, demands, as a condition of peace, that the king be admitted into the city of Rome: the consideration of which being deferred to a fuller meeting, Appius Claudius, who, on account of a disorder in his eyes, had not, for a long time, attended in the senate, comes there; moves, and carries his motion, that the demand of the king be refused. Cneius Domitius, the first plebeian censor, holds a lustrum; the number of the citizens found to be two hundred and seventy-eight thousand two hundred and twenty-two. A second, but undecided battle with Pyrrhus. [Y.R. 473. B.C. 279.] The treaty with the Carthaginians renewed a fourth time. An offer made to Fabricius, the consul, by a traitor, to poison Pyrrhus; [Y. R. 474. B. C. 278.] he sends him to the king, and discovers to him the treasonable offer. Successful operations against the Etruscans, Lucanians, Bruttians, and Samnites.

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BOOK XIV.

Pyrrhus crosses over into Sicily. [Y. R. 475. B. C. 277.] Many prodigies, among which, the statue of Jupiter in the Capitol is struck by lightning, and thrown down. [Y. R. 476. B. C. 276.] The head of it afterwards found by the priests. Curius Dentatus, holding a levy, puts up to sale the goods of a person who refuses to answer to his name when called upon. [Y. R. 477. B. C. 275.] Pyrrhus, after his return from Sicily, is defeated, and compelled to quit Italy. The censors hold a lustrum, and find the number of the citizens to be two hundred and seventy-one thousand two hundred and twenty-four. [Y. R. 479. B. c. 273.] A treaty of alliance formed with Ptolemy, king of Egypt. Sextilia, a vestal, found guilty of incest, and buried alive. Two colonies sent forth, to Posidonium and Cossa. [Y. R. 480. B. C. 272.] A Carthaginian fleet sails, in aid of the Tarentines, by which act the treaty is violated. Successful operations against the Lucanians, Samnites, and Bruttians. Death of king Pyrrhus.

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BOOK XV.

The Tarentines overcome: peace and freedom granted to them. [Y. R. 481. B. C. 271.] The Campanian legion, which had forcibly taken possession of Rhegium, besieged there; lay down their arms, and are punished with death. Some young men, who had ill-treated the ambassadors from the Apollonians to the senate of Rome, are delivered up to them. Peace granted to the Picentians. [Y. R. 484. B. C. 268.] Two colonies established; one at Ariminum in Picenum, another at Beneventum in Samnium. Silver coin now, for the first time, used by the Roman people. [Y. R. 485. B. C. 267.] The Umbrians and Sallentines subdued. The number of quaestors increased to eight.

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BOOK XVI.

[Y. R. 488. B. C. 264.] Origin and progress of the Carthaginian state. After much debate, the senate resolves to succour the Mammertines against the Carthaginians, and against Hiero, king of Syracuse. Roman cavalry, then, for the first time, cross the sea, and engage successfully, in battle with Hiero; who solicits and obtains peace. [Y.R. 489. B.C. 263.] A lustrum: the number of the citizens amounts to two hundred and ninety-two thousand two hundred and twenty-four. D. Junius Brutus exhibits the first show of gladiators, in honour of his deceased father. [Y.R. 490. B.C. 262.] The Aesernian colony established. Successful operations against the Carthaginians and Vulsinians. [Y.R. 491. B.C. 261.]

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BOOK XVII.

[Y.R. 492. B.C. 260.] Cneius Cornelius, consul, surrounded by the Carthaginian fleet; and, being drawn into a conference by a stratagem, is taken. [Y.R. 493. B.C. 259.] C. Duilius, consul, engages with and vanquishes the Carthaginian fleet; is the first commander to whom a triumph was decreed for a naval victory; in honour of which, he is allowed, when returning to his habitation at night, to be attended with torches and music. L. Cornelius, consul, fights and subdues the Sardinians and Corsicans, together with Hanno, the Carthaginian general, in the island of Sardinia. [Y.R. 494. B.C. 258.] Atilius Calatinus, consul, drawn into an ambuscade by the Carthaginians, is rescued by the skill and valour of M. Calpurnius, a military tribune, who making a sudden attack upon the enemy, with a body of only three hundred men, turns their whole force against himself. [Y.R. 495. B.C. 257.] Hannibal, the commander of the Carthaginian fleet which was beaten, is put to death by his soldiers.

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BOOK XVIII.

[Y.R. 496. B.C. 256.] Attilius Regulus, consul, having overcome the Carthaginians in a sea-fight, passes over into Africa: kills a serpent of prodigious magnitude, with great loss of his own men. [Y.R. 497. B.C. 255.] The senate, on account of his successful conduct of the war, not appointing him a successor, he writes to them, complaining; and, among other reasons for desiring to be recalled, alledges, that his little farm, being all his subsistence, was going to ruin, owing to the mismanagement of hired stewards. [Y.R. 498. B.C. 254.] A memorable instance of the instability of fortune exhibited in the person of Regulus, who is overcome in battle, and taken prisoner by Xanthippus, a Lacedaemonian general. [Y. R. 499. B. C. 253.] The Roman fleet shipwrecked; which disaster entirely reverses the good fortune which had hitherto attended their affairs. Titus Corucanius, the first high priest chosen from among the commons. [Y. R. 500. B. C. 252.] P. Sempronius Sophus and M. Yalerius Maximus, censors, examine into the state of the senate, and expel thirteen of the members of that body. [Y. R. 501. B. C. 251.] They hold a lustrum, and find the number of citizens to be two hundred and ninety-seven thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven. [Y. R. 502. B. C. 250.] Regulus being sent by the Carthaginians to Rome to treat for peace, and an exchange of prisoners, binds himself by oath to return if these objects be not attained; dissuades the senate from agreeing to the propositions: and then, in observance of his oath, returning to Carthage, is put to death by torture.

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BOOK XIX.

[Y. R. 502. B. C. 250.] C. Caecilius Metellus, having been successful in several engagements with the Carthaginians, triumphs with more splendour than had ever yet been seen; thirteen generals of the enemy, and one hundred and twenty elephants, being exhibited in the procession, [Y. R. 503. B. C. 249.] Claudius Pulcher, consul, obstinately persisting, notwithstanding the omens were inauspicious, engages the enemy's fleet, and is beaten; drowns the sacred chickens which would not feed: recalled by the senate, and ordered to nominate a dictator; he appoints Claudius Glicia, one of the lowest of the people, who, notwithstanding his being ordered to abdicate the office, yet attends the celebration of the public games in his dictator's robe. [Y. R. 504. B. C. 248.] Atilius Calatinus, the first dictator who marches with an army out of Italy. An exchange of prisoners with the Carthaginians. Two colonies established at Fregenae and Brundusium in the Sallentine territories. [Y. R. 505. B. C. 247.] A lustrum; the citizens numbered amount to two hundred and fifty-one thousand two hundred and twenty-two. [Y. R. 506. B. C. 246.] Claudia, the sister of Claudius, who had fought unsuccessfully, in contempt of the auspices, being pressed by the crowd, as she was returning from the game, cries out, I wish my brother were alive and had again the command of the fleet: for which offence she is tried and fined. [Y. R. 507. B. C. 245.] Two praetors now first created. Aulus Postumius, consul, being priest of Mars, forcibly detained in the city by Caecilius Metellus, the high priest, and not suffered to go forth to war, being obliged by law to attend to the sacred duties of his office. [Y.R. 508. B.C. 244.] After several successful engagements with the Carthaginians, Caius Lutatius, consul, puts an end to the war, [Y.R. 509. B.C. 243.] by gaining a complete victory over their fleet, at the island of Aegate. The Carthaginians sue for peace, which is granted to them. [Y.R. 510. B.C. 242.] The temple of Vesta being on fire, the high priest, Caecilius Metellus, saves the sacred utensils from the flames. [Y.R. 511. B.C. 241.] Two new tribes added, the Veline and Quirine. The Falisci rebel; are subdued in six days.

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BOOK XX.

A colony settled at Spoletum. [Y.R. 512. B.C. 240.] An army sent against the Ligurians; being the first war with that state. The Sardinians and Corsicans rebel, and are subdued. [Y.R. 514. B.C. 238.] Tuccia, a vestal, found guilty of incest. War declared against the Illyrians, who had slain an ambassador; they are subdued and brought to submission. [Y.R. 515. B.C. 237.] The number of praetors increased to four. The Transalpine Gauls make an irruption into Italy: are conquered and put to the sword. [Y.R. 516. B.C. 236.] The Roman army, in conjunction with the Latins, is said to have amounted to no less than three hundred thousand men. [Y.R. 517. B.C. 235.] The Roman army for the first time crosses the Po; fights with and subdues the Insubrian Gauls. [Y.R. 530. B.C. 222.] Claudius Marcellus, consul, having slain Viridomarus, the general of the Insubrian Gauls, carries off the spolia opima. [Y.R. 531. B.C. 221.] The Istrians subdued; also the Illyrians, who had rebelled. [Y.R. 532. B.C. 220.] The censors hold a lustrum, in which the number of the citizens is found to be two hundred and seventy thousand two hundred and thirteen. The sons of freed-men formed into four tribes; the Esquiline, Palatine, Suburran, and Colline. [Y.R. 533. B.C. 219.] Caius Flaminius, censor, constructs the Flaminian road, and builds the Flaminian circus.

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BOOK XXI.

B.C. 219-218

Origin of the second Punic war. Hannibal's character. In violation of a treaty, he passes the Iberus. Besieges Saguntum, and at length takes it. The Romans send ambassadors to Carthage; declare war. Hannibal crosses the Pyrenees: makes his way through Gaul; then crosses the Alps; defeats the Romans at the Ticinus. The Romans again defeated at the Trebia. Cneius Cornelius Scipio defeats the Carthaginians in Spain, and takes Hanno, their general, prisoner.

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I may be permitted to premise at this division of my work, what most historians have professed at the beginning of their whole undertaking; that I am about to relate the most memorable of all wars that were ever waged: the war which the Carthaginians, under the conduct of Hannibal, maintained with the Roman people. For never did any states and nations more efficient in their resources engage in contest; nor had they themselves at any other period so great a degree of power and energy. They brought into action too no arts of war unknown to each other, but those which had been tried in the first Punic war; and so various was the fortune of the conflict, and so doubtful the victory, that they who conquered were more exposed to danger. The hatred with which they fought also was almost greater than their resources; the Romans being indignant that the conquered aggressively took up arms against their victors; the Carthaginians, because they considered that in their subjection it had been lorded over them with haughtiness and avarice. There is besides a story, that Hannibal, when about nine years old, while he boyishly coaxed his father Hamilcar that he might be taken to Spain, (at the time when the African war was completed, and he was employed in sacrificing previously to transporting his army thither,) was conducted to the altar; and, having laid his hand on the offerings, was bound by an oath to prove himself, as soon as he could, an enemy to the Roman people. The loss of Sicily and Sardinia grieved the high spirit of Hamilcar: for he deemed that Sicily had been given up through a premature despair of their affairs; and that Sardinia, during the disturbances in Africa, had been treacherously taken by the Romans, while, in addition, the payment of a tribute had been imposed.

Being disturbed with these anxieties, he so conducted himself for five years in the African war, which commenced shortly after the peace with Rome, and then through nine years employed in augmenting the Carthaginian empire in Spain, that it was obvious that he was revolving in his mind a greater war than he was then engaged in; and that if he had lived longer, the Carthaginians under Hamilcar would have carried the war into Italy, which, under the command of Hannibal, they afterwards did. The timely death of Hamilcar and the youth of Hannibal occasioned its delay. Hasdrubal, intervening between the father and the son, held the command for about eight years. He was first endeared to Hamilcar, as they say, on account of his youthful beauty, and then adopted by him, when advanced in age, as his son-in-law, on account of his eminent abilities; and, because he was his son-in-law, he obtained the supreme authority, against the wishes of the nobles, by the influence of the Barcine faction, which was very powerful with the military and the populace. Prosecuting his designs rather by stratagem than force, by entertaining the princes, and by means of the friendship of their leaders, gaining the favour of unknown nations, he aggrandized the Carthaginian power, more than by arms and battles. Yet peace proved no greater security to himself. A barbarian, in resentment of his master's having been put to death by him, publicly murdered him; and, having been seized by the bystanders, he exhibited the same countenance as if he had escaped; nay, even when he was lacerated by tortures, he preserved such an expression of face, that he presented the appearance of one who smiled, his joy getting the better of his pains. With this Hasdrubal, because he possessed such wonderful skill in gaining over the nations and adding them to his empire, the Roman people had renewed the treaty, on the terms, that the river Iberus should be the boundary of both empires; and that to the Saguntines, who lay between the territories of the two states, their liberty should be preserved.

There was no doubt that in appointing a successor to Hasdrubal, the approbation of the commons would follow the military prerogative, by which the young Hannibal had been immediately carried to the praetorium, and hailed as general, amid the loud shouts and acquiescence of all. Hasdrubal had sent for him by letter, when scarce yet arrived at manhood; and the matter had even been discussed in the senate, the Barcine faction using all their efforts, that Hannibal might be trained to military service and succeed to his father's command. Hanno, the leader of the opposite faction, said, "Hasdrubal seems indeed to ask what is reasonable, but I, nevertheless, do not think his request ought to be granted." When he had attracted to himself the attention of all, through surprise at this ambiguous opinion, he proceeded: "Hasdrubal thinks that the flower of youth which he gave to the enjoyment of Hannibal's father, may justly be expected by himself in return from the son: but it would little become us to accustom our youth, in place of a military education, to the lustful ambition of the generals. Are we afraid that the son of Hamilcar should be too late in seeing the immoderate power and splendour of his father's sovereignty? or that we shall not soon enough become slaves to the son of him, to whose son-in-law our armies were bequeathed as an hereditary right? I am of opinion, that this youth should be kept at home, and taught, under the restraint of the laws and the authority of magistrates, to live on an equal footing with the rest of the citizens, lest at some time or other this small fire should kindle a vast conflagration."

A few, and nearly every one of the highest merit, concurred with Hanno; but, as usually happens, the more numerous party prevailed over the better. Hannibal, having been sent into Spain, from his very first arrival drew the eyes of the whole army upon him. The veteran soldiers imagined that Hamilcar, in his youth, was restored to them; they remarked the same vigour in his looks and animation in his eye the same features and expression of countenance; and then, in a short time, he took care that his father should be of the least powerful consideration in conciliating their esteem. There never was a genius more fitted for the two most opposite duties of obeying and commanding; so that you could not easily decide whether he were dearer to the general or the army: and neither did Hasdrubal prefer giving the command to any other, when any thing was to be done with courage and activity; nor did the soldiers feel more confidence and boldness under any other leader. His fearlessness in encountering dangers, and his prudence when in the midst of them, were extreme. His body could not be exhausted, nor his mind subdued, by any toil. He could alike endure either heat or cold. The quantity of his food and drink was determined by the wants of nature, and not by pleasure. The seasons of his sleeping and waking were distinguished neither by day nor night. The time that remained after the transaction of business was given to repose; but that repose was neither invited by a soft bed nor by quiet. Many have seen him wrapped in a military cloak, lying on the ground amid the watches and outposts of the soldiers. His dress was not at all superior to that of his equals: his arms and his horses were conspicuous. He was at once by far the first of the cavalry and infantry; and, foremost to advance to the charge, was last to leave the engagement. Excessive vices counterbalanced these high virtues of the hero; inhuman cruelty, more than Punic perfidy, no truth, no reverence for things sacred, no fear of the gods, no respect for oaths, no sense of religion. With a character thus made up of virtue and vices, he served for three years under the command of Hasdrubal, without neglecting any thing which ought to be done or seen by one who was to become a great general.

But from the day on which he was declared general, as if Italy had been decreed to him as his province, and the war with Rome committed to him, thinking there should be no delay, lest, while he procrastinated, some unexpected accident might defeat him, as had happened to his father, Hamilcar, and afterwards to Hasdrubal, he resolved to make war the Saguntines. As there could be no doubt that by attacking them the Romans would be excited to arms, he first led his army into the territory of the Olcades, a people beyond the Iberus, rather within the boundaries than under the dominion of the Carthaginians, so that he might not seem to have had the Saguntines for his object, but to have been drawn on to the war by the course of events; after the adjoining nations had been subdued, and by the progressive annexation of conquered territory. He storms and plunders Carteia, a wealthy city, the capital of that nation; at which the smaller states being dismayed, submitted to his command and to the imposition of a tribute. His army, triumphant and enriched with booty, was led into winter-quarters to New Carthage. Having there confirmed the attachment of all his countrymen and allies by a liberal division of the plunder, and by faithfully discharging the arrears of pay, the war was extended, in the beginning of spring, to the Vaccaei. The cities Hermandica and Arbocala were taken by storm. Arbocala was defended for a long time by the valour and number of its inhabitants. Those who escaped from Hermandica joining themselves to the exiles of the Olcades, a nation subdued the preceding summer, excite the Carpetani to arms; and having attacked Hannibal near the river Tagus, on his return from the Vaccaei, they threw into disorder his army encumbered with spoil. Hannibal avoided an engagement, and having pitched his camp on the bank, as soon as quiet and silence prevailed among the enemy, forded the river; and having removed his rampart so far that the enemy might have room to pass over, resolved to attack them in their passage. He commanded the cavalry to charge as soon as they should see them advanced into the water. He drew up the line of his infantry on the bank with forty elephants in front. The Carpetani, with the addition of the Olcades and Vaccaei amounted to a hundred thousand, an invincible army, were the fight to take place in the open plain. Being therefore both naturally ferocious and confiding in their numbers; and since they believed that the enemy had retired through fear thinking that victory was only delayed by the intervention of the river, they raise a shout, and in every direction, without the command of any one, dash into the stream, each where it nearest to him. At the same time, a heavy force of cavalry poured into the river from its opposite bank, and the engagement commenced in the middle of the channel on very unequal terms; for there the foot-soldier, having no secure footing, and scarcely trusting to the ford, could be borne down even by an unarmed horseman, by the mere shock of his horse urged at random; while the horseman, with the command of his body and his weapons, his horse moving steadily even through the middle of the eddies, could maintain the fight either at close quarters or at a distance. A great number were swallowed up by the current; some being carried by the whirlpools of the stream to the side of the enemy, were trodden down by the elephants; and whilst the last, for whom it was more safe to retreat to their own bank, were collecting together after their various alarms, Hannibal, before they could regain courage after such excessive consternation, having entered the river with his army in a close square, forced them to fly from the bank. Having then laid waste their territory, he received the submission of the Carpetani also within a few days. And now all the country beyond the Iberus, excepting that of the Saguntines, was under the power of the Carthaginians.

As yet there was no war with the Saguntines, but already, in order to a war, the seeds of dissension were sown between them and their neighbours, particularly the Turetani, with whom when the same person sided who had originated the quarrel, and it was evident, not that a trial of the question of right, but violence, was his object, ambassadors were sent by the Saguntines to Rome to implore assistance in the war which now evidently threatened them. The consuls then at Rome were Publius Cornelius Scipio and Tiberius Sempronius Longus, who, after the ambassadors were introduced into the senate, having made a motion on the state of public affairs, it was resolved that envoys should be sent into Spain to inspect the circumstances of the allies; and if they saw good reason, both to warn Hannibal that he should refrain from the Saguntines, the allies of the Roman people, and to pass over into Africa to Carthage, and report the complaints of the allies of the Roman people. This embassy having been decreed but not yet despatched, the news arrived, more quickly than any one expected, that Saguntum was besieged. The business was then referred anew to the senate. And some, decreeing Spain and Africa as provinces for the consuls, thought the war should be maintained both by sea and land, while others wished to direct the whole hostilities against Spain and Hannibal. There were others again who thought that an affair of such importance should not be entered on rashly; and that the return of the ambassadors from Spain ought to be awaited. This opinion, which seemed the safest, prevailed; and Publius Valerius Flaccus, and Quintus Baebius Tamphilus, were, on that account, the more quickly despatched as ambassadors to Hannibal at Saguntum, and from thence to Carthage, if he did not desist from the war, to demand the general himself in atonement for the violation of the treaty.

While the Romans thus prepare and deliberate, Saguntum was already besieged with the utmost vigour. That city, situated about a mile from the sea, was by far the most opulent beyond the Iberus. Its inhabitants are said to have been sprung from the island Zacynthus, and some of the Rutulian race from Ardea to have been also mixed with them; but they had risen in a short time to great wealth, either by their gains from the sea or the land, or by the increase of their numbers, or the integrity of their principles, by which they maintained their faith with their allies, even to their own destruction. Hannibal having entered their territory with a hostile army, and laid waste the country in every direction, attacks the city in three different quarters. There was an angle of the wall sloping down into a more level and open valley than the other space around; against this he resolved to move the vineae, by means of which the battering-ram might be brought up to the wall. But though the ground at a distance from the wall was sufficiently level for working the vineae, yet their undertakings by no means favourably succeeded, when they came to effect their object. Both a huge tower overlooked it, and the wall, as in a suspected place, was raised higher than in any other part; and a chosen band of youths presented a more vigorous resistance, where the greatest danger and labour were indicated. At first they repelled the enemy with missile weapons, and suffered no place to be sufficiently secure for those engaged in the works; afterwards, not only did they brandish their weapons in defence of the walls and tower, but they had courage to make sallies on the posts and works of the enemy; in which tumultuary engagements, scarcely more Saguntines than Carthaginians were slain. But when Hannibal himself, while he too incautiously approached the wall, fell severely wounded in the thigh by a javelin, such flight and dismay spread around, that the works and vineae had nearly been abandoned.

For a few days after, while the general's wound was being cured, there was rather a blockade than a siege: during which time, though there was a respite from fighting, yet there was no intermission in the preparation of works and fortifications. Hostilities, therefore, broke out afresh with greater fury, and in more places, in some even where the ground scarcely admitted of the works, the vineae began to be moved forward, and the battering-ram to be advanced to the walls. The Carthaginian abounded in the numbers of his troops; for there is sufficient reason to believe that he had as many as a hundred and fifty thousand in arms. The townsmen began to be embarrassed, by having their attention multifariously divided, in order to maintain their several defences, and look to every thing; nor were they equal to the task, for the walls were now battered by the rams, and many parts of them were shattered. One part by continuous ruins left the city exposed; three successive towers and all the wall between them had fallen down with an immense crash, and the Carthaginians believed the town taken by that breach; through which, as if the wall had alike protected both, there was a rush from each side to the battle. There was nothing resembling the disorderly fighting which, in the storming of towns, is wont to be engaged in, on the opportunities of either party; but regular lines, as in an open plain, stood arrayed between the ruins of the walls and the buildings of the city, which lay but a slight distance from the walls. On the one side hope, on the other despair, inflamed their courage; the Carthaginian believing that, if a little additional effort were used, the city was his; the Saguntines opposing their bodies in defence of their native city deprived of its walls, and not a man retiring a step, lest he might admit the enemy into the place he deserted. The more keenly and closely, therefore, they fought on both sides, the more, on that account, were wounded, no weapon falling without effect amidst their arms and persons. There was used by the Saguntines a missile weapon, called falarica, with the shaft of fir, and round in other parts except towards the point, whence the iron projected: this part, which was square, as in the pilum, they bound around with tow, and besmeared with pitch. It had an iron head three feet in length, so that it could pierce through the body with the armour. But what caused the greatest fear was, that this weapon, even though it stuck in the shield and did not penetrate into the body, when it was discharged with the middle part on fire, and bore along a much greater flame, produced by the mere motion, obliged the armour to be thrown down, and exposed the soldier to succeeding blows.

When the contest had for a long time continued doubtful, and the courage of the Saguntines had increased, because they had succeeded in their resistance beyond their hopes, while the Carthaginian, because he had not conquered, felt as vanquished, the townsmen suddenly set up a shout, and drive their enemies to the ruins of the wall; thence they force them, while embarrassed and disordered; and lastly, drove them back, routed and put to flight, to their camp. In the mean time it was announced that ambassadors had arrived from Rome; to meet whom messengers were sent to the sea-side by Hannibal, to tell them that they could not safely come to him through so many armed bands of savage tribes, and that Hannibal at such an important conjuncture had not leisure to listen to embassies. It was obvious that, if not admitted, they would immediately repair to Carthage: he therefore sends letters and messengers beforehand to the leaders of the Barcine faction, to prepare the minds of their partisans, so that the other party might not be able in any thing to give an advantage to the Romans.

That embassy, therefore, excepting that the ambassadors were admitted and heard, proved likewise vain and fruitless. Hanno alone, in opposition to the rest of the senate, pleaded the cause of the treaty, amidst deep silence on account of his authority, and not from the approbation of the audience. He said: that he had admonished and forewarned them by the gods, the arbiters and witnesses of treaties, that they should not send the son of Hamilcar to the army; that the manes, that the offspring of that man could not rest in peace, nor ever, while any one of the Barcine name and blood survived, would the Roman treaties continue undisturbed. "You, supplying as it were fuel to the flame, have sent to your armies a youth burning with the desire of sovereign power, and seeing but one road to his object, if by exciting war after war, he may live surrounded by arms and legions. You have therefore fostered this fire, in which you now burn. Your armies invest Saguntum, whence they are forbidden by the treaty: ere long the Roman legions will invest Carthage, under the guidance of those gods through whose aid they revenged in the former war the infraction of the treaty. Are you unacquainted with the enemy, or with yourselves, or with the fortune of either nation? Your good general refused to admit into his camp ambassadors coming from allies and in behalf of allies, and set at nought the law of nations. They, however, after being there repulsed, where not even the ambassadors of enemies are prohibited admittance, come to you: they require restitution according to the treaty: let not guilt attach to the state, they demand to have delivered up to them the author of the transgression, the person who is chargeable with this offence. The more gently they proceed,--the slower they are to begin, the more unrelentingly, I fear, when they have once commenced, will they indulge resentment. Set before your eyes the islands Aegates and Eryx, all that for twenty-four years ye have suffered by land and sea. Nor was this boy the leader, but his father Hamilcar himself, a second Mars, as these people would have it: but we had not refrained from Tarentum, that is, from Italy, according to the treaty; as now we do not refrain from Saguntum. The gods and men have, therefore, prevailed over us; and as to that about which there was a dispute in words, whether of the two nations had infringed the treaty, the issue of the war, like an equitable judge, hath awarded the victory to the party on whose side justice stood. It is against Carthage that Hannibal is now moving his vineae and towers: it is the wall of Carthage that he is shaking with his battering-ram. The ruins of Saguntum (oh that I may prove a false prophet!) will fall on our heads; and the war commenced against the Saguntines must be continued against the Romans. Shall we, therefore, some one will say, deliver up Hannibal? In what relates to him I am aware that my authority is of little weight, on account of my enmity with his father. But I both rejoice that Hamilcar perished, for this reason, that, had he lived we should have now been engaged in a war with the Romans; and this youth, as the fury and firebrand of this war, I hate and detest. Nor ought he only to be given up in atonement for the violated treaty; but even though no one demanded him, he ought to be transported to the extremest shores of earth or sea, and banished to a distance, whence neither his name nor any tidings of him can reach us, and he be unable to disturb the peace of a tranquil state. I therefore give my opinion, that ambassadors be sent immediately to Rome to satisfy the senate; others to tell Hannibal to lead away his army from Saguntum, and to deliver up Hannibal himself, according to the treaty to the Romans; and I propose a third embassy to make restitution to the Saguntines."

When Hanno had concluded, there was no occasion for any one to contend with him in debate, to such a decree were almost all the senators devoted to Hannibal; and they accused Hanno of having spoken with more malignity than Flaccus Valerius, the Roman ambassador. It was then said in answer to the Roman ambassadors, "that the war had been commenced by the Saguntines, not by Hannibal; and that the Roman people acted unjustly if they preferred the Saguntines to the most ancient alliance of the Carthaginians." Whilst the Romans waste time in sending embassies, Hannibal, because his soldiers were fatigued with the battles and the works, allowed them rest for a few days, parties being stationed to guard the vineae and other works. In the mean time he inflames their minds, now by inciting their anger against the enemy, now with the hope of reward. But when he declared before the assembled army, that the plunder of the captured city should be given to the soldiers, to such a degree were they all excited, that if the signal had been immediately given, it appeared that they could not have been resisted by any force. The Saguntines, as they had a respite from fighting, neither for some days attacking nor attacked, so they had not, by night or day, ever ceased from toiling, that they might repair anew the wall in the quarter where the town had been exposed by the breach. A still more desperate storming than the former then assailed them; nor whilst all quarters resounded with various clamours, could they satisfactorily know where first or principally they should lend assistance. Hannibal, as an encouragement, was present in person, where a movable tower, exceeding in height all the fortifications of the city, was urged forward. When being brought up it had cleared the walls of their defenders by means of the catapultae and ballistae ranged through all its stories, then Hannibal, thinking it a favourable opportunity, sends about five hundred Africans with pickaxes to undermine the wall: nor was the work difficult, since the unhewn stones were not fastened with lime, but filled in their interstices with clay, after the manner of ancient building. It fell, therefore, more extensively than it was struck, and through the open spaces of the ruins troops of armed men rushed into the city. They also obtain possession of a rising ground; and having collected thither catapultae and ballistae, so that they might have a fort in the city itself, commanding it like a citadel, they surround it with a wall: and the Saguntines raise an inner wall before the part of the city which was not yet taken. On both sides they exert the utmost vigour in fortifying and fighting: but the Saguntines, by erecting these inner defences, diminish daily the size of their city. At the same time, the want of all supplies increased through the length of the siege, and the expectation of foreign aid diminished, since the Romans, their only hope, were at such a distance, and all the country round was in the power of the enemy. The sudden departure of Hannibal against the Oretani and Carpetani revived for a little their drooping spirits; which two nations, though, exasperated by the severity of the levy, they had occasioned, by detaining the commissaries, the fear of a revolt, having been suddenly checked by the quickness of Hannibal, laid down the arms they had taken up.

Nor was the siege of Saguntum, in the mean time, less vigorously maintained; Maharbal, the son of Himilco, whom Hannibal had set over the army, carrying on operations so actively that neither the townsmen nor their enemies perceived that the general was away. He both engaged in several successful battles, and with three battering-rams overthrew a portion of the wall; and showed to Hannibal, on his arrival the ground all covered with fresh ruins. The army was therefore immediately led against the citadel itself, and a desperate combat was commenced with much slaughter on both sides, and part of the citadel was taken. The slight chance of a peace was then tried by two persons; Alcon a Saguntine, and Alorcus a Spaniard. Alcon, thinking he could effect something by entreaties, having passed over, without the knowledge of the Saguntines, to Hannibal by night, when his tears produced no effect, and harsh conditions were offered as from an exasperated conqueror, becoming a deserter instead of an advocate, remained with the enemy; affirming that the man would be put to death who should treat for peace on such terms. For it was required that they should make restitution to the Turdetani; and after delivering up all their gold and silver, departing from the city each with a single garment, should take up their dwelling where the Carthaginian should direct. Alcon having denied that the Saguntines would accept such terms of peace, Alorcus, asserting that when all else is subdued, the mind becomes subdued, offers himself as the proposer of that peace. Now at that time he was a soldier of Hannibal's, but publicly the friend and host of the Saguntines. Having openly delivered his weapon to the guards of the enemy and passed the fortifications, he was conducted, as he had himself requested, to the Saguntine praetor; whither when there was immediately a general rush of every description of people, the rest of the multitude being removed, an audience of the senate is given to Alorcus; whose speech was to the following effect:

"If your citizen Alcon, as he came to implore a peace from Hannibal, had in like manner brought back to you the terms of peace proposed by Hannibal, this journey of mine would have been unnecessary; by which circumstance I should not have had to come to you as the legate of Hannibal, nor as a deserter. Since he has remained with your enemies, either through your fault or his own, (through his own, if he counterfeited fear; through yours, if among you there be danger to those who tell the truth,) that you may not be ignorant that there are some terms of safety and peace for you, I have come to you in consideration of the ancient ties of hospitality which subsist between us. But that I speak what I address to you for your sake and that of no other, let even this be the proof: that neither while you resisted with your own strength, nor while you expected assistance from the Romans, did I ever make any mention of peace to you. But now, after you have neither any hope from the Romans, nor your own arms nor walls sufficiently defend you, I bring to you a peace rather necessary than just: of effecting which there is thus some hope, if, as Hannibal offers it in the spirit of a conqueror, you listen to it as vanquished; if you will consider not what is taken from you as loss, (since all belongs to the conqueror,) but whatever is left as a gift. He takes away from you your city, which, already for the greater part in ruins, he has almost wholly in his possession; he leaves you your territory, intending to mark out a place in which you may build a new town; he commands that all the gold and silver, both public and private, shall be brought to him; he preserves inviolate your persons and those of your wives and children, provided you are willing to depart from Saguntum, unarmed, each with two garments. These terms a victorious enemy dictates. These, though harsh and grievous, your condition commends to you. Indeed I do not despair, when the power of every thing is given him, that he will remit something from these terms. But even these I think you ought rather to endure, than suffer, by the rights of war, yourselves to be slaughtered, your wives and children to be ravished and dragged into captivity before your faces."

When an assembly of the people, by the gradual crowding round of the multitude, had mingled with the senate to hear these proposals, the chief men suddenly withdrawing before an answer was returned, and throwing all the gold and silver collected, both from public and private stores, into a fire hastily kindled for that purpose, the greater part flung themselves also into it. When the dismay and agitation produced by this deed had pervaded the whole city, another noise was heard in addition from the citadel. A tower, long battered, had fallen down; and when a Carthaginian cohort, rushing through the breach, had made a signal to the general that the city was destitute of the usual outposts and guards, Hannibal, thinking that there ought to be no delay at such an opportunity, having attacked the city with his whole forces, took it in a moment, command being given that all the adults should be put to death; which command, though cruel, was proved in the issue to have been almost necessary. For to whom of those men could mercy have been shown, who, either shut up with their wives and children, burned their houses over their own heads, or abroad in arms made no end of fighting, except in death.

The town was taken, with immense spoil. Though the greater part of the goods had been purposely damaged by their owners, and resentment had made scarce any distinction of age in the massacre, and the captives were the booty of the soldiers; still it appears that some money was raised from the price of the effects that were sold, and that much costly furniture and garments were sent to Carthage. Some have written that Saguntum was taken in the eighth month after it began to be besieged; that Hannibal then retired to New Carthage, into winter quarters; and that in the fifth month after he had set out from Carthage he arrived in Italy. If this be so, it was impossible that Publius Cornelius and Tiberius Sempronius could have been consuls, to whom both at the beginning of the siege the Saguntine ambassadors were despatched, and who, during their office, fought with Hannibal; the one at the river Ticinus, and both some time after at the Trebia. Either all these events took place in a somewhat shorter period, or Saguntum was not begun to be besieged, but taken at the beginning of the year in which Publius Cornelius and Tiberius Sempronius were consuls. For the battle at Trebia could not have been so late as the year of Cneius Servilius and Caius Flaminius, since Flaminius entered on the office at Ariminum, having been created by the consul Tiberius Sempronius; who, having repaired to Rome after the battle at Trebia for the purpose of creating consuls, returned when the election was finished to the army into winter quarters.

Nearly about the same time, both the ambassadors who had returned from Carthage brought intelligence to Rome that all appearances were hostile, and the destruction of Saguntum was announced. Then such grief, and pity for allies so undeservingly destroyed, and shame that aid was withheld, and rage against the Carthaginians, and fear for the issue of events, as if the enemy were already at the gates, took at once possession of the senators, that their minds, disturbed by so many simultaneous emotions, trembled with fear rather than deliberated. For they considered that neither had a more spirited or warlike enemy ever encountered them nor had the Roman state been ever so sunk in sloth, and unfit for war: that the Sardinians, the Corsicans, the Istrians, and the Illyrians, had rather kept in a state of excitement than exercised the Roman arms; and with the Gauls it had been more properly a tumult than a war. That the Carthaginian, a veteran enemy, ever victorious during the hardest service for twenty-three years among the tribes of Spain, first trained to war under Hamilcar, then Hasdrubal, now Hannibal, a most active leader, and fresh from the destruction of a most opulent city, was passing the Iberus; that along with them he was bringing the numerous tribes of Spain, already aroused, and was about to excite the nations of Gaul, ever desirous of war; and that a war against the world was to be maintained in Italy and before the walls of Rome.

The provinces had already been previously named for the consuls; and having been now ordered to cast lots for them, Spain fell to Cornelius, and Africa with Sicily to Sempronius. Six legions were decreed for that year, and as many of the allies as should seem good to the consuls, and as great a fleet as could be equipped. Twenty-four thousand Roman infantry were levied, and one thousand eight hundred horse: forty thousand infantry of the allies, and four thousand four hundred horse: two hundred and twenty ships of three banks of oars, and twenty light galleys, were launched. It was then proposed to the people, "whether they willed and commanded that war should be declared against the people of Carthage;" and for the sake of that war a supplication was made through the city, and the gods were implored that the war which the Roman people had decreed might have a prosperous and fortunate issue. The forces were thus divided between the consuls. To Sempronius two legions were given, (each of these consisted of four thousand infantry and three hundred horse,) and sixteen thousand of the infantry of the allies, and one thousand eight hundred horse: one hundred and sixty ships of war, and twelve light galleys. With these land and sea forces Tiberius Sempronius was despatched to Sicily, in order to transport his army to Africa if the other consul should be able to prevent the Carthaginian from invading Italy. Fewer troops were given to Cornelius, because Lucius Manlius, the praetor, also had been sent with no weak force into Gaul. The number of ships in particular was reduced to Cornelius. Sixty of five banks of oars were assigned to him, (for they did not believe that the enemy would come by sea, or would fight after that mode of warfare,) and two Roman legions with their regular cavalry, and fourteen thousand of the infantry of the allies, with one thousand six hundred horse. The province of Gaul being not as yet exposed to the Carthaginian invasion, had, in the same year, two Roman legions, ten thousand allied infantry, one thousand allied cavalry, and six hundred Roman.

These preparations having been thus made, in order that every thing that was proper might be done before they commenced war, they send Quintus Fabius, Marcus Livius, Lucius Aemilius, Caius Licinius, and Quintus Baebius, men of advanced years, as ambassadors into Africa, to inquire of the Carthaginians if Hannibal had laid siege to Saguntum by public authority; and if they should confess it, as it seemed probable they would, and defend it as done by public authority, to declare war against the people of Carthage. After the Romans arrived at Carthage, when an audience of the senate was given them, and Quintus Fabius had addressed no further inquiry than the one with which they had been charged, then one of the Carthaginians replied: "Even your former embassy, O Romans, was precipitate, when you demanded Hannibal to be given up, as attacking Saguntum on his own authority: but your present embassy, though so far milder in words, is in fact more severe. For then Hannibal was both accused, and required to be delivered up: now both a confession of wrong is exacted from us, and, as though we had confessed, restitution is immediately demanded. But I think that the question is not, whether Saguntum was attacked by private or public authority, but whether it was with right or wrong. For in the case of our citizen, the right of inquiry, whether he has acted by his own pleasure or ours, and the punishment also, belongs to us. The only dispute with you is, whether it was allowed to be done by the treaty. Since, therefore, it pleases you that a distinction should be made between what commanders do by public authority, and what on their own suggestion, there was a treaty between us made by the consul Lutatius; in which, though provision was made for the allies of both, there is no provision made for the Saguntines, for they were not as yet your allies. But in that treaty which was made with Hasdrubal, the Saguntines are excepted; against which I am going to say nothing but what I have learned from you. For you denied that you were bound by the treaty which Caius Lutatius the consul first made with us, because that it had neither been made by the authority of the senate nor the command of the people; and another treaty was therefore concluded anew by public authority. If your treaties do not bind you unless they are made by your authority and your commands, neither can the treaty of Hasdrubal, which he made without our knowledge, be binding on us. Cease, therefore, to make mention of Saguntum and the Iberus, and let your mind at length bring forth that with which it has long been in labour." Then the Roman, having formed a fold in his robe, said, "Here we bring to you peace and war; take which you please." On this speech they exclaimed no less fiercely in reply: "he might give which he chose;" and when he again, unfolding his robe, said "he gave war," they all answered that "they accepted it, and would maintain it with the same spirit with which they accepted it."

This direct inquiry and denunciation of war seemed more consistent with the dignity of the Roman people, both before and now, especially when Saguntum was destroyed, than to cavil in words about the obligation of treaties. For if it was a subject for a controversy of words, in what was the treaty of Hasdrubal to be compared with the former treaty of Lutatius, which was altered? Since in the treaty of Lutatius, was expressly added, "that it should only be held good if the people sanctioned it;" but in the treaty of Hasdrubal, neither was there any such exception; and that treaty during its life had been so established by the silence of so many years, that not even after the death of its author was any change made in it. Although even were they to abide by the former treaty, there had been sufficient provision made for the Saguntines by excepting the allies of both states; for neither was it added, "those who then were," nor "those who should afterwards be admitted." and since it is allowable to admit new allies, who could think it proper, either that no people should be received for any services into friendship? or that, being received under protection, they should not be defended? It was only stipulated, that the allies of the Carthaginians should not be excited to revolt, nor, revolting of their own accord, be received. The Roman ambassadors, according as they had been commanded at Rome, passed over from Carthage into Spain, in order to visit the nations, and either to allure them into an alliance, or dissuade them from joining the Carthaginians. They came first to the Bargusii, by whom having been received with welcome, because they were weary of the Carthaginian government, they excited many of the states beyond the Iberus to the desire of a revolution. Thence they came to the Volciani, whose reply being celebrated through Spain, dissuaded the other states from an alliance with the Romans; for thus the oldest member in their council made answer: "What sense of shame have ye, Romans, to ask of us that we should prefer your friendship to that of the Carthaginians, when you, their allies, betrayed the Saguntines with greater cruelty than that with which the Carthaginians, their enemies, destroyed them? There, methinks, you should look for allies, where the massacre of Saguntum is unknown. The ruins of Saguntum will remain a warning as melancholy as memorable to the states of Spain, that no one should confide in the faith or alliance of Rome." Having been then commanded to depart immediately from the territory of the Volciani, they afterwards received no kinder words from any of the councils of Spain: they therefore pass into Gaul, after having gone about through Spain to no purpose.

Among the Gauls a new and alarming spectacle was seen, by reason of their coming (such is the custom of the nation) in arms to the assembly. When, extolling in their discourse the renown and valour of the Roman people, and the wide extent of their empire, they had requested that they would refuse a passage through their territory and cities to the Carthaginian invading Italy; such laughter and yelling is said to have arisen, that the youths were with difficulty composed to order by the magistrates and old men. So absurd and shameless did the request seem, to propose that the Gauls, rather than suffer the war to pass on to Italy, should turn it upon themselves and expose their own lands to be laid waste instead of those of others. When the tumult was at length allayed, answer was returned to the ambassadors, "that they had neither experienced good from the Romans, nor wrong from the Carthaginians, on account of which they should either take up arms in behalf of the Romans, or against the Cathaginians. On the contrary, they had heard that men of their nation had been driven from the lands and confines of Italy by the Roman people, that they had to pay a tribute, and suffered other indignities." Nearly the same was said and heard in the other assemblies of Gaul; nor did they hear any thing friendly or pacific before they came to Marseilles. There, every thing found out by the care and fidelity of the allies was made known to them--"that the minds of the Gauls had been already prepossessed by Hannibal, but that not even by him would that nation be found very tractable, (so fierce and untameable are their dispositions,) unless the affections of the chiefs should every now and then be conciliated with gold, of which that people are most covetous." Having thus gone round through the tribes of Spain and Gaul, the ambassadors return to Rome not long after the consuls had set out for their provinces. They found the whole city on tiptoe in expectation of war, the report being sufficiently confirmed, that the Carthaginians had already passed the Iberus.

Hannibal, after the taking of Saguntum, had retired to New Carthage into winter quarters; and there, having heard what had been done and decreed at Rome and Carthage, and that he was not only the leader, but also the cause of the war, after having divided and sold the remains of the plunder, thinking there ought to be no longer delay, he calls together and thus addresses his soldiers of the Spanish race: "I believe, tribes, that even you yourselves perceive that, all the tribes of Spain having been reduced to peace, we must either conclude our campaigns and disband our armies, or transfer the war into other regions: for thus these nations will flourish amid the blessings not only of peace, but also of victory, if we seek from other countries spoils and renown. Since, therefore, a campaign far from home soon awaits you, and it is uncertain when you shall again see your homes, and all that is there dear to you, if any one of you wishes to visit his friends, I grant him leave of absence. I give you orders to be here at the beginning of spring, that, with the good assistance of the gods, we may enter on a war which will prove one of great glory and spoil." This power of visiting their homes, voluntarily offered, was acceptable to almost all, already longing to see their friends, and foreseeing in future a still longer absence Repose through the whole season of winter, between toils already undergone and those that were soon to be endured, repaired the vigour of their bodies and minds to encounter all difficulties afresh. At the beginning of spring they assembled according to command. Hannibal, when he had reviewed the auxiliaries of all the nations, having gone to Gades, performs his vows to Hercules; and binds himself by new vows, provided his other projects should have a prosperous issue. Then dividing his care at the same time between the offensive and defensive operations of the war, lest while he was advancing on Italy by a land journey through Spain and Gaul, Africa should be unprotected and exposed to the Romans from Sicily, he resolved to strengthen it with a powerful force. For this purpose he requested a reinforcement from Africa, chiefly of light-armed spearmen, in order that the Africans might serve in Spain, and the Spaniards in Africa, each likely to be a better soldier at a distance from home, as if bound by mutual pledges. He sent into Africa thirteen thousand eight hundred and fifty targetteers, eight hundred and seventy Balearic slingers, and one thousand two hundred horsemen, composed of various nations. He orders these forces partly to be used as a garrison for Carthage and partly to be distributed through Africa: at the same time having sent commissaries into the different states, he orders four thousand chosen youth whom they had levied to be conducted to Carthage, both as a garrison and as hostages.

Thinking also that Spain ought not to be neglected (and the less because he was aware that it had been traversed by the Roman ambassadors, to influence the minds of the chiefs,) he assigns that province to his brother Hasdrubal, a man of active spirit, and strengthens him chiefly with African troops: eleven thousand eight hundred and fifty African infantry, three hundred Ligurians, and five hundred Balearians. To these forces of infantry were added four hundred horsemen of the Libyphoenicians, a mixed race of Carthaginians and Africans; of the Numidians and Moors, who border on the ocean, to the number of one thousand eight hundred, and a small band of Ilergetes from Spain, amounting to two hundred horse: and, that no description of land force might be wanting, fourteen elephants. A fleet was given him besides to defend the sea-coast, (because it might be supposed that the Romans would then fight in the same mode of warfare by which they had formerly prevailed,) fifty quinqueremes, two quadriremes, five triremes: but only thirty-two quinqueremes and five triremes were properly fitted out and manned with rowers. From Gades he returned to the winter quarters of the army at Carthage; and thence setting out, he led his forces by the city Etovissa to the Iberus and the sea-coast. There, it is reported, a youth of divine aspect was seen by him in his sleep, who said, "that he was sent by Jupiter as the guide of Hannibal into Italy, and that he should, therefore, follow him, nor in any direction turn his eyes away from him." At first he followed in terror, looking no where, either around or behind: afterwards, through the curiosity of the human mind, when he revolved in his mind what that could be on which he was forbidden to look back, he could not restrain his eyes; then he beheld behind him a serpent of wonderful size moving along with an immense destruction of trees and bushes, and after it a cloud following with thunderings from the skies; and that then inquiring "what was that great commotion, and what the cause of the prodigy," he heard in reply: "That it was the devastation of Italy: that he should continue to advance forward, nor inquire further, but suffer the fates to remain in obscurity."

Cheered by this vision, he transported his forces in three divisions across the Iberus, having sent emissaries before him to conciliate by gifts the minds of the Gauls, in the quarter through which his army was to be led, and to examine the passes of the Alps. He led ninety thousand infantry and twelve thousand cavalry across the Iberus. He then subdued the Ilergetes, the Bargusii, the Ausetani, and that part of Lacetania which lies at the foot of the Pyrenaean mountains; and he placed Hanno in command over all this district, that the narrow gorges which connect Spain with Gaul might be under his power. Ten thousand infantry, and a thousand cavalry, were given to Hanno for the defence of the country he was to occupy. After the army began to march through the passes of the Pyrenees, and a more certain rumour of the Roman war spread through the barbarians, three thousand of the Carpetanian infantry turned back: it clearly appeared that they were not so much swayed by the prospect of the war as by the length of the journey and the insuperable passage of the Alps. Hannibal, because it was hazardous to recall or detain them by force, lest the fierce minds of the rest might also be irritated, sent home above seven thousand men, whom also he had observed to be annoyed with the service, pretending that the Carpetani had also been dismissed by him.

Then, lest delay and ease might unsettle their minds, he crosses the Pyrenees with the rest of his forces, and pitches his camp at the town Illiberis. The Gauls, though they had heard that the war was directed against Italy, yet because there was a report that the Spaniards on the other side of the Pyrenees had been reduced by force, and that strong forces had been imposed on them, being roused to arms through the fear of slavery, assembled certain tribes at Ruscino. When this was announced to Hannibal, he, having more fear of the delay than of the war, sent envoys to say to their princes, "that he wished to confer with them; and that they should either come nearer to Illiberis, or that he would proceed to Ruscino, that their meeting might be facilitated by vicinity: for that he would either be happy to receive them into his camp, or would himself without hesitation come to them: since he had entered Gaul as a friend, and not as an enemy, and would not draw the sword, if the Gauls did not force him, before he came to Italy." These proposals, indeed, were made by his messengers. But when the princes of the Gauls, having immediately moved their camp to Illiberis, came without reluctance to the Carthaginian, being won by his presents, they suffered his army to pass through their territories, by the town of Ruscino, without any molestation.

In the mean time no further intelligence had been brought into Italy to Rome by the ambassadors of Marseilles than that Hannibal had passed the Iberus; when the Boii asked if he had already passed the Alps, revolted after instigating the Insubrians; not so much through their ancient resentment towards the Roman people, as on account of their having felt aggrieved that the colonies of Placentia and Cremona had been lately planted in the Gallic territory about the Po. Having therefore, suddenly taken up arms, and made an attack on that very territory, they created so much of terror and tumult, that not only the rustic population, but even the Roman triumvirs, Caius Lutatius, Caius Servilius, and Titus Annius, who had come to assign the lands, distrusting the walls of Placentia, fled to Mutina. About the name of Luttius there is no doubt: in place of Caius Servilius and Titus Annius, some annals have Quintus Acilius and Caius Herenrius; others, Publius Cornelius Asina and Caius Papirius Maso. This point is also uncertain, whether the ambassadors went to expostulate to the Boii suffered violence, or whether an attack was made on the triumvirs while measuring out the lands. While they were shut up in Mutina, and a people unskilled in the arts of besieging towns, and, at the same time, most sluggish at military operations, lay inactive before the walls, which they had not touched, pretended proposals for a peace were set on foot; and the ambassadors, being invited out to a conference by the chiefs of the Gauls, are seized, not only contrary to the law of nations, but in violation of the faith which was pledged on that very occasion; the Gauls denying that they would set them free unless their hostages were restored to them. When this intelligence respecting the ambassadors was announced, and that Mutina and its garrison were in danger, Lucius Manlius, the praetor, inflamed with rage, led his army in haste to Mutina. There were then woods on both sides of the road, most of the country being uncultivated. There, having advanced without previously exploring his route, he fell suddenly into an ambuscade; and after much slaughter of his men, with difficulty made his way into the open plains. Here a camp was fortified, and because confidence was wanting to the Gauls to attack it, the spirit of the soldiers revived, although it was sufficiently evident that their strength was much clipped. The journey was then commenced anew; nor while the army was led in march through open tracts did the enemy appear: but, when the woods were again entered, then attacking the rear, amid great confusion and alarm of all, they slew eight hundred soldiers, and took six standards. There was an end to the Gauls of creating, and to the Romans of experiencing terror, when they escaped from the pathless and entangled thicket; then easily defending their march through the open ground, the Romans directed their course to Tanetum, a village near the Po; where, by a temporary fortification, and the supplies conveyed by the river, and also by the aid of the Brixian Gauls, they defended themselves against the daily increasing multitude of their enemies.

When the account of this sudden disturbance was brought to Rome, and the senators heard that the Punic had also been increased by a Gallic war, they order Caius Atilius, the praetor, to carry assistance to Manlius with one Roman legion and five thousand of the allies, enrolled in the late levy by the consul: who, without any contest, for the enemy had retired through fear, arrived at Tanetum. At the same time Publius Cornelius, a new legion having been levied in the room of that which was sent with the praetor, setting out from the city with sixty ships of war, by the coast of Etruria and Liguria, and then the mountains of the Salyes, arrived at Marseilles, and pitched his camp at the nearest mouth of the Rhone, (for the stream flows down to the sea divided into several channels,) scarcely as yet well believing that Hannibal had crossed the Pyrenaean mountains; whom when he ascertained to be also meditating the passage of the Rhone, uncertain in what place he might meet him, his soldiers not yet being sufficiently recovered from the tossing of the sea, he sends forward, in the mean time, three hundred chosen horses, with Massilian guides and Gallic auxiliaries, to explore all the country, and observe the enemy from a safe distance. Hannibal, the other states being pacified by fear or bribes, had now come into the territory of the Volcae, a powerful nation. They, indeed, dwell on both sides of the Rhone: but doubting that the Carthaginian could be driven from the hither bank, in order that they might have the river as a defence, having transported almost all their effects across the Rhone, occupied in arms the farther bank of the river. Hannibal, by means of presents, persuades the other inhabitants of the river-side, and some even of the Volcae themselves, whom their homes had detained, to collect from every quarter and build ships; and they at the same time themselves desired that the army should be transported, and their country relieved, as soon as possible, from the vast multitude of men that burthened it. A great number, therefore, of ships and boats rudely formed for the neighbouring passages, were collected together; and the Gauls, first beginning the plan, hollowed out some new ones from single trees; and then the soldiers themselves, at once induced by the plenty of materials and the easiness of the work, hastily formed shapeless hulks, in which they could transport themselves and their baggage, caring about nothing else, provided they could float and contain their burthen.

And now, when all things were sufficiently prepared for crossing, the enemy over against them occupying the whole bank, horse and foot, deterred them. In order to dislodge them, Hannibal orders Hanno, the son of Bomilcar, at the first watch of the night, to proceed with a part of the forces, principally Spanish, one day's journey up the river; and having crossed it where he might first be able, as secretly as possible, to lead round his forces, that when the occasion required he might attack the enemy in the rear. The Gauls, given him as guides for the purpose, inform him that about twenty-five miles from thence, the river spreading round a small island, broader where it was divided, and therefore with a shallower channel, presented a passage. At this place timber was quickly cut down and rafts formed, on which men, horses, and other burthens might be conveyed over. The Spaniards, without making any difficulty, having put their clothes in bags of leather, and themselves leaning on their bucklers placed beneath them, swam across the river. And the rest of the army, after passing on the rafts joined together, and pitching their camp near the river, being fatigued by the journey of the night and the labour of the work, are refreshed by the rest of one day, their leader being anxious to execute his design at a proper season. Setting out next day from this place, they signify by raising a smoke that they had crossed, and were not far distant; which when Hannibal understood, that he might not be wanting on the opportunity, he gives the signal for passing. The infantry already had the boats prepared and fitted; a line of ships higher up transporting the horsemen for the most part near their horses swimming beside them, in order to break the force of the current, rendered the water smooth to the boats crossing below. A great part of the horses were led across swimming, held by bridles from the stern, except those which they put on board saddled and bridled, in order that they might be ready to be used by the rider the moment he disembarked on the strand.

The Gauls run down to the bank to meet them with various whoopings and songs, according to their custom, shaking their shields above their heads, and brandishing their weapons in their right hands, although such a multitude of ships in front of them alarmed them, together with the loud roaring of the river, and the mingled clamours of the sailors and soldiers, both those who were striving to break through the force of the current, and those who from the other bank were encouraging their comrades on their passage. While sufficiently dismayed by this tumult in front, more terrifying shouts from behind assailed them, their camp having been taken by Hanno; presently he himself came up, and a twofold terror encompassed them, both such a multitude of armed men landing from the ships, and this unexpected army pressing on their rear. When the Gauls, having made a prompt and bold effort to force the enemy, were themselves repulsed, they break through where a way seemed most open, and fly in consternation to their villages around. Hannibal, now despising these tumultuary onsets of the Gauls, having transported the rest of his forces at leisure, pitches his camp. I believe that there were various plans for transporting the elephants; at least there are various accounts of the way in which it was done. Some relate, that after the elephants were assembled together on the bank, the fiercest of them being provoked by his keeper, pursued him as he swam across the water, to which he had run for refuge, and drew after him the rest of the herd; the mere force of the stream hurrying them to the other bank, when the bottom had failed each, fearful of the depth. But there is more reason to believe that they were conveyed across on rafts; which plan, as it must have appeared the safer before execution, is after it the more entitled to credit. They extended from the bank into the river one raft two hundred feet long and fifty broad, which, fastened higher up by several strong cables to the bank, that it might not be carried down by the stream they covered, like a bridge, with earth thrown upon it, so that the beasts might tread upon it without fear, as over solid ground. Another raft equally broad and a hundred feet long, fit for crossing the river, was joined to this first; and when the elephants, driven along the stationary raft as along a road had passed, the females leading the way, on to the smaller raft which was joined to it, the lashings, by which it was slightly fastened, being immediately let go, it was drawn by some light boats to the opposite side. The first having been thus landed, the rest were then returned for and carried across. They gave no signs of alarm whatever while they were driven along as it were on a continuous bridge. The first fear was, when, the raft being loosed from the rest, they were hurried into the deep. Then pressing together, as those at the edges drew back from the water, they produced some disorder, till mere terror, when they saw water all around, produced quiet. Some, indeed, becoming infuriated, fell into the river; but, steadied by their own weight, having thrown off their riders, and seeking step by step the shallows, they escaped to the shore.

Whilst the elephants were conveyed over, Hannibal, in the mean time, had sent five hundred Numidian horsemen towards the camp of the Romans, to observe where and how numerous their forces were, and what they were designing. The three hundred Roman horsemen sent, as was before said, from the mouth of the Rhone, meet this band of cavalry; and a more furious engagement than could be expected from the number of the combatants takes place. For, besides many wounds, the loss on both sides was also nearly equal: and the flight and dismay of the Numidians gave victory to the Romans, now exceedingly fatigued. There fell of the conquerors one hundred and sixty, not all Romans, but partly Gauls: of the vanquished more than two hundred. This commencement, and at the same time omen of the war, as it portended to the Romans a prosperous issue of the whole, so did it also the success of a doubtful and by no means bloodless contest. When, after the action had thus occurred, his own men returned to each general, Scipio could adopt no fixed plan of proceeding, except that he should form his measures from the plans and undertakings of the enemy: and Hannibal, uncertain whether he should pursue the march he had commenced into Italy, or fight with the Roman army which had first presented itself, the arrival of ambassadors from the Boii, and of a petty prince called Magalus, diverted from an immediate engagement; who, declaring that they would be the guides of his journey and the companions of his dangers, gave it as their opinion, that Italy ought to be attacked with the entire force of the war, his strength having been no where previously impaired. The troops indeed feared the enemy, the remembrance of the former war not being yet obliterated; but much more did they dread the immense journey and the Alps, a thing formidable by report, particularly to the inexperienced.

Hannibal, therefore, when his own resolution was fixed to proceed in his course and advance on Italy, having summoned an assembly, works upon the minds of the soldiers in various ways, by reproof and exhortation. He said, that "he wondered what sudden fear had seized breasts ever before undismayed: that through so many years they had made their campaigns with conquest; nor had departed from Spain before all the nations and countries which two opposite seas embrace, were subjected to the Carthaginians. That then, indignant that the Romans demanded those, whosoever had besieged Saguntum, to be delivered up to them, as on account of a crime, they had passed the Iberus to blot out the name of the Romans, and to emancipate the world. That then the way seemed long to no one, though they were pursuing it from the setting to the rising of the sun. That now, when they saw by far the greater part of their journey accomplished, the passes of the Pyrenees surmounted, amid the most ferocious nations, the Rhone, that mighty river, crossed, in spite of the opposition of so many thousand Gauls, the fury of the river itself having been overcome, when they had the Alps in sight, the other side of which was Italy, should they halt through weariness at the very gates of the enemy, imagining the Alps to be--what else than lofty mountains? That supposing them to be higher than the summits of the Pyrenees, assuredly no part of the earth reached the sky, nor was insurmountable by mankind. The Alps in fact were inhabited and cultivated;--produced and supported living beings. Were they passable by a few men and impassable to armies? That those very ambassadors whom they saw before them had not crossed the Alps borne aloft through the air on wings; neither were their ancestors indeed natives of the soil, but settling in Italy from foreign countries, had often as emigrants safely crossed these very Alps in immense bodies, with their wives and children. To the armed soldier, carrying nothing with him but the instruments of war, what in reality was impervious or insurmountable? That Saguntum might be taken, what dangers, what toils were for eight months undergone! Now, when their aim was Rome, the capital of the world, could any thing appear so dangerous or difficult as to delay their undertaking? That the Gauls had formerly gained possession of that very country which the Carthaginian despairs of being able to approach. That they must, therefore, either yield in spirit and valour to that nation which they had so often during those times overcome; or look forward, as the end of their journey, to the plain which spreads between the Tiber and the walls of Rome."

He orders them, roused by these exhortations, to refresh themselves and prepare for the journey. Next day, proceeding upward along the bank of the Rhone, he makes for the inland part of Gaul: not because it was the more direct route to the Alps, but believing that the farther he retired from the sea, the Romans would be less in his way; with whom, before he arrived in Italy, he had no intention of engaging. After four days' march he came to the Island: there the streams of the Arar and the Rhone, flowing down from different branches of the Alps, after embracing a pretty large tract of country, flow into one. The name of the Island is given to the plains that lie between them. The Allobroges dwell near, a nation even in those days inferior to none in Gaul in power and fame. They were at that time at variance. Two brothers were contending for the sovereignty. The elder, named Brancus, who had before been king, was driven out by his younger brother and a party of the younger men, who, inferior in right, had more of power. When the decision of this quarrel was most opportunely referred to Hannibal, being appointed arbitrator of the kingdom, he restored the sovereignty to the elder, because such had been the opinion of the senate and the chief men. In return for this service, he was assisted with a supply of provisions, and plenty of all necessaries, particularly clothing, which the Alps, notorious for extreme cold, rendered necessary to be prepared. After composing the dissensions of the Allobroges, when he now was proceeding to the Alps, he directed his course thither, not by the straight road, but turned to the left into the country of the Tricastini, thence by the extreme boundary of the territory of the Vocontii he proceeded to the Tricorii; his way not being any where obstructed till he came to the river Druentia. This stream, also arising amid the Alps, is by far the most difficult to pass of all the rivers in Gaul; for though it rolls down an immense body of water, yet it does not admit of ships; because, being restrained by no banks, and flowing in several and not always the same channels, and continually forming new shallows and new whirlpools, (on which account the passage is also uncertain to a person on foot,) and rolling down besides gravelly stones, it affords no firm or safe passage to those who enter it; and having been at that time swollen by showers, it created great disorder among the soldiers as they crossed, when, in addition to other difficulties, they were of themselves confused by their own hurry and uncertain shouts.

Publius Cornelius the consul, about three days after Hannibal moved from the bank of the Rhone, had come to the camp of the enemy, with his army drawn up in square, intending to make no delay in fighting: but when he saw the fortifications deserted, and that he could not easily come up with them so far in advance before him, he returned to the sea and his fleet, in order more easily and safely to encounter Hannibal when descending from the Alps. But that Spain, the province which he had obtained by lot, might not be destitute of Roman auxiliaries, he sent his brother Cneius Scipio with the principal part of his forces against Hasdrubal, not only to defend the old allies and conciliate new, but also to drive Hasdrubal out of Spain. He himself, with a very small force, returned to Genoa, intending to defend Italy with the army which was around the Po. From the Druentia, by a road that lay principally through plains, Hannibal arrived at the Alps without molestation from the Gauls that inhabit those regions. Then, though the scene had been previously anticipated from report, (by which uncertainties are wont to be exaggerated,) yet the height of the mountains when viewed so near, and the snows almost mingling with the sky, the shapeless huts situated on the cliffs, the cattle and beasts of burden withered by the cold, the men unshorn and wildly dressed, all things, animate and inanimate, stiffened with frost, and other objects more terrible to be seen than described, renewed their alarm. To them, marching up the first acclivities, the mountaineers appeared occupying the heights over head; who, if they had occupied the more concealed valleys, might, by rushing out suddenly to the attack, have occasioned great flight and havoc. Hannibal orders them to halt, and having sent forward Gauls to view the ground, when he found there was no passage that way, he pitches his camp in the widest valley he could find, among places all rugged and precipitous. Then, having learned from the same Gauls, when they had mixed in conversation with the mountaineers, from whom they differed little in language and manners, that the pass was only beset during the day, and that at night each withdrew to his own dwelling, he advanced at the dawn to the heights, as if designing openly and by day to force his way through the defile. The day then being passed in feigning a different attempt from that which was in preparation, when they had fortified the camp in the same place where they had halted, as soon as he perceived that the mountaineers had descended from the heights, and that the guards were withdrawn, having lighted for show a greater number of fires than was proportioned to the number that remained, and having left the baggage in the camp, with the cavalry and the principal part of the infantry, he himself with a party of light-armed, consisting of all the most courageous of his troops, rapidly cleared the defile, and took post on those very heights which the enemy had occupied.

At dawn of light the next day the camp broke up, and the rest of the army began to move forward. The mountaineers, on a signal being given, were now assembling from their forts to their usual station, when they suddenly behold part of the enemy overhanging them from above, in possession of their former position, and the others passing along the road. Both these objects, presented at the same time to the eye and the mind, made them stand motionless for a little while; but when they afterwards saw the confusion in the pass, and that the marching body was thrown into disorder by the tumult which itself created, principally from the horses being terrified, thinking that whatever terror they added would suffice for the destruction of the enemy, they scramble along the dangerous rocks, as being accustomed alike to pathless and circuitous ways. Then indeed the Carthaginians were opposed at once by the enemy and by the difficulties of the ground; and each striving to escape first from the danger, there was more fighting among themselves than with their opponents. The horses in particular created danger in the lines, which, being terrified by the discordant clamours which the groves and re-echoing valleys augmented, fell into confusion; and if by chance struck or wounded, they were so dismayed that they occasioned a great loss both of men and baggage of every description: and as the pass on both sides was broken and precipitous, this tumult threw many down to an immense depth, some even of the armed men; but the beasts of burden, with their loads, were rolled down like the fall of some vast fabric. Though these disasters were shocking to view, Hannibal however kept his place for a little, and kept his men together, lest he might augment the tumult and disorder; but afterwards, when he saw the line broken, and that there was danger that he should bring over his army, preserved to no purpose if deprived of their baggage, he hastened down from the higher ground; and though he had routed the enemy by the first onset alone, he at the same time increased the disorder in his own army: but that tumult was composed in a moment, after the roads were cleared by the flight of the mountaineers; and presently the whole army was conducted through, not only without being disturbed, but almost in silence. He then took a fortified place, which was the capital of that district, and the little villages that lay around it, and fed his army for three days with the corn and cattle he had taken; and during these three days, as the soldiers were neither obstructed by the mountaineers, who had been daunted by the first engagement, nor yet much by the ground, he made considerable way.

He then came to another state, abounding, for a mountainous country, with inhabitants; where he was nearly overcome, not by open war, but by his own arts of treachery and ambuscade. Some old men, governors of forts, came as deputies to the Carthaginian, professing, "that having been warned by the useful example of the calamities of others, they wished rather to experience the friendship than the hostilities of the Carthaginians: they would, therefore, obediently execute his commands, and begged that he would accept of a supply of provisions, guides of his march, and hostages for the sincerity of their promises." Hannibal, when he had answered them in a friendly manner, thinking that they should neither be rashly trusted nor yet rejected, lest if repulsed they might openly become enemies, having received the hostages whom they proffered, and made use of the provisions which they of their own accord brought down to the road, follows their guides, by no means as among a people with whom he was at peace, but with his line of march in close order. The elephants and cavalry formed the van of the marching body; he himself, examining every thing around, and intent on every circumstance, followed with the choicest of the infantry. When they came into a narrower pass, lying on one side beneath an overhanging eminence, the barbarians, rising at once on all sides from their ambush, assail them in front and rear, both at close quarters and from a distance, and roll down huge stones on the army. The most numerous body of men pressed on the rear; against whom the infantry, facing about and directing their attack, made it very obvious, that had not the rear of the army been well supported, a great loss must have been sustained in that pass. Even as it was they came to the extremity of danger, and almost to destruction: for while Hannibal hesitates to lead down his division into the defile, because, though he himself was a protection to the cavalry, lie had not in the same way left any aid to the infantry in the rear; the mountaineers, charging obliquely, and on having broken through the middle of the army, took possession of the road; and one night was spent by Hannibal without his cavalry and baggage.

Next day, the barbarians running in to the attack between (the two divisions) less vigorously, the forces were re-united, and the defile passed, not without loss, but yet with a greater destruction of beasts of burden than of men. From that time the mountaineers fell upon them in smaller parties, more like an attack of robbers than war, sometimes on the van, sometimes on the rear, according as the ground afforded them advantage, or stragglers advancing or loitering gave them an opportunity. Though the elephants were driven through steep and narrow roads with great loss of time, yet wherever they went they rendered the army safe from the enemy, because men unacquainted with such animals were afraid of approaching too nearly. On the ninth day they came to a summit of the Alps, chiefly through places trackless; and after many mistakes of their way, which were caused either by the treachery of the guides, or, when they were not trusted, by entering valleys at random, on their own conjectures of the route. For two days they remained encamped on the summit; and rest was given to the soldiers, exhausted with toil and fighting: and several beasts of burden, which had fallen down among the rocks, by following the track of the army arrived at the camp. A fall of snow, it being now the season of the setting of the constellation of the Pleiades, caused great fear to the soldiers, already worn out with weariness of so many hardships. On the standards being moved forward at daybreak, when the army proceeded slowly over all places entirely blocked up with snow, and languor and despair strongly appeared in the countenances of all, Hannibal, having advanced before the standards, and ordered the soldiers to halt on a certain eminence, whence there was a prospect far and wide, points out to them Italy and the plains of the Po, extending themselves beneath the Alpine mountains; and said "that they were now surmounting not only the ramparts of Italy, but also of the city of Rome; that the rest of the journey would be smooth and down-hill; that after one, or, at most, a second battle, they would have the citadel and capital of Italy in their power and possession." The army then began to advance, the enemy now making no attempts beyond petty thefts, as opportunity offered. But the journey proved much more difficult than it had been in the ascent, as the declivity of the Alps being generally shorter on the side of Italy is consequently steeper; for nearly all the road was precipitous, narrow, and slippery, so that neither those who made the least stumble could prevent themselves from falling, nor, when fallen, remain in the same place, but rolled, both men and beasts of burden, one upon another.

They then came to a rock much more narrow, and formed of such perpendicular ledges, that a light-armed soldier, carefully making the attempt, and clinging with his hands to the bushes and roots around, could with difficulty lower himself down. The ground, even before very steep by nature, had been broken by a recent falling away of the earth into a precipice of nearly a thousand feet in depth. Here when the cavalry had halted, as if at the end of their journey, it is announced to Hannibal, wondering what obstructed the march that the rock was impassable. Having then gone himself to view the place, it seemed clear to him that he must lead his army round it, by however great a circuit, through the pathless and untrodden regions around. But this route also proved impracticable; for while the new snow of a moderate depth remained on the old, which had not been removed, their footsteps were planted with ease as they walked upon the new snow, which was soft and not too deep; but when it was dissolved by the trampling of so many men and beasts of burden, they then walked on the bare ice below, and through the dirty fluid formed by the melting snow. Here there was a wretched struggle, both on account of the slippery ice not affording any hold to the step, and giving way beneath the foot more readily by reason of the slope; and whether they assisted themselves in rising by their hands or their knees, their supports themselves giving way, they would stumble again; nor were there any stumps or roots near; by pressing against which, one might with hand or foot support himself; so that they only floundered on the smooth ice and amid the melted snow. The beasts of burden sometimes also went into this lower ice by merely treading upon it, at others they broke it completely through, by the violence with which they struck in their hoofs in their struggling, so that most of them, as if taken in a trap, stuck in the hardened and deeply frozen ice.

At length, after the men and beasts of burden had been fatigued to no purpose, the camp was pitched on the summit, the ground being cleared for that purpose with great difficulty, so much snow was there to be dug out and carried away. The soldiers being then set to make a way down the cliff by which alone a passage could be effected, and it being necessary that they should cut through the rocks, having felled and lopped a number of large trees which grew around, they make a huge pile of timber; and as soon as a strong wind fit for exciting the flames arose, they set fire to it, and, pouring vinegar on the heated stones, they render them soft and crumbling. They then open a way with iron instruments through the rock thus heated by the fire, and soften its declivities by gentle windings, so that not only the beasts of burden, but also the elephants could be led down it. Four days were spent about this rock, the beasts nearly perishing through hunger: for the summits of the mountains are for the most part bare, and if there is any pasture the snows bury it. The lower parts contain valleys, and some sunny hills, and rivulets flowing beside woods, and scenes more worthy of the abode of man. There the beasts of burden were sent out to pasture, and rest given for three days to the men, fatigued with forming the passage: they then descended into the plains, the country and the dispositions of the inhabitants being now less rugged.

In this manner chiefly they came to Italy in the fifth month (as some authors relate) after leaving New Carthage, having crossed the Alps in fifteen days. What number of forces Hannibal had when he had passed into Italy is by no means agreed upon by authors. Those who state them at the highest, make mention of a hundred thousand foot and twenty thousand horse; those who state them at the lowest, of twenty thousand foot and six thousand horse. Lucius Cincius Alimentus, who relates that he was made prisoner by Hannibal, would influence me most as an authority, did he not confound the number by adding the Gauls and Ligurians. Including these, (who, it is more probable, flocked to him afterwards, and so some authors assert,) he says, that eighty thousand foot and ten thousand horse were brought into Italy; and that he had heard from Hannibal himself, that after crossing the Rhone he had lost thirty-six thousand men, and an immense number of horses, and other beasts of burden, among the Taurini, the next nation to the Gauls, as he descended into Italy. As this circumstance is agreed on by all, I am the more surprised that it should be doubtful by what road he crossed the Alps; and that it should commonly be believed that he passed over the Pennine mountain, and that thence the name was given to that ridge of the Alps. Coelius says, that he passed over the top of Mount Cremo; both which passes would have brought him, not to the Taurini, but through the Salasian mountaineers to the Libuan Gauls. Neither is it probable that these roads into Gaul were then open, especially once those which, lead to the Pennine mountain would have been unlocked up by nations half German; nor by Hercules (if this argument has weight with any one) do the Veragri, the inhabitants of this ridge, know of the name being given to these mountains from the passage of the Carthaginians, but from the divinity, whom the mountaineers style Penninus, worshipped on the highest summit.

Very opportunely for the commencement of his operations, a war had broken out with the Taurini, the nearest nation, against the Insubrians; but Hannibal could not put his troops under arms to assist either party, as they very chiefly felt the disorders they had before contracted, in remedying them; for ease after toil, plenty after want, and attention to their persons after dirt and filth, had variously affected their squalid and almost savage-looking bodies. This was the reason that Publius Cornelius, the consul, when he had arrived at Pisa with his fleet, hastened to the Po, though the troops he received from Manlius and Atilius were raw and disheartened by their late disgraces, in order that he might engage the enemy when not yet recruited. But when the consul came to Placentia, Hannibal had already moved from his quarters, and had taken by storm one city of the Taurini, the capital of the nation, because they did not come willingly into his alliance; and he would have gained over to him, not only from fear, but also from inclination, the Gauls who dwell beside the Po, had not the arrival of the consul suddenly checked them while watching for an opportunity of revolt. Hannibal at the same time moved from the Taurini, thinking that the Gauls, uncertain which side to choose, would follow him if present among them. The armies were now almost in sight of each other, and their leaders, though not at present sufficiently acquainted, yet met each other with a certain feeling of mutual admiration. For the name of Hannibal, even before the destruction of Saguntum, was very celebrated among the Romans; and Hannibal believed Scipio to be a superior man, from the very circumstance of his having been specially chosen to act as commander against himself. They had increased too their estimation of each other; Scipio, because, being left behind in Gaul, he had met Hannibal when he had crossed into Italy; Hannibal, by his daring attempt of crossing the Alps and by its accomplishment. Scipio, however, was the first to cross the Po, and having pitched his camp at the river Ticinus, he delivered the following oration for the sake of encouraging his soldiers before he led them out to form for battle:

"If, soldiers, I were leading out that army to battle which I had with me in Gaul, I should have thought it superfluous to address you; for of what use would it be to exhort either those horsemen who so gloriously vanquished the cavalry of the enemy at the river Rhone, or those legions with whom, pursuing this very enemy flying before us, I obtained in lieu of victory, a confession of superiority, shown by his retreat and refusal to fight? Now because that army, levied for the province of Spain, maintains the war under my auspices and the command of my brother Cneius Scipio, in the country where the senate and people of Rome wished him to serve, and since I, that you might have a consul for your leader against Hannibal and the Carthaginians, have offered myself voluntarily for this contest, few words are required to be addressed from a new commander to soldiers unacquainted with him. That you may not be ignorant of the nature of the war nor of the enemy, you have to fight, soldiers, with those whom in the former war you conquered both by land and sea; from whom you have exacted tribute for twenty years; from whom you hold Sicily and Sardinia, taken as the prizes of victory. In the present contest, therefore, you and they will have those feelings which are wont to belong to the victors and the vanquished. Nor are they now about to fight because they are daring, but because it is unavoidable; except you can believe that they who declined the engagement when their forces were entire, should have now gained more confidence when two-thirds of their infantry and cavalry have been lost in the passage of the Alps, and when almost greater numbers have perished than survive. Yes, they are few indeed, (some may say,) but they are vigorous in mind and body; men whose strength and power scarce any force may withstand. On the contrary, they are but the resemblances, nay, are rather the shadows of men; being worn out with hunger, cold, dirt, and filth, and bruised and enfeebled among stones and rocks. Besides all this, their joints are frost-bitten, their sinews stiffened with the snow, their limbs withered up by the frost, their armour battered and shivered, their horses lame and powerless. With such cavalry, with such infantry, you have to fight: you will not have enemies in reality, but rather their last remains. And I fear nothing more than that when you have fought Hannibal, the Alps may appear to have conquered him. But perhaps it was fitting that the gods themselves should, without any human aid, commence and carry forward a war with a leader and a people that violate the faith of treaties; and that we, who next to the gods have been injured, should finish the contest thus commenced and nearly completed."

"I do not fear lest any one should think that I say this ostentatiously for the sake of encouraging you, while in my own mind I am differently affected. I was at liberty to go with my army into Spain, my own province, whither I had already set out; where I should have had a brother as the bearer of my councils and my dangers, and Hasdrubal, instead of Hannibal, for my antagonist, and without question a less laborious war: nevertheless, as I sailed along the coast of Gaul, having landed on hearing of this enemy, and having sent forward the cavalry, I moved my camp to the Rhone. In a battle of cavalry, with which part of my forces the opportunity of engaging was afforded, I routed the enemy; and because I could not overtake by land his army of infantry, which was rapidly hurried away, as if in flight, having returned to the ships with all the speed I could, after compassing such an extent of sea and land, I have met him at the foot of the Alps. Whether do I appear, while declining the contest, to have fallen in unexpectedly with this dreaded foe, or encounter him in his track? to challenge him and drag him out to decide the contest? I am anxious to try whether the earth has suddenly, in these twenty years, sent forth a new race of Carthaginians, or whether these are the same who fought at the islands Aegates, and whom you permitted to defeat from Eryx, valued at eighteen denarii a head; and whether this Hannibal be, as he himself gives out, the rival of the expeditions of Hercules, or one left by his father the tributary and taxed subject and slave of the Roman people; who, did not his guilt at Saguntum drive him to frenzy, would certainly reflect, if not upon his conquered country, at least on his family, and his father, and the treaties written by the hand of Hamilcar; who, at the command of our consul, withdrew the garrison from Eryx; who, indignant and grieving, submitted to the harsh conditions imposed on the conquered Carthaginians; who agreed to depart from Sicily, and pay tribute to the Roman people. I would, therefore, have you fight, soldiers, not only with that spirit with which you are wont to encounter other enemies, but with a certain indignation and resentment, as if you saw your slaves suddenly taking up arms against you. We might have killed them when shut up in Eryx by hunger, the most dreadful of human tortures; we might have carried over our victorious fleet to Africa, and in a few days have destroyed Carthage without any opposition. We granted pardon to their prayers; we released them from the blockade; we made peace with them when conquered; and we afterwards considered them under our protection when they were oppressed by the African war. In return for these benefits, they come under the conduct of a furious youth to attack our country. And I wish that the contest on your side was for glory, and not for safety: it is not about the possession of Sicily and Sardinia, concerning which the dispute was formerly, but for Italy, that you must fight: nor is there another army behind, which, if we should not conquer, can resist the enemy; nor are there other Alps, during the passage of which fresh forces may be procured: here, soldiers, we must make our stand, as if we fought before the walls of Rome. Let every one consider that he defends with his arms not only his own person, but his wife and young children: nor let him only entertain domestic cares and anxieties, but at the same time let him revolve in his mind, that the senate and people of Rome now anxiously regard our efforts; and that according as our strength and valour shall be, such henceforward will be the fortune of that city and of the Roman empire."

Thus the consul addressed the Romans. Hannibal, thinking that his soldiers ought to be roused by deeds rather than by words, having drawn his army around for the spectacle, placed in their midst the captive mountaineers in fetters; and after Gallic arms had been thrown at their feet, he ordered the interpreter to ask, "whether any among them, on condition of being released from chains, and receiving, if victorious, armour and a horse, was willing to combat with the sword?" When they all, to a man, demanded the combat and the sword, and lots were cast into the urn for that purpose, each wished himself the person whom fortune might select for the contest. As the lot of each man came out, eager and exulting with joy amidst the congratulations of his comrades, and dancing after the national custom, he hastily snatched up the arms: but when they fought, such was the state of feeling, not only among their companions in the same circumstances, but among the spectators in general, that the fortune of those who conquered was not praised more than that of those who died bravely.

When he had dismissed the soldiers, thus affected after viewing several pairs of combatants, having then summoned an assembly, he is said to have addressed them in these terms: "If, soldiers, you shall by and by, in judging of your own fortune, preserve the same feelings which you experienced a little before in the example of the fate of others, we have already conquered; for neither was that merely a spectacle, but as it were a certain representation of your condition. And I know not whether fortune has not thrown around you still stronger chains and more urgent necessities than around your captives. On the right and left two seas enclose you, without your possessing a single ship even for escape. The river Po around you, the Po larger and more impetuous than the Rhone, the Alps behind, scarcely passed by you when fresh and vigorous, hem you in. Here, soldiers, where you have first met the enemy, you must conquer or die; and the same fortune which has imposed the necessity of fighting, holds out to you, if victorious, rewards, than which men are not wont to desire greater, even from the immortal gods. If we were only about to recover by our valour Sicily and Sardinia, wrested from our fathers, the recompence would be sufficiently ample; but whatever, acquired and amassed by so many triumphs, the Romans possess, all, with its masters themselves, will become yours. To gain this rich reward, hasten, then, and seize your arms with the favour of the gods. Long enough in pursuing cattle among the desert mountains of Lusitania and Celtiberia, you have seen no emolument from so many toils and dangers: it is time to make rich and profitable campaigns, and to gain the great reward of your labours, after having accomplished such a length of journey over so many mountains and rivers, and so many nations in arms. Here fortune has granted you the termination of your labours; here she will bestow a reward worthy of the service you have undergone. Nor, in proportion as the war is great in name, ought you to consider that the victory will be difficult. A despised enemy has often maintained a sanguinary contest, and renowned states and kings been conquered by a very slight effort. For, setting aside only the splendour of the Roman name, what remains in which they can be compared to you? To pass over in silence your service for twenty years, distinguished by such valour and success you have made your way to this place from the pillars of Hercules, from the ocean, and the remotest limits of the world advancing victorious through so many of the fiercest nations of Gaul and Spain: you will fight with a raw army, which this very summer was beaten, conquered, and surrounded by the Gauls, as yet unknown to its general, and ignorant of him. Shall I compare myself, almost born, and certainly bred in the tent of my father, that most illustrious commander, myself the subjugator of Spain and Gaul, the conqueror too not only of the Alpine nations, but what is much more, of the Alps themselves, with this six months' general, the deserter of his army? To whom, if any one, having taken away their standards, should show to-day the Carthaginians and Romans, I am sure that he would not know of which army he was consul. I do not regard it, soldiers, as of small account, that there is not a man among you before whose eyes I have not often achieved some military exploit; and to whom, in like manner, I the spectator and witness of his valour, could not recount his own gallant deeds, particularized by time and place. With soldiers who have a thousand times received my praises and gifts, I, who was the pupil of you all before I became your commander, will march out in battle-array against those who are unknown to and ignorant of each other."

"On whatever side I turn my eyes I see nothing but what is full of courage and energy; a veteran infantry; calvary, both those with and those without the bridle, composed of the most gallant nations, you our most faithful and valiant allies, you Carthaginians, who are about to fight as well for the sake of your country as from the justest resentment. We are the assailants in the war, and descend into Italy with hostile standards, about to engage so much more boldly and bravely than the foe, as the confidence and courage of the assailant are greater than those of him who is defensive. Besides suffering, injury and indignity inflame and excite our minds: they first demanded me your leader for punishment, and then all of you who had laid siege to Saguntum; and had we been given up they would have visited us with the severest tortures. That most cruel and haughty nation considers every thing its own, and at its own disposal; it thinks it right that it should regulate with whom we are to have war, with whom peace: it circumscribes and shuts us up by the boundaries of mountains and rivers, which we must not pass; and then does not adhere to those boundaries which it appointed. Pass not the Iberus; have nothing to do with the Saguntines. Saguntum is on the Iberus; you must not move a step in any direction. Is it a small thing that you take away my most ancient provinces Sicily and Sardinia? will you take Spain also? and should I withdraw thence, you will cross over into Africa--will cross, did I say? they have sent the two consuls of this year one to Africa, the other to Spain: there is nothing left to us in any quarter, except what we can assert to ourselves by arms. Those may be cowards and dastards who have something to look back upon; whom, flying through safe and unmolested roads, their own lands and their own country will receive: there is a necessity for you to be brave; and since all between victory and death is broken off from you by inevitable despair, either to conquer, or, if fortune should waver, to meet death rather in battle than flight. If this be well fixed and determined in the minds of you all, I will repeat, you have already conquered: no stronger incentive to victory has been given to man by the immortal gods."

When the minds of the soldiers on both sides had been animated to the contest by these exhortations, the Romans throw a bridge over the Ticinus, and, for the sake of defending the bridge, erect a fort on it. The Carthaginian, while the Romans were engaged in this work, sends Maharbal with a squadron of five hundred Numidian horse, to lay waste the territories of the allies of the Roman people. He orders that the Gauls should be spared as much as possible, and the minds of their chiefs be instigated to a revolt. When the bridge was finished, the Roman army being led across into the territory of the Insubrians, took up its station five miles from Victumviae. At this place Hannibal lay encamped; and having quickly recalled Maharbal and the cavalry, when he perceived that a battle was approaching, thinking that in exhorting the soldiers enough could never be spoken or addressed by way of admonition, he announces to them, when summoned to an assembly, stated rewards, in expectation of which they might fight. He promised, "that he would give them land in Italy, Africa, Spain, where each man might choose, exempt from all burdens to the person who received it, and to his children: if any one preferred money to land, he would satisfy him in silver; if any of the allies wished to become citizens of Carthage, he would grant them permission; if others chose rather to return home, he would lend his endeavours that they should not wish the situation of any one of their countrymen exchanged for their own." To the slaves also who followed their masters he promised freedom, and that he would give two slaves in place of each of them to their masters. And that they might know that these promises were certain, holding in his left hand a lamb, and in his right a flint, having prayed to Jupiter and the other gods, that, if he was false to his word, they would thus slay him as he slew the lamb; after the prayer he broke the skull of the sheep with the stone. Then in truth all, receiving as it were the gods as sureties, each for the fulfilment of his own hopes, and thinking that the only delay in obtaining the object of their wishes arose from their not yet being engaged, with one mind and one voice demanded the battle.

By no means so great an alacrity prevailed among the Romans, who, in addition to other causes, were also alarmed by recent prodigies; for both a wolf had entered the camp, and having torn those who met him, had escaped unhurt; and a swarm of bees had settled on a tree overhanging the general's tent. After these prodigies were expiated, Scipio having set out with his cavalry and light-armed spearmen towards the camp of the enemy, to observe from a near point their forces, how numerous, and of what description they were, falls in with Hannibal, who had himself also advanced with his cavalry to explore the circumjacent country: neither at first perceived the other, but the dust arising from the trampling of so many men and horses soon gave the signal of approaching enemies. Both armies halted, and were preparing themselves for battle. Scipio places his spearmen and Gallic cavalry in front; the Romans and what force of allies he had with him, in reserve. Hannibal receives the horsemen who rode with the rein in the centre, and strengthens his wings with Numidians. When the shout was scarcely raised, the spearmen fled among the reserve to the second line: there was then a contest of the cavalry, for some time doubtful; but afterwards, on account of the foot soldiers, who were intermingled, causing confusion among the horses, many of the riders falling off from their horses, or leaping down where they saw their friends surrounded and hard pressed, the battle for the most part came to be fought on foot; until the Numidians, who were in the wings, having made a small circuit, showed themselves on the rear. That alarm dismayed the Romans, and the wound of the consul, and the danger to his life, warded off by the interposition of his son, then just arriving at the age of puberty, augmented their fears. This youth will be found to be the same to whom the glory of finishing this war belongs, and to whom the name of Africanus was given, on account of his splendid victory over Hannibal and the Carthaginians. The flight, however, of the spearmen, whom the Numidians attacked first, was the most disorderly. The rest of the cavalry, in a close body, protecting, not only with their arms, but also with their bodies, the consul, whom they had received into the midst of them, brought him back to the camp without any where giving way in disorder or precipitation. Coelius attributes the honour of saving the consul to a slave, by nation a Ligurian. I indeed should rather wish that the account about the son was true, which also most authors have transmitted, and the report of which has generally obtained credit.

This was the first battle with Hannibal; from which it clearly appeared that the Carthaginian was superior in cavalry; and on that account, that open plains, such as lie between the Po and the Alps, were not suited to the Romans for carrying on the war. On the following night, therefore, the soldiers being ordered to prepare their baggage in silence, the camp broke up from the Ticinus, and they hastened to the Po, in order that the rafts by which the consul had formed a bridge over the river, being not yet loosened, he might lead his forces across without disturbance or pursuit of the enemy. They arrived at Placentia before Hannibal had ascertained that they had set out from the Ticinus. He took, however, six hundred of those who loitered on the farther bank, who were slowly unfastening the raft; but he was not able to pass the bridge, as the whole raft floated down the stream as soon as the ends were unfastened. Coelius relates that Mago, with the cavalry and Spanish infantry, immediately swam the river; and that Hannibal himself led the army across by fords higher up the Po, the elephants being opposed to the stream in a line to break the force of the current. These accounts can scarcely gain credit with those who are acquainted with that river; for it is neither probable that the cavalry could bear up against the great violence of the stream, without losing their arms or horses, even supposing that inflated bags of leather had transported all the Spaniards; and the fords of the Po, by which an army encumbered with baggage could pass, must have been sought by a circuit of many days' march. Those authors are more credited by me, who relate that in the course of two days a place was with difficulty found fit for forming a bridge of rafts across the river, and that by this way the light-armed Spanish cavalry was sent forward with Mago. Whilst Hannibal, delaying beside the river to give audience to the embassies of the Gauls, conveys over the heavy-armed forces of infantry, in the mean time Mago and the cavalry proceed towards the enemy at Placentia one day's journey after crossing the river. Hannibal, a few days after, fortified his camp six miles from Placentia, and on the following day, having drawn up his line of battle in sight of the enemy, gave them an opportunity of fighting.

On the following night a slaughter was made in the Roman camp by the auxiliary Gauls, which appeared greater from the tumult than it proved in reality. Two thousand infantry and two hundred horse, having killed the guards at the gates, desert to Hannibal; whom the Carthaginians having addressed kindly, and excited by the hope of great rewards, sent each to several states to gain over the minds of their countrymen. Scipio, thinking that that slaughter was a signal for the revolt of all the Gauls, and that, contaminated with the guilt of that affair, they would rush to arms as if a frenzy had been sent among them, though he was still suffering severely from his wound, yet setting out for the river Trebia at the fourth watch of the following night with his army in silence, he removes his camp to higher ground and hills more embarrassing to the cavalry. He escaped observation less than at the Ticinus: and Hannibal, having despatched first the Numidians and then all the cavalry, would have thrown the rear at least into great confusion, had not the Numidians, through anxiety for booty, turned aside into the deserted Roman camp. There whilst, closely examining every part of the camp, they waste time, with no sufficient reward for the delay, the enemy escaped out of their hands; and when they saw the Romans already across the Trebia, and measuring out their camp, they kill a few of the loiterers intercepted on that side of the river. Scipio being unable to endure any longer the irritation of his wound, caused by the roughness of the road, and thinking that he ought to wait for his colleague, (for he had now heard that he was recalled from Sicily,) fortified a space of chosen ground, which, adjoining the river, seemed safest for a stationary camp. When Hannibal had encamped not far from thence, being as much elated with the victory of his cavalry, as anxious on account of the scarcity which every day assailed him more severely, marching as he did through the territory of the enemy, and supplies being no where provided, he sends to the village of Clastidium, where the Romans had collected a great stock of corn. There, whilst they were preparing for an assault, a hope of the town being betrayed to them was held out: Dasius, a Brundusian, the governor of the garrison, having been corrupted for four hundred pieces of gold, (no great bribe truly,) Clastidium is surrendered to Hannibal. It served as a granary for the Carthaginians while they lay at the Trebia. No cruelty was used towards the prisoners of the surrendered garrison, in order that a character for clemency might be acquired at the commencement of his proceedings.

While the war by land was at a stand beside the Trebia, in the mean time operations went on by land and sea around Sicily and the islands adjacent to Italy, both under Sempronius the consul, and before his arrival. Twenty quinqueremes, with a thousand armed men, having been sent by the Carthaginians to lay waste the coast of Italy, nine reached the Liparae, eight the island of Vulcan, and three the tide drove into the strait. On these being seen from Messana, twelve ships sent out by Hiero king of Syracuse, who then happened to be at Messana, waiting for the Roman consul, brought back into the port of Messana the ships taken without any resistance. It was discovered from the prisoners that, besides the twenty ships, to which fleet they belonged, and which had been despatched against Italy, thirty-five other quinqueremes were directing their course to Sicily, in order to gain over their ancient allies: that their main object was to gain possession of Lilybaeum, and they believed that that fleet had been driven to the islands Aegates by the same storm by which they themselves had been dispersed. The king writes these tidings, according as they had been received, to Marcus Aemilius the praetor, whose province Sicily was, and advises him to occupy Lilybaeum with a strong garrison. Immediately the lieutenants, generals, and tribunes, with the praetor, were despatched to the different states, in order that they might keep their men on vigilant guard; above all things it was commanded, that Lilybaeum should be secured: an edict having been put forth that, in addition to such warlike preparations, the crews should carry down to their ships dressed provisions for ten days, so that no one when the signal was given might delay in embarking; and that those who were stationed along the whole coast should look out from their watch-towers for the approaching fleet of the enemy. The Carthaginians, therefore, though they had purposely slackened the course of their ships, so that they might reach Lilybaeum just before daybreak, were descried before their arrival, because both the moon shone all night, and they came with their sails set up. Immediately the signal was given from the watch-towers, and the summons to arms was shouted through the town, and they embarked in the ships: part of the soldiers were left on the walls and at the stations of the gates, and part went on board the fleet. The Carthaginians, because they perceived that they would not have to do with an unprepared enemy, kept back from the harbour till daylight, that interval being spent in taking down their rigging and getting ready the fleet for action. When the light appeared, they withdrew their fleet into the open sea, that there might be room for the battle, and that the ships of the enemy might have a free egress from the harbour. Nor did the Romans decline the conflict, being emboldened both by the recollection of the exploits they had performed near that very spot, and by the numbers and valour of their soldiers.

When they had advanced into the open sea, the Romans wished to come to close fight, and to make a trial of strength hand to hand. The Carthaginians, on the contrary, eluded them, and sought to maintain the fight by art, not by force, and to make it a battle of ships rather than of men and arms: for though they had their fleet abundantly supplied with mariners, yet it was deficient in soldiers; and when a ship was grappled, a very unequal number of armed men fought on board of it. When this was observed, their numbers increased the courage of the Romans, and their inferiority of force diminished that of the others. Seven Carthaginian ships were immediately surrounded; the rest took to flight: one thousand seven hundred soldiers and mariners were captured in the ships, and among them were three noble Carthaginians. The Roman fleet returned without loss to the harbour, only one ship being pierced, and even that also brought back into port. After this engagement, before those at Messana were aware of its occurrence, Titus Sempronius the consul arrived at Messana. As he entered the strait, king Hiero led out a fleet fully equipped to meet him; and having passed from the royal ship into that of the general, he congratulated him on having arrived safe with his army and fleet, and prayed that his expedition to Sicily might be prosperous and successful. He then laid before him the state of the island and the designs of the Carthaginians, and promised that with the same spirit with which he had in his youth assisted the Romans during the former war, he would now assist them in his old age; that he would gratuitously furnish supplies of corn and clothing to the legions and naval crews of the consul; adding, that great danger threatened Lilybaeum and the maritime states, and that a change of affairs would be acceptable to some of them. For these reasons it appeared to the consul that he ought to make no delay, but to repair to Lilybaeum with his fleet. The king and the royal squadron set out along with him, and on their passage they heard that a battle had been fought at Lilybaeum, and that the enemy's ships had been scattered and taken.

The consul having dismissed Hiero with the royal fleet, and left the praetor to defend the coast of Sicily, passed over himself from Lilybaeum to the island Melita, which was held in possession by the Carthaginians. On his arrival, Hamilcar, the son of Gisgo, the commander of the garrison, with little less than two thousand soldiers, together with the town and the island, are delivered up to him: thence, after a few days, he returned to Lilybaeum, and the prisoners taken, both by the consul and the praetor, excepting those illustrious for their rank, were publicly sold. When the consul considered that Sicily was sufficiently safe on that side, he crossed over to the islands of Vulcan, because there was a report that the Carthaginian fleet was stationed there: but not one of the enemy was discovered about those islands. They had already, as it happened, passed over to ravage the coast of Italy, and having laid waste the territory of Vibo, were also threatening the city. The descent made by the enemy on the Vibonensian territory is announced to the consul as he was returning to Sicily: and letters were delivered to him which had been sent by the senate, about the passage of Hannibal into Italy, commanding him as soon as possible to bring assistance to his colleague. Perplexed with having so many anxieties at once, he immediately sent his army, embarked in the fleet, by the upper sea to Ariminum; he assigned the defence of the territory of Vibo, and the sea-coast of Italy, to Sextus Pomponius, his lieutenant-general, with twenty-five ships of war: he made up a fleet of fifty ships for Marcus Aemilius the praetor; and he himself, after the affairs of Sicily were settled, sailing close along the coast of Italy with ten ships, arrived at Ariminum, whence, setting out with his army for the river Trebia, he joined his colleague.

Both the consuls and all the strength of Rome being now opposed to Hannibal, made it sufficiently obvious that the Roman empire could either be defended by those forces, or that there was no other hope left. Yet the one consul being dispirited by the battle of the cavalry and his own wound, wished operations to be deferred: the other having his spirits unsubdued, and being therefore the more impetuous, admitted no delay. The tract of country between the Trebia and the Po was then inhabited by the Gauls, who, in this contest of two very powerful states, by a doubtful neutrality, were evidently looking forward to the favour of the conqueror. The Romans submitted to this conduct of the Gauls with tolerable satisfaction, provided they did not take any active part at all; but the Carthaginian bore it with great discontent, giving out that he had come invited by the Gauls to set them at liberty. On account of that resentment, and in order that he might at the same time maintain his troops from the plunder, he ordered two thousand foot and a thousand horse, chiefly Numidians, with some Gauls intermixed, to lay waste all the country straightforward as far as the banks of the Po. The Gauls, being in want of assistance, though they had up to this time kept their inclinations doubtful, are forced by the authors of the injury to turn to some who would be their supporters; and having sent ambassadors to the consul, they implore the aid of the Romans in behalf of a country which was suffering for the too great fidelity of its inhabitants to the Romans. Neither the cause nor the time of pleading it was satisfactory to Cornelius; and the nation was suspected by him, both on account of many treacherous actions, and though others might have been forgotten through length of time, on account of the recent perfidy of the Boii. Sempronius, on the contrary, thought that it would be the strongest tie upon the fidelity of the allies, if those were defended who first required support. Then, while his colleague hesitated, he sends his own cavalry, with about a thousand spearmen on foot in their company, to protect the Gallic territory beyond the Trebia. These, when they had unexpectedly attacked the enemy while scattered and disordered, and for the most part encumbered with booty, caused great terror, slaughter, and flight, even as far as the camp and outposts of the enemy; whence being repulsed by the numbers that poured out, they again renewed the fight with the assistance of their own party. Then pursuing and retreating in doubtful battle, though they left it at last equal, yet the fame of the victory was more with the Romans than the enemy.

But to no one did it appear more important and just than to the consul himself. He was transported with joy "that he had conquered with that part of the forces with which the other consul had been defeated; that the spirits of the soldiers were restored and revived; that there was no one, except his colleague, who would wish an engagement delayed; and that he, suffering more from disease of mind than body, shuddered, through recollection of his wound, at arms and battle. But others ought not to sink into decrepitude together with a sick man. For why should there be any longer protraction or waste of time? What third consul, what other army did they wait for? The camp of the Carthaginians was in Italy, and almost in sight of the city. It was not Sicily and Sardinia, which had been taken from them when vanquished, nor Spain on this side of the Iberus, that was their object, but that the Romans should be driven from the land of their fathers, and the soil in which they were born. How deeply," he continued, "would our fathers groan, who were wont to wage war around the walls of Carthage, if they should see us their offspring, two consuls and two consular armies, trembling within our camps in the heart of Italy, while a Carthaginian had made himself master of all the country between the Alps and the Apennine!" Such discourses did he hold while sitting beside his sick colleague, and also at the head-quarters, almost in the manner of an harangue. The approaching period of the elections also stimulated him, lest the war should be protracted till the new consuls were chosen, and the opportunity of turning all the glory to himself, while his colleague lay sick. He orders the soldiers, therefore, Cornelius in vain attempting to dissuade him, to get ready for an immediate engagement. Hannibal, as he saw what conduct would be best for the enemy, had scarce at first any hope that the consuls would do any thing rashly or imprudently, but when he discovered that the disposition of the one, first known from report, and afterwards from experience, was ardent and impetuous, and believed that it had been rendered still more impetuous by the successful engagement with his predatory troops, he did not doubt that an opportunity of action was near at hand. He was anxious and watchful not to omit this opportunity, while the troops of the enemy were raw, while his wound rendered the better of the two commanders useless, and while the spirits of the Gauls were fresh; of whom he knew that a great number would follow him with the greater reluctance the farther they were drawn away from home. When, for these and similar reasons, he hoped that an engagement was near and desired to make the attack himself, if there should be any delay; and when the Gauls, who were the safer spies to ascertain what he wished, as they served in both camps, had brought intelligence that the Romans were prepared for battle, the Carthaginian began to look about for a place for an ambuscade.

Between the armies was a rivulet, bordered on each side with very high banks, and covered around with marshy plants, and with the brushwood and brambles with which uncultivated places are generally overspread; and when, riding around it, he had, with his own eyes, thoroughly reconnoitred a place which was sufficient to afford a covert even for cavalry, he said to Mago his brother: "This will be the place which you must occupy. Choose out of all the infantry and cavalry a hundred men of each, with whom come to me at the first watch. Now is the time to refresh their bodies." The council was thus dismissed, and in a little time Mago came forward with his chosen men. "I see," said Hannibal, "the strength of the men; but that you may be strong not only in resolution, but also in number, pick out each from the troops and companies nine men like yourselves: Mago will show you the place where you are to lie in ambush. You will have an enemy who is blind to these arts of war." A thousand horse and a thousand foot, under the command of Mago, having been thus sent off, Hannibal orders the Numidian cavalry to ride up, after crossing the river Trebia by break of day, to the gates of the enemy, and to draw them out to a battle by discharging their javelins at the guards; and then, when the fight was commenced, by retiring slowly to decoy them across the river. These instructions were given to the Numidians: to the other leaders of the infantry and cavalry it was commanded that they should order all their men to dine; and then, under arms and with their horses equipped, to await the signal. Sempronius, eager for the contest, led out, on the first tumult raised by the Numidians, all the cavalry, being full of confidence in that part of the forces; then six thousand infantry, and lastly all his army, to the place already determined in his plan. It happened to be the winter season and a snowy day, in the region which lies between the Alps and the Apennine, and excessively cold by the proximity of rivers and marshes: besides, there was no heat in the bodies of the men and horses thus hastily led out without having first taken food, or employed any means to keep off the cold; and the nearer they approached to the blasts from the river, a keener degree of cold blew upon them. But when, in pursuit of the flying Numidians, they entered the water, (and it was swollen by rain in the night as high as their breasts,) then in truth the bodies of all, on landing, were so benumbed, that they were scarcely able to hold their arms; and as the day advanced they began to grow faint, both from fatigue and hunger.

In the mean time the soldiers of Hannibal, fires having been kindled before the tents, and oil sent through the companies to soften their limbs, and their food having been taken at leisure, as soon as it was announced that the enemy had passed the river, seized their arms with vigour of mind and body, and advanced to the battle. Hannibal placed before the standards the Baliares and the light-armed troops, to the amount of nearly eight thousand men; then the heavier-armed infantry, the chief of his power and strength: on the wings he posted ten thousand horse, and on their extremities stationed the elephants divided into two parts. The consul placed on the flanks of his infantry the cavalry, recalled by the signal for retreat, as in their irregular pursuit of the enemy they were checked, while unprepared, by the Numidians suddenly turning upon them. There were of infantry eighteen thousand Romans, twenty thousand allies of the Latin name, besides the auxiliary forces of the Cenomani, the only Gallic nation that had remained faithful: with these forces they engaged the enemy. The battle was commenced by the Baliares; whom when the legions resisted with superior force, the light-armed troops were hastily drawn off to the wings; which movement caused the Roman cavalry to be immediately overpowered: for when their four thousand already with difficulty withstood by themselves ten thousand of the enemy, the wearied, against men for the most part fresh, they were overwhelmed in addition by a cloud as it were of javelins, discharged by the Baliares; and the elephants besides, which held a prominent position at the extremities of the wings, (the horses being greatly terrified not only at their appearance, but their unusual smell,) occasioned flight to a wide extent. The battle between the infantry was equal rather in courage than strength; for the Carthaginian brought the latter entire to the action, having a little before refreshed themselves, while, on the contrary, the bodies of the Romans, suffering from fasting and fatigue, and stiff with cold, were quite benumbed. They would have made a stand, however, by dint of courage, if they had only had to fight with the infantry. But both the Baliares, having beaten off the cavalry, poured darts on their flanks, and the elephants had already penetrated to the centre of the line of the infantry; while Mago and the Numidians, as soon as the army had passed their place of ambush without observing them, starting up on their rear, occasioned great disorder and alarm. Nevertheless, amid so many surrounding dangers, the line for some time remained unbroken, and, most contrary to the expectation of all, against the elephants. These the light infantry, posted for the purpose, turned back by throwing their spears; and following them up when turned, pierced them under the tail, where they received the wounds in the softest skin.

Hannibal ordered the elephants, thus thrown into disorder, and almost driven by their terror against their own party, to be led away from the centre of the line to its extremity against the auxiliary Gauls on the left wing. In an instant they occasioned unequivocal flight; and a new alarm was added to the Romans when they saw their auxiliaries routed. About ten thousand men, therefore, as they now were fighting in a circle, the others being unable to escape, broke through the middle of the line of the Africans, which was supported by the Gallic auxiliaries, with immense slaughter of the enemy: and since they neither could return to the camp, being shut out by the river, nor, on account of the heavy rain, satisfactorily determine in what part they should assist their friends, they proceeded by the direct road to Placentia. After this several irruptions were made in all directions; and those who sought the river were either swallowed up in its eddies, or whilst they hesitated to enter it were cut off by the enemy. Some, who had been scattered abroad through the country in their flight, by following the traces of the retreating army, arrived at Placentia; others, the fear of the enemy inspired with boldness to enter the river, having crossed it, reached the camp. The rain mixed with snow, and the intolerable severity of the cold, destroyed many men and beasts of burden, and almost all the elephants. The river Trebia was the termination of the Carthaginians' pursuit of the enemy; and they returned to the camp so benumbed with cold, that they could scarcely feel joy for the victory. On the following night, therefore, though the guard of the camp and the principal part of the soldiers that remained passed the Trebia on rafts, they either did not perceive it, on account of the beating of the rain, or being unable to bestir themselves, through their fatigue and wounds, pretended that they did not perceive it; and the Carthaginians remaining quiet, the army was silently led by the consul Scipio to Placentia, thence transported across the Po to Cremona, lest one colony should be too much burdened by the winter quarters of two armies.

Such terror on account of this disaster was carried to Rome, that they believed that the enemy was already approaching the city with hostile standards, and that they had neither hope nor aid by which they might repel his attack from the gates and walls. One consul having been defeated at the Ticinus, the other having been recalled from Sicily, and now both consuls and their two consular armies having been vanquished, what other commanders, what other legions were there to be sent for? The consul Sempronius came to them whilst thus dismayed, having passed at great risk through the cavalry of the enemy, scattered in every direction in search of plunder, with courage, rather than with any plan or hope of escaping, or of making resistance if he should not escape it. Having held the assembly for the election of the consuls, the only thing which was particularly wanting at present, he returned to the winter quarters. Cneius Servilius and Caius Flaminius were elected consuls. But not even the winter quarters of the Romans were undisturbed, the Numidian horse ranging at large, and where the ground was impracticable for these, the Celtiberians and Lusitanians. All supplies, therefore, from every quarter, were cut off, except such as the ships conveyed by the Po. There was a magazine near Placentia, both fortified with great care and secured by a strong garrison. In the hope of taking this fort, Hannibal having set out with the cavalry and the light-armed horse, and having attacked it by night, as he rested his main hope of effecting his enterprise on keeping it concealed, did not escape the notice of the guards. Such a clamour was immediately raised, that it was heard even at Placentia. The consul; therefore, came up with the cavalry about daybreak, having commanded the legions to follow in a square band. In the mean time an engagement of cavalry commenced, in which the enemy being dismayed because Hannibal retired wounded from the fight, the fortress was admirably defended. After this, having taken rest for a few days, and before his wound was hardly as yet sufficiently healed, he sets out to lay siege to Victumviae. This magazine had been fortified by the Romans in the Gallic war; afterwards a mixture of inhabitants from the neighbouring states around had made the place populous; and at this time the terror created by the devastation of the enemy had driven together to it numbers from the country. A multitude of this description, excited by the report of the brave defence of the fortress near Placentia, having snatched up their arms, went out to meet Hannibal. They engaged on the road rather like armies in order of march than in line of battle; and since on the one side there was nothing but a disorderly crowd, and on the other a general confident in his soldiers, and soldiers in their general, as many as thirty-five thousand men were routed by a few. On the following day, a surrender having been made, they received a garrison within their walls; and being ordered to deliver up their arms, as soon as they had obeyed the command, a signal is suddenly given to the victors to pillage the city, as if it had been taken by storm; nor was any outrage, which in such cases is wont to appear to writers worthy of relation, left unperpetrated; such a specimen of every kind of lust, barbarity, and inhuman insolence was exhibited towards that unhappy people. Such were the expeditions of Hannibal during the winter.

For a short time after, while the cold continued intolerable, rest was given to the soldiers; and having set out from his winter quarters on the first and uncertain indications of spring, he leads them into Etruria, intending to gain that nation to his side, like the Gauls and Ligurians, either by force or favour. As he was crossing the Apennines, so furious a storm attacked him, that it almost surpassed the horrors of the Alps. When the rain and wind together were driven directly against their faces, they at first halted, because their arms must either be cast away, or striving to advance against the storm they were whirled round by the hurricane, and dashed to the ground: afterwards, when it now stopped their breath, nor suffered them to respire, they sat down for a little, with their backs to the wind. Then indeed the sky resounded with loud thunder, and the lightnings flashed between its terrific peals; all, bereft of sight and hearing, stood torpid with fear. At length, when the rain had spent itself, and the fury of the wind was on that account the more increased, it seemed necessary to pitch the camp in that very place where they had been overtaken by the storm. But this was the beginning of their labours, as it were, afresh; for neither could they spread out nor fix any tent, nor did that which perchance had been put up remain, the wind tearing through and sweeping every thing away: and soon after, when the water raised aloft by the wind had been frozen above the cold summits of the mountains, it poured down such a torrent of snowy hail, that the men, casting away every thing, fell down upon their faces, rather buried under than sheltered by their coverings; and so extreme an intensity of cold succeeded, that when each wished to raise and lift himself from that wretched heap of men and beasts of burden, he was for a long time unable, because their sinews being stiffened by the cold, they had great difficulty in bending their joints. Afterwards, when, by continually moving themselves to and fro, they succeeded in recovering the power of motion, and regained their spirits, and fires began to be kindled in a few places, every helpless man had recourse to the aid of others. They remained as if blockaded for two days in that place. Many men and beasts of burden, and also seven elephants, of those which had remained from the battle fought at the Trebia, were destroyed.

Having descended from the Apennines, he moved his camp back towards Placentia, and having proceeded as far as ten miles, took up his station. On the following day he leads out twelve thousand infantry and five thousand cavalry against the enemy. Nor did Sempronius the consul (for he had now returned from Rome) decline the engagement; and during that day three miles intervened between the two camps. On the following day they fought with amazing courage and various success. At the first onset the Roman power was so superior, that they not only conquered the enemy in the regular battle, but pursued them when driven back quite into their camp, and soon after also assaulted it. Hannibal, having stationed a few to defend the rampart and the gates, and having admitted the rest in close array into the middle of the camp orders them to watch attentively the signal for sallying out. It was now about the ninth hour of the day when the Roman, having fatigued his soldiers to no purpose, after there was no hope of gaining possession of the camp, gave the signal for retreat; which when Hannibal heard, and saw that the attack was slackened, and that they were retreating from the camp, instantly having sent out the cavalry on the right and left against the enemy, he himself in the middle with the main force of the infantry rushed out from the camp. Seldom has there been a combat more furious, and few would have been more remarkable for the loss on both sides, if the day had suffered it to continue for a longer time. Night broke off the battle when raging most from the determined spirit of the combatants. The conflict therefore was more severe than the slaughter: and as it was pretty much a drawn battle, they separated with equal loss. On neither side fell more than six hundred infantry, and half that number of cavalry. But the loss of the Romans was more severe than proportionate to the number that fell, because several of equestrian rank, and five tribunes of the soldiers, and three prefects of the allies were slain. After this battle Hannibal retired to the territory of the Ligurians, and Sempronius to Luca. Two Roman quaestors, Caius Fulvius and Lucius Lucretius, who had been treacherously intercepted, with two military tribunes and five of the equestrian order, mostly sons of senators, are delivered up to Hannibal when coming among the Ligurians, in order that he might feel more convinced that the peace and alliance with them would be binding.

While these things are transacting in Italy, Cneius Cornelius Scipio having been sent into Spain with a fleet and army, when, setting out from the mouth of the Rhone, and sailing past the Pyrenaean mountains, he had moored his fleet at Emporiae, having there landed his army, and beginning with the Lacetani, he brought the whole coast, as far as the river Iberus, under the Roman dominion, partly by renewing the old, and partly by forming new alliances. The reputation for clemency, acquired by these means, had influence not only with the maritime states, but now also with the more savage tribes in the inland and mountainous districts; nor was peace only effected with them, but also an alliance of arms, and several fine cohorts of auxiliaries were levied from their numbers. The country on this side of the Iberus was the province of Hanno, whom Hannibal had left to defend that region. He, therefore, judging that he ought to make opposition, before every thing was alienated from him, having pitched his camp in sight of the enemy, led out his forces in battle-array; nor did it appear to the Roman, that the engagement ought to be deferred, as he knew that he must fight with Hanno and Hasdrubal, and wished rather to contend against each of them separately, than against both together. The conflict did not prove one of great difficulty; six thousand of the enemy were slain, and two thousand made prisoners, together with the guard of the camp; for both the camp was stormed, and the general himself, with several of the chief officers, taken; and Scissis, a town near the camp, was also carried by assault. But the spoil of this town consisted of things of small value, such as the household furniture used by barbarians and slaves that were worth little. The camp enriched the soldiers; almost all the valuable effects, not only of that army which was conquered, but of that which was serving with Hannibal in Italy, having been left on this side the Pyrenees, that the baggage might not be cumbrous to those who conveyed it.

Before any certain news of this disaster arrived, Hasdrubal, having passed the Iberus with eight thousand foot and a thousand horse, intending to meet the Romans on their first approach, after he heard of the ruin of their affairs at Scissis, and the loss of the camp, turned his route towards the sea. Not far from Tarraco, having despatched his cavalry in various directions, he drove to their ships, with great slaughter, and greater route, the soldiers belonging to the fleet and the mariners, while scattered and wandering through the fields (for it is usually the case that success produces negligence), but not daring to remain longer in that quarter, lest he should be surprised by Scipio, he withdrew to the other side of the Iberus. And Scipio, having quickly brought up his army on the report of fresh enemies, after punishing a few captains of ships and leaving a moderate garrison at Tarraco, returned with his fleet to Emporiae. He had scarcely departed, when Hasdrubal came up, and having instigated to a revolt the state of the Ilergetes, which had given hostages to Scipio, he lays waste, with the youth of that very people, the lands of the faithful allies of the Romans. Scipio being thereupon roused from his winter quarters, Hasdrubal again retires from in all the country on this side the Iberus. Scipio, when with a hostile army he had invaded the state of the Ilergetes, forsaken by the author of their revolt, and having driven them all into Athanagia, which was the capital of that nation laid siege to the city; and within a few days, having imposed the delivery of more hostages than before, and also fined the Ilergetes in a sum of money, he received them back into his authority and dominion. He then proceeded against the Ausetani near the Iberus, who were also the allies of the Carthaginians; and having laid siege to their city, he cut off by an ambuscade the Lacetani, while bringing assistance by night to their neighbours, having attacked them at a small distance from the city, as they were designing to enter it. As many as twelve thousand were slain; the rest, nearly all without their arms, escaped home, by dispersing through the country in every direction. Nor did any thing else but the winter, which was unfavourable to the besiegers, secure the besieged. The blockade continued for thirty days, during which the snow scarce ever lay less deep than four feet; and it had covered to such a degree the sheds and mantelets of the Romans, that it alone served as a defence when fire was frequently thrown on them by the enemy. At last, when Amusitus, their leader, had fled to Hasdrubal, they are surrendered, on condition of paying twenty talents of silver. They then returned into winter quarters at Tarraco.

At Rome during this winter many prodigies either occurred about the city, or, as usually happens when the minds of men are once inclined to superstition, many were reported and readily believed; among which it was said that an infant of good family, only six months old, had called out "Io triumphe" in the herb market: that in the cattle market an ox had of his own accord ascended to the third story, and that thence, being frightened by the noise of the inhabitants, had flung himself down; that the appearance of ships had been brightly visible in the sky, and that the temple of Hope in the herb market had been struck by lightning; that the spear at Lanuvium had shaken itself; that a crow had flown down into the temple of Juno and alighted on the very couch; that in the territory of Amiternum figures resembling men dressed in white raiment had been seen in several places at a distance, but had not come close to any one; that in Picenum it had rained stones; that at Caere the tablets for divination had been lessened in size; and that in Gaul a wolf had snatched out the sword from the scabbard of a soldier on guard, and carried it off. On account of the other prodigies the decemvirs were ordered to consult the books; but on account of its having rained stones in Picenum the festival of nine days was proclaimed, and almost all the state was occupied in expiating the rest, from time to time. First of all the city was purified, and victims of the greater kind were sacrificed to those gods to whom they were directed to be offered; and a gift of forty pounds' weight of gold was carried to the temple of Juno at Lanuvium; and the matrons dedicated a brazen statue to Juno on the Aventine; and a lectisternium was ordered at Caere, where the tablets for divination had diminished; and a supplication to Fortune at Algidum; at Rome also a lectisternium was ordered to Youth, and a supplication at the temple of Hercules, first by individuals named and afterwards by the whole people at all the shrines; five greater victims were offered to Genius; and Caius Atilius Serranus the praetor was ordered to make certain vows if the republic should remain in the same state for ten years. These things, thus expiated and vowed according to the Sibylline books, relieved, in a great degree, the public mind from superstitious fears.

Flaminius, one of the consuls elect, to whom the legions which were wintering at Placentia had fallen by lot, sent an edict and letter to the consul, desiring that those forces should be ready in camp at Ariminum on the ides of March. He had a design to enter on the consulship in his province, recollecting his old contests with the fathers, which he had waged with them when tribune of the people, and afterwards when consul, first about his election to the office, which was annulled, and then about a triumph. He was also odious to the fathers on account of a new law which Quintus Claudius, tribune of the people, had carried against the senate, Caius Flaminius alone of that body assisting him, that no senator, or he who had been father of a senator, should possess a ship fit for sea service, containing more than three hundred amphorae. This size was considered sufficient for conveying the produce of their lands: all traffic appeared unbecoming a senator. This contest, maintained with the warmest opposition, procured the hatred of the nobility to Flaminius, the advocate of the law; but the favour of the people, and afterwards a second consulship. For these reasons, thinking that they would detain him in the city by falsifying the auspices, by the delay of the Latin festival, and other hinderances to which a consul was liable, he pretended a journey, and, while yet in a private capacity, departed secretly to his province. This proceeding, when it was made public, excited new and additional anger in the senators, who were before irritated against him. They said, "That Caius Flaminius waged war not only with the senate, but now with the immortal gods; that having been formerly made consul without the proper auspices, he had disobeyed both gods and men recalling him from the very field of battle; and now, through consciousness of their having been dishonoured, had shunned the Capitol and the customary offering of vows, that he might not on the day of entering his office approach the temple of Jupiter, the best and greatest of gods; he might not see and consult the senate, himself hated by it, as it was hateful to him alone; that he might not proclaim the Latin festival, or perform on the Alban mount the customary rights to Jupiter Latiaris; that he might not, under the direction of the auspices, go up to the Capitol to recite his vows, and thence, attended by the lictors, proceed to his province in the garb of a general; but that he had set off, like some camp boy, without his insignia, without the lictors, in secrecy and stealth, just as if he had been quitting his country to go into banishment; as if forsooth he would enter his office more consistently with the dignity of the consul at Ariminum than Rome, and assume the robe of office in a public inn better than before his own household gods."--it was unanimously resolved that he, should be recalled and brought back, and be constrained to perform in person every duty to gods and men before he went to the army and the province. Quintus Terentius and Marcus Antistius having set out on this embassy, (for it was decreed that ambassadors should be sent,) prevailed with him in no degree more than the letter sent by the senate in his former consulship. A few days after he entered on his office, and as he was sacrificing a calf, after being struck, having broken away from the hands of the ministers, sprinkled several of the bystanders with its blood. Flight and disorder ensued, to a still greater degree at a distance among those who were ignorant what was the cause of the alarm. This circumstance was regarded by most persons as an omen of great terror. Having then received two legions from Sempronius, the consul of the former year, and two from Caius Atilius, the praetor, the army began to be led into Etruria, through the passes of the Apennines.

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BOOK XXII.

B.C. 217-216

Hannibal, after an uninterrupted march of four days and three nights, arrives in Etruria, through the marshes, in which he lost an eye. Caius Flaminius, the consul, an inconsiderate man, having gone forth in opposition to the omens, dug up the standards which could not otherwise be raised, and been thrown from his horse immediately after he had mounted, is insnared by Hannibal, and cut off by his army near the Thrasimene lake. Three thousand who had escaped are placed in chains by Hannibal, in violation of pledges given. Distress occasioned in Rome by the intelligence. The Sibylline books consulted, and a sacred spring decreed. Fabius Maximus sent as dictator against Hannibal, whom he frustrates by caution and delay. Marcus Minucius, the master of the horse, a rash and impetuous man, inveighs against the caution of Fabius, and obtains an equality of command with him. The army is divided between them, and Minucius engaging Hannibal in an unfavourable position, is reduced to the extremity of danger, and is rescued by the dictator, and places himself under his authority. Hannibal, after ravaging Campania, is shut up by Fabius in a valley near the town of Casilinum, but escapes by night, putting to flight the Romans on guard by oxen with lighted faggots attached to their horns. Hannibal attempts to excite a suspicion of the fidelity of Fabius by sparing his farm while ravaging with fire the whole country around it. Aemilius Paulus and Terentius Varro are routed at Cannae, and forty thousand men slain, among whom were Paulus the consul, eighty senators, and thirty who had served the office of consul, praetor, or edile. A design projected by some noble youths of quitting Italy in despair after this calamity, is intrepidly quashed by Publius Cornelius Scipio, a military tribune, afterwards surnamed Africanus. Successes in Spain, eight thousand slaves are enlisted by the Romans, they refuse to ransom the captives, they go out in a body to meet Varro, and thank him for not having despaired of the commonwealth.

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Spring was now at hand, when Hannibal quitted his winter quarters, having both attempted in vain to cross the Apennines, from the intolerable cold, and having remained with great danger and alarm. The Gauls, whom the hope of plunder and spoil had collected, when, instead of being themselves engaged in carrying and driving away booty from the lands of others, they saw their own lands made the seat of war and burdened by the wintering of the armies of both forces, turned their hatred back again from the Romans to Hannibal; and though plots were frequently concerted against him by their chieftains, he was preserved by the treachery they manifested towards each other; disclosing their conspiracy with the same inconstancy with which they had conspired; and by changing sometimes his dress, at other times the fashion of his hair, he protected himself from treachery by deception. However, this fear was the cause of his more speedily quitting his winter quarters. Meanwhile Cneius Servilius, the consul, entered upon his office at Rome, on the ides of March. There, when he had consulted the senate on the state of the republic in general, the indignation against Flaminius was rekindled. They said "that they had created indeed two consuls, that they had but one; for what regular authority had the other, or what auspices? That their magistrates took these with them from home, from the tutelar deities of themselves and the state, after the celebration of the Latin holidays; the sacrifice upon the mountain being completed, and the vows duly offered up in the Capitol: that neither could an unofficial individual take the auspices, nor could one who had gone from home without them, take them new, and for the first time, in a foreign soil." Prodigies announced from many places at the same time, augmented the terror: in Sicily, that several darts belonging to the soldiers had taken fire; and in Sardinia, that the staff of a horseman, who was going his rounds upon a wall, took fire as he held it in his hand; that the shores had blazed with frequent fires; that two shields had sweated blood at Praeneste; that redhot stones had fallen from the heavens at Arpi; that shields were seen in the heavens, and the sun fighting with the moon, at Capena; that two moons rose in the day-time; that the waters of Caere had flowed mixed with blood; and that even the fountain of Hercules had flowed sprinkled with spots of blood. In the territory of Antium, that bloody ears of corn had fallen into the basket as they were reaping. At Falerii, that the heavens appeared cleft as if with a great chasm; and, that where it had opened, a vast light had shone forth; that the prophetic tablets had spontaneously become less; and that one had fallen out thus inscribed, "Mars shakes his spear." During the same time, that the statue of Mars at Rome, on the Appian way, had sweated at the sight of images of wolves. At Capua that there had been the appearance of the heavens being on fire, and of the moon as falling amidst rain. After these, credence was given to prodigies of less magnitude: that the goats of certain persons had borne wool; that a hen had changed herself into a cock; and a cock into a hen: these things having been laid before the senate as reported, the authors being conducted into the senate-house, the consul took the sense of the fathers on religious affairs. It was decreed that those prodigies should be expiated, partly with full-grown, partly with sucking victims; and that a supplication should be made at every shrine for the space of three days; that the other things should be done accordingly as the gods should declare in their oracles to be agreeable to their will when the decemviri had examined the books. By the advice of the decemviri it was decreed, first, that a golden thunderbolt of fifty pounds' weight should be made as an offering to Jupiter; that offerings of silver should be presented to Juno and Minerva; that sacrifices of full-grown victims should be offered to Juno Regina on the Aventine; and to Juno Sospita at Lanuvium; that the matrons, contributing as much money as might be convenient to each, should carry it to the Aventine, as a present to Juno Regina; and that a lectisternium should be celebrated. Moreover, that the very freed-women should, according to their means, contribute money from which a present might be made to Feronia. When these things were done, the decemviri sacrificed with the larger victims in the forum at Ardea. Lastly, it being now the month of December, a sacrifice was made at the temple of Saturn at Rome, and a lectisternium ordered, in which senators prepared the couch and a public banquet. Proclamation was made through the city, that the Saturnalia should be kept for a day and a night; and the people were commanded to account that day as a holiday, and observe it for ever.

While the consul employs himself at Rome in appeasing the gods and holding the levy, Hannibal, setting out from his winter quarters, because it was reported that the consul Flaminius had now arrived at Arretium, although a longer but more commodious route was pointed out to him, takes the nearer road through a marsh where the Arno had, more than usual, overflowed its banks. He ordered the Spaniards and Africans (in these lay the strength of his veteran army) to lead, their own baggage being intermixed with them, lest, being compelled to halt any where, they should want what might be necessary for their use: the Gauls he ordered to go next, that they might form the middle of the marching body; the cavalry to march in the rear: next, Mago with the light-armed Numidians to keep the army together, particularly coercing the Gauls, if, fatigued with exertion and the length of the march, as that nation is wanting in vigour for such exertions, they should fall away or halt. The van still followed the standards wherever the guides did but lead them, through the exceeding deep and almost fathomless eddies of the river, nearly swallowed up in mud, and plunging themselves in. The Gauls could neither support themselves when fallen, nor raise themselves from the eddies. Nor did they sustain their bodies with spirit, nor their minds with hope; some scarce dragging on their wearied limbs; others dying where they had once fallen, their spirits being subdued with fatigue, among the beasts which themselves also lay prostrate in every place. But chiefly watching wore them out, endured now for four days and three nights. When, the water covering every place, not a dry spot could be found where they might stretch their weary bodies, they laid themselves down upon their baggage, thrown in heaps into the waters. Piles of beasts, which lay every where through the whole route, afforded a necessary bed for temporary repose to those seeking any place which was not under water. Hannibal himself, riding on the only remaining elephant, to be the higher from the water, contracted a disorder in his eyes, at first from the unwholesomeness of the vernal air, which is attended with transitions from heat to cold; and at length from watching, nocturnal damps, the marshy atmosphere disordering his head, and because he had neither opportunity nor leisure for remedies, loses one of them.

Many men and cattle having been lost thus wretchedly, when at length he had emerged from the marshes, he pitched his camp as soon as he could on dry ground. And here he received information, through the scouts sent in advance, that the Roman army was round the walls of Arretium. Next the plans and temper of the consul, the situation of the country, the roads, the sources from which provisions might be obtained, and whatever else it was useful to know; all these things he ascertained by the most diligent inquiry. The country was among the most fertile of Italy, the plain of Etruria, between Faesulae and Arretium, abundant in its supply of corn, cattle, and every other requisite. The consul was haughty from his former consulship, and felt no proper degree of reverence not only for the laws and the majesty of the fathers, but even for the gods. This temerity, inherent in his nature, fortune had fostered by a career of prosperity and success in civil and military affairs. Thus it was sufficiently evident that, heedless of gods and men, he would act in all cases with presumption and precipitation; and, that he might fall the more readily into the errors natural to him, the Carthaginian begins to fret and irritate him; and leaving the enemy on his left, he takes the road to Faesulae, and marching through the centre of Etruria, with intent to plunder, he exhibits to the consul, in the distance, the greatest devastation he could with fires and slaughters. Flaminius, who would not have rested even if the enemy had remained quiet; then, indeed, when he saw the property of the allies driven and carried away almost before his eyes, considering that it reflected disgrace upon him that the Carthaginian now roaming at large through the heart of Italy, and marching without resistance to storm the very walls of Rome, though every other person in the council advised safe rather than showy measures, urging that he should wait for his colleague, in order that, joining their armies, they might carry on the war with united courage and counsels; and that, meanwhile, the enemy should be prevented from his unrestrained freedom in plundering by the cavalry and the light-armed auxiliaries; in a fury hurried out of the council, and at once gave out the signal for marching and for battle. "Nay, rather," says he, "let him be before the walls of Arretium, for here is our country, here our household gods. Let Hannibal, slipping through our fingers, waste Italy through and through; and, ravaging and burning every thing, let him arrive at the walls of Rome; let us move hence till the fathers shall have summoned Flaminius from Arretium, as they did Camillus of old from Veii." While reproaching them thus, and in the act of ordering the standards to be speedily pulled up, when he had mounted upon his horse, the animal fell suddenly, and threw the unseated consul over his head. All the bystanders being alarmed at this as an unhappy omen in the commencement of the affair, in addition word is brought, that the standard could not be pulled up, though, the standard-bearer strove with all his force. Flaminius, turning to the messenger, says, "Do you bring, too, letters from the senate, forbidding me to act. Go, tell them to dig up the standard, if, through fear, their hands are so benumbed that they cannot pluck it up." Then the army began to march; the chief officers, besides that they dissented from the plan, being terrified by the twofold prodigy; while the soldiery in general were elated by the confidence of their leader, since they regarded merely the hope he entertained, and not the reasons of the hope.

Hannibal lays waste the country between the city Cortona and the lake Trasimenus, with all the devastation of war, the more to exasperate the enemy to revenge the injuries inflicted on his allies. They had now reached a place formed by nature for an ambuscade, where the Trasimenus comes nearest to the mountains of Cortona. A very narrow passage only intervenes, as though room enough just for that purpose had been left designedly; after that a somewhat wider plain opens itself, and then some hills rise up. On these he pitches his camp, in full view, where he himself with his Spaniards and Africans only might be posted. The Baliares and his other light troops he leads round the mountains; his cavalry he posts at the very entrance of the defile, some eminences conveniently concealing them; in order that when the Romans had entered, the cavalry advancing, every place might be enclosed by the lake and the mountains. Flaminius, passing the defiles before it was quite daylight, without reconnoitering, though he had arrived at the lake the preceding day at sunset, when the troops began to be spread into the wider plain, saw that part only of the enemy which was opposite to him; the ambuscade in his rear and overhead escaped his notice. And when the Carthaginian had his enemy enclosed by the lake and mountains, and surrounded by his troops, he gives the signal to all to make a simultaneous charge; and each running down the nearest way, the suddenness and unexpectedness of the event was increased to the Romans by a mist rising from the lake, which had settled thicker on the plain than on the mountains; and thus the troops of the enemy ran down from the various eminences, sufficiently well discerning each other, and therefore with the greater regularity. A shout being raised on all sides, the Roman found himself surrounded before he could well see the enemy; and the attack on the front and flank had commenced ere his line could be well formed, his arms prepared for action, or his swords unsheathed.

The consul, while all were panic-struck, himself sufficiently undaunted though in so perilous a case, marshals, as well as the time and place permitted, the lines which were thrown into confusion by each man's turning himself towards the various shouts; and wherever he could approach or be heard exhorts them, and bids them stand and fight: for that they could not escape thence by vows and prayers to the gods but by exertion and valour; that a way was sometimes opened by the sword through the midst of marshalled armies, and that generally the less the fear the less the danger. However, from the noise and tumult, neither his advice nor command could be caught; and so far were the soldiers from knowing their own standards, and ranks, and position, that they had scarce sufficient courage to take up arms and make them ready for battle; and certain of them were surprised before they could prepare them, being burdened rather than protected by them; while in so great darkness there was more use of ears than of eyes. They turned their faces and eyes in every direction towards the groans of the wounded, the sounds of blows upon the body or arms, and the mingled clamours of the menacing and the affrighted. Some, as they were making their escape, were stopped, having encountered a body of men engaged in fight; and bands of fugitives returning to the battle, diverted others. After charges had been attempted unsuccessfully in every direction, and on their flanks the mountains and the lake, on the front and rear the lines of the enemy enclosed them, when it was evident that there was no hope of safety but in the right hand and the sword; then each man became to himself a leader, and encourager to action; and an entirely new contest arose, not a regular line, with principes, hastati, and triarii; nor of such a sort as that the vanguard should fight before the standards, and the rest of the troops behind them; nor such that each soldier should be in his own legion, cohort, or company: chance collects them into bands; and each man's own will assigned to him his post, whether to fight in front or rear; and so great was the ardour of the conflict, so intent were their minds upon the battle, that not one of the combatants felt an earthquake which threw down large portions of many of the cities of Italy, turned rivers from their rapid courses, carried the sea up into rivers, and levelled mountains with a tremendous crash.

The battle was continued near three hours, and in every quarter with fierceness; around the consul, however, it was still hotter and more determined. Both the strongest of the troops, and himself too, promptly brought assistance wherever he perceived his men hard pressed and distressed. But, distinguished by his armour, the enemy attacked him with the utmost vigour, while his countrymen defended him; until an Insubrian horseman, named Ducarius, knowing him also by his face, says to his countrymen, "Lo, this is the consul who slew our legions and laid waste our fields and city. Now will I offer this victim to the shades of my countrymen, miserably slain;" and putting spurs to his horse, he rushes through a very dense body of the enemy; and first slaying his armour-bearer, who had opposed himself to his attack as he approached, ran the consul through with his lance; the triarii, opposing their shields, kept him off when seeking to despoil him. Then first the flight of a great number began; and now neither the lake nor the mountains obstructed their hurried retreat; they run through all places, confined and precipitous, as though they were blind; and arms and men are tumbled one upon another. A great many, when there remained no more space to run, advancing into the water through the first shallows of the lake, plunge in, as far as they could stand above it with their heads and shoulders. Some there were whom inconsiderate fear induced to try to escape even by swimming; but as that attempt was inordinate and hopeless, they were either overwhelmed in the deep water, their courage failing, or, wearied to no purpose, made their way back, with extreme difficulty, to the shallows; and there were cut up on all hands by the cavalry of the enemy, which had entered the water. Near upon six thousand of the foremost body having gallantly forced their way through the opposing enemy, entirely unacquainted with what was occurring in their rear, escaped from the defile; and having halted on a certain rising ground, and hearing only the shouting and clashing of arms, they could not know nor discern, by reason of the mist, what was the fortune of the battle. At length, the affair being decided, when the mist, dispelled by the increasing heat of the sun, had cleared the atmosphere, then, in the clear light, the mountains and plains showed their ruin and the Roman army miserably destroyed; and thus, lest, being descried at a distance, the cavalry should be sent against them, hastily snatching up their standards, they hurried away with all possible expedition. On the following day, when in addition to their extreme sufferings in other respects, famine also was at hand, Maharbal, who had followed them during the night with the whole body of cavalry, pledging his honour that he would let them depart with single garments, if they would deliver up their arms, they surrendered themselves; which promise was kept by Hannibal with Punic fidelity, and he threw them all into chains.

This is the celebrated battle at the Trasimenus, and recorded among the few disasters of the Roman people. Fifteen thousand Romans were slain in the battle. Ten thousand, who had been scattered in the flight through all Etruria, returned to the city by different roads. One thousand five hundred of the enemy perished in the battle; many on both sides died afterwards of their wounds. The carnage on both sides is related, by some authors, to have been many times greater. I, besides that I would relate nothing drawn from a worthless source, to which the minds of historians generally incline too much, have as my chief authority Fabius, who was contemporary with the events of this war. Such of the captives as belonged to the Latin confederacy being dismissed without ransom, and the Romans thrown into chains, Hannibal ordered the bodies of his own men to be gathered from the heaps of the enemy, and buried: the body of Flaminius too, which was searched for with great diligence for burial, he could not find. On the first intelligence of this defeat at Rome, a concourse of the people, dismayed and terrified, took place in the forum. The matrons, wandering through the streets, ask all they meet, what sudden disaster was reported? what was the fate of the army? And when the multitude, like a full assembly, having directed their course to the comitium and senate-house, were calling upon the magistrates, at length, a little before sunset, Marcus Pomponius, the praetor, declares, "We have been defeated in a great battle;" and though nothing more definite was heard from him, yet, full of the rumours which they had caught one from another, they carry back to their homes intelligence, that the consul, with a great part of his troops, was slain; that a few only survived, and these either widely dispersed in flight through Etruria, or else captured by the enemy. As many as had been the calamities of the vanquished army, into so many anxieties were the minds of those distracted whose relations had served under Flaminius, and who were uninformed of what had been the fate of their friends, nor does any one know certainly what he should either hope or fear. During the next and several successive days, a greater number of women almost than men stood at the gates, waiting either for some one of their friends or for intelligence of them, surrounding and earnestly interrogating those they met: nor could they be torn away from those they knew especially, until they had regularly inquired into every thing. Then as they retired from the informants you might discern their various expressions of countenance according as intelligence, pleasing or sad, was announced to each; and those who congratulated or condoled on their return home. The joy and grief of the women were especially manifested. They report that one, suddenly meeting her son, who had returned safe, expired at the very door before his face--that another, who sat grieving at her house at the falsely reported death of her son, became a corpse, from excessive joy, at the first sight of him on his return. The praetors detained the senators in the house for several days from sunrise to sunset, deliberating under whose conduct and by what forces, the victorious Carthaginians could be opposed.

Before their plans were sufficiently determined another unexpected defeat is reported: four thousand horse, sent under the conduct of C. Centenius, propraetor, by Servilius to his colleague, were cut off by Hannibal in Umbria, to which place, on hearing of the battle at Trasimenus, they had turned their course. The report of this event variously affected the people. Some, having their minds preoccupied with heavier grief, considered the recent loss of cavalry trifling, in comparison with their former losses; others did not estimate what had occurred by itself, but considered that, as in a body already labouring under disease, a slight cause would be felt more violently than a more powerful one in a robust constitution, so whatever adverse event befell the state in its then sickly and impaired condition, ought to be estimated, not by the magnitude of the event itself, but with reference to its exhausted strength, which could endure nothing that could oppress it. The state therefore took refuge in a remedy for a long time before neither wanted nor employed, the appointment of a dictator, and because the consul was absent, by whom alone it appeared he could be nominated, and because neither message nor letter could easily be sent to him through the country occupied by Punic troops, and because the people could not appoint a dictator, which had never been done to that day, the people created Quintus Fabius Maximus pro dictator, and Marcus Minucius Rufus master of the horse. To them the senate assigned the task of strengthening the walls and towers of the city, of placing guards in such quarters as seemed good, and breaking down the bridges of the river, considering that they must now fight at home in defence of their city, since they were unable to protect Italy.

Hannibal, marching directly through Umbria, arrived at Spoletum, thence, having completely devastated the adjoining country, and commenced an assault upon the city, having been repulsed with great loss and conjecturing from the strength of this one colony, which had been not very successfully attacked, what was the size of the city of Rome, turned aside into the territory of Picenum, which abounded not only with every species of grain, but was stored with booty, which his rapacious and needy troops eagerly seized. There he continued encamped for several days, and his soldiers were refreshed, who had been enfeebled by winter marches and marshy ground, and with a battle more successful in its result than light or easy. When sufficient time for rest had been granted for soldiers delighting more in plunder and devastation than ease and repose, setting out, he lays waste the territories of Pretutia and Hadria, then of the Marsi, the Marrucini, and the Peligni, and the contiguous region of Apulia around Arpi and Luceria. Cneius Servilius, the consul, having fought some slight battles with the Gauls, and taken one inconsiderable town, when he heard of the defeat of his colleague and the army, alarmed now for the walls of the capital, marched towards the city, that he might not be absent at so extreme a crisis. Quintus Fabius Maximus, a second time dictator, assembled the senate the very day he entered on his office; and commencing with what related to the gods, after he had distinctly proved to the fathers, that Caius Flaminius had erred more from neglect of the ceremonies and auspices than from temerity and want of judgment, and that the gods themselves should be consulted as to what were the expiations of their anger, he obtained a resolution that the decemviri should be ordered to inspect the Sibylline books, which is rarely decreed, except when some horrid prodigies were announced. Having inspected the prophetic books, they reported, that the vow which was made to Mars on account of this war, not having been regularly fulfilled, must be performed afresh and more fully; that the great games must be vowed to Jupiter, temples to Venus Erycina and Mens; that a supplication and lectisternium must be made, and a sacred spring vowed, if the war should proceed favourably and the state continue the condition it was in before the war. Since the management of the war would occupy Fabius, the senate orders Marcus Aemilius, the praetor, to see that all these things are done in good time, according to the directions of the college of pontiffs.

These decrees of the senate having been passed, Lucius Cornelius Lentulus, pontifex maximus, the college of praetors consulting with him, gives his opinion that, first of all, the people should be consulted respecting a sacred spring: that it could not be without the order of the people. The people having been asked according to this form: Do ye will and order that this thing should be performed in this manner? If the republic of the Roman people, the Quirites, shall be safe and preserved as I wish it may, from these wars for the next five years, (the war which is between the Roman people and the Carthaginian, and the wars which are with the Cisalpine Gauls), the Roman people, the Quirites, shall present whatsoever the spring shall produce from herds of swine, sheep, goats, oxen and which shall not have been consecrated, to be sacrificed to Jupiter, from the day which the senate and people shall appoint. Let him who shall make an offering do it when he please, and in what manner he please; in whatsoever manner he does it, let it be considered duly done. If that which ought to be sacrificed die, let it be unconsecrated, and let no guilt attach; if any one unwittingly wound or kill it, let it be no injury to him; if any one shall steal it, let no guilt attach to the people or to him from whom it was stolen; if any one shall unwittingly offer it on a forbidden day, let it be esteemed duly offered; also whether by night or day, whether slave or free-man perform it. If the senate and people shall order it to be offered sooner than any person shall offer it, let the people being acquitted of it be free. On the same account great games were vowed, at an expense of three hundred and thirty-three thousand three hundred and thirty-three asses and a third; moreover, it was decreed that sacrifice should be done to Jupiter with three hundred oxen, to many other deities with white oxen and the other victims. The vows being duly made, a supplication was proclaimed; and not only the inhabitants of the city went with their wives and children, but such of the rustics also as, possessing any property themselves, were interested in the welfare of the state. Then a lectisternium was celebrated for three days, the decemviri for sacred things superintending. Six couches were seen, for Jupiter and Juno one, for Neptune and Minerva another, for Mars and Venus a third, for Apollo and Diana a fourth, for Vulcan and Vesta a fifth, for Mercury and Ceres a sixth. Then temples were vowed. To Venus Erycina, Quintus Fabius Maximus vowed a temple; for so it was delivered from the prophetic books, that he should vow it who held the highest authority in the state. Titus Otacilius, the praetor vowed a temple to Mens.

Divine things having been thus performed, the dictator then put the question of the war and the state; with what, and how many legions the fathers were of opinion that the victorious enemy should be opposed. It was decreed that he should receive the army from Cneius Servilius, the consul: that he should levy, moreover, from the citizens and allies as many horse and foot as seemed good; that he should transact and perform every thing else as he considered for the good of the state. Fabius said he would add two legions to the army of Servilius. These were levied by the master of the horse, and were appointed by Fabius to meet him at Tibur on a certain day. And then having issued proclamation that those whose towns or castles were unfortified should quit them and assemble in places of security; that all the inhabitants of that tract through which Hannibal was about to march, should remove from the country, having first burnt their buildings and spoiled their fruits, that there might not be a supply of any thing; he himself set out on the Flaminian road to meet the consul and his army; and when he saw in the distance the marching body on the Tiber, near Ocriculum, and the consul with the cavalry advancing to him, he sent a beadle to acquaint the consul that he must meet the dictator without the lictors. When he had obeyed his command, and their meeting had exhibited a striking display of the majesty of the dictatorship before the citizens and allies, who, from its antiquity, had now almost forgotten that authority; a letter arrived from the city, stating that the ships of burden, conveying provisions from Ostia into Spain to the army, had been captured by the Carthaginian fleet off the port of Cossa. The consul, therefore, was immediately ordered to proceed to Ostia, and, having manned the ships at Rome or Ostia with soldiers and sailors, to pursue the enemy, and protect the coasts of Italy. Great numbers of men were levied at Rome, sons of freed-men even, who had children, and were of the military age, had taken the oath. Of these troops levied in the city, such as were under thirty-five were put on board ships, the rest were left to protect the city.

The dictator, having received the troops of the consul from Fulvius Flaccus, his lieutenant-general, marching through the Sabine territory, arrived at Tibur on the day which he had appointed the new-raised troops to assemble. Thence he went to Praeneste, and cutting across the country, came out in the Latin way, whence he led his troops towards the enemy, reconnoitering the road with the utmost diligence; not intending to expose himself to hazard any where, except as far as necessity compelled him. The day he first pitched his camp in sight of the enemy, not far from Arpi, the Carthaginian, without delay, led out his troops, and forming his line gave an opportunity of fighting: but when he found all still with the enemy, and his camp free from tumult and disorder, he returned to his camp, saying indeed tauntingly, "That even the spirit of the Romans, inherited from Mars, was at length subdued; that they were warred down and had manifestly given up all claim to valour and renown:" but burning inwardly with stifled vexation because he would have to encounter a general by no means like Flaminius and Sempronius; and because the Romans, then at length schooled by their misfortunes, had sought a general a match for Hannibal; and that now he had no longer to fear the headlong violence, but the deliberate prudence of the dictator. Having not yet experienced his constancy, he began to provoke and try his temper, by frequently shifting his camp and laying waste the territories of the allies before his eyes: and one while he withdrew out of sight at quick march, another while he halted suddenly, and concealed himself in some winding of the road, if possible to entrap him on his descending into the plain. Fabius kept marching his troops along the high grounds, at a moderate distance from the enemy, so as neither to let him go altogether nor yet to encounter him. The troops were kept within the camp, except so far as necessary wants compelled them to quit it; and fetched in food and wood not by small nor rambling parties. An outpost of cavalry and light-armed troops, prepared and equipped for acting in cases of sudden alarm, rendered every thing safe to their own soldiers, and dangerous to the scattered plunderers of the enemy. Nor was his whole cause committed to general hazard; while slight contests, of small importance in themselves, commenced on safe ground, with a retreat at hand, accustomed the soldiery, terrified by their former disasters, now at length to think less meanly either of their prowess or good fortune. But he did not find Hannibal a greater enemy to such sound measures than his master of the horse, who was only prevented from plunging the state into ruin by his inferiority in command. Presumptuous and precipitate in his measures, and unbridled in his tongue, first among a few, then openly and publicly, he taunted him with being sluggish instead of patient, spiritless instead of cautious; falsely imputing to him those vices which bordered on his virtues; and raised himself by means of depressing his superiors, which, though a most iniquitous practice, has become more general from the too great successes of many.

Hannibal crosses over from the Hirpini into Samnium; lays waste the territory of Beneventum; takes the town of Telesia; and purposely irritates the dictator, if perchance he could draw him down to a battle on the plain, exasperated by so many indignities and disasters inflicted on his allies. Among the multitude of allies of Italian extraction, who had been captured by Hannibal at the Trasimenus, and dismissed, were three Campanian horsemen, who had even at that time been bribed by many presents and promises from Hannibal to win over the affections of their countrymen to him. These, bringing him word that he would have an opportunity of getting possession of Capua, if he brought his army into the neighbourhood in Campania, induced Hannibal to quit Samnium for Campania; though he hesitated, fluctuating between confidence and distrust, as the affair was of more importance than the authorities. He dismissed them, repeatedly charging them to confirm their promises by acts, and ordering them to return with a greater number, and some of their leading men. Hannibal himself orders his guide to conduct him into the territory of Casinum, being certified by persons acquainted with the country, that if he seized that pass he would deprive the Romans of a passage by which they might get out to the assistance of their allies. But his Punic accent, ill adapted to the pronunciation of Latin names, caused the guide to understand Casilinum, instead of Casinum; and leaving his former course, he descends through the territory of Allifae, Calatia, and Cales, into the plain of Stella, where, seeing the country enclosed on all sides by mountains and rivers, he calls the guide to him, and asks him where in the world he was? when he replied, that on that day he would lodge at Casilinum: then at length the error was discovered, and that Casinum lay at a great distance in another direction. Having scourged the guide with rods and crucified him, in order to strike terror into all others, he fortified a camp, and sent Maharbal with the cavalry into the Falernian territory to pillage. This depredation reached as far as the waters of Sinuessa; the Numidians caused destruction to a vast extent, but flight and consternation through a still wider space. Yet not even the terror of these things, when all around was consuming in the flames of war, could shake the fidelity of the allies; for this manifest reason, because they lived under a temperate and mild government: nor were they unwilling to submit to those who were superior to them, which is the only bond of fidelity.

But when the enemy's camp was pitched on the Vulturnus, and the most delightful country in Italy was being consumed by fire, and the farm-houses, on all hands, were smoking from the flames, whilst Fabius led his troops along the heights of Mount Massicus, then the strife had nearly been kindled anew, for they had been quiet for a few days, because, as the army had marched quicker than usual, they had supposed that the object of this haste was to save Campania from devastation; but when they arrived at the extreme ridge of Mount Massicus, and the enemy appeared under their eyes, burning the houses of the Falernian territory, and of the settlers of Sinuessa, and no mention made of battle, Minucius exclaims, "Are we come here to see our allies butchered, and their property burned, as a spectacle to be enjoyed? and if we are not moved with shame on account of any others, are we not on account of these citizens, whom our fathers sent as settlers to Sinuessa, that this frontier might be protected from the Samnite foe: which now not the neighbouring Samnite wastes with fire, but a Carthaginian foreigner, who has advanced even thus far from the remotest limits of the world, through our dilatoriness and inactivity? What! are we so degenerate from our ancestors as tamely to see that coast filled with Numidian and Moorish foes, along which our fathers considered it a disgrace to their government that the Carthaginian fleets should cruise? We, who erewhile, indignant at the storming of Saguntum, appealed not to men only, but to treaties and to gods, behold Hannibal scaling the walls of a Roman colony unmoved. The smoke from the flames of our farm-houses and lands comes into our eyes and faces; our ears ring with the cries of our weeping allies, imploring us to assist them oftener than the gods, while we here are leading our troops, like a herd of cattle, through shady forests and lonely paths, enveloped in clouds and woods. If Marcus Furius had resolved to recover the city from the Gauls, by thus traversing the tops of mountains and forests, in the same manner as this modern Camillus goes about to recover Italy from Hannibal, who has been sought out for our dictator in our distress, on account of his unparalleled talents, Rome would be the possession of the Gauls; and I fear lest, if we are thus dilatory, our ancestors will so often have preserved it only for the Carthaginians and Hannibal; but that man and true Roman, on the very day on which intelligence was brought him to Veii, that he was appointed dictator, on the authority of the fathers and the nomination of the people, came down into the plain, though the Janiculum was high enough to admit of his sitting down there, and viewing the enemy at a distance, and on that very day defeated the Gallic legions in the middle of the city, in the place where the Gallic piles are now, and on the following day on the Roman side of Gabii. What many years after this, when we were sent under the yoke at the Caudine forks by the Samnite foe, did Lucius Papirius Cursor take the yoke from the Roman neck and place it upon the proud Samnites, by traversing the heights of Samnium? or was it by pressing and besieging Luceria, and challenging the victorious enemy? A short time ago, what was it that gave victory to Caius Lutatius but expedition? for on the day after he caught sight of the enemy he surprised and overpowered the fleet, loaded with provisions, and encumbered of itself by its own implements and apparatus. It is folly to suppose that the war can be brought to a conclusion by sitting still, or by prayers, the troops must be armed and led down into the plain, that you may engage man to man. The Roman power has grown to its present height by courage and activity, and not by such dilatory measures as these, which the cowardly only designate as cautious." A crowd of Roman tribunes and knights poured round Minucius, while thus, as it were, haranguing, his presumptuous expressions reached the ears of the common soldiers, and had the question been submitted to the votes of the soldiers, they showed evidently that they would have preferred Minucius to Fabius for their general.

Fabius, keeping his attention fixed no less upon his own troops than on the enemy, first shows that his resolution was unconquered by the former. Though he well knew that his procrastination was disapproved, not only in his own camp, but by this time even at Rome, yet, inflexibly adhering to the same line of policy, he delayed through the remainder of the summer, in order that Hannibal, devoid of all hope of a battle, which he so earnestly desired, might now look out for a place for winter quarters, because that district was one of present, but not constant, supply, consisting, as it did, of plantations and vineyards, and all places planted luxurious rather than useful produce. This intelligence was to Fabius by his scouts. When he felt convinced that he would return by the same narrow pass through which he had entered the Falernian territory, he occupied Mount Callicula and Casilinum with a pretty strong guard. Which city, intersected by the river Vulturnus, divides the Falernian and Campanian territories. He himself leads back his troops along the same heights, having sent Lucius Hostilius Mancinus with four hundred of the allied cavalry to reconnoitre; who being one of the crowd of youths who had often heard the master of the horse fiercely haranguing, at first advanced after the manner of a scout, in order that he might observe the enemy in security; and when he saw the Numidians scattered widely throughout the villages, having gotten an opportunity, he also slew a few of them. But from that moment his mind was engrossed with the thoughts of a battle, and the injunctions of the dictator were forgotten, who had charged him, when he had advanced as far as he could with safety, to retreat before he came within the enemy's view. The Numidians, party after party, skirmishing and retreating, drew the general almost to their camp, to the fatigue of his men and horses. Then Karthalo, who had the command of the cavalry, charging at full speed, and having put them to flight before he came within a dart's throw, pursued them for five miles almost in a continuous course. Mancinus, when he saw that the enemy did not desist from the pursuit, and that there was no hope of escape, having encouraged his troops, turned back to the battle though inferior in every kind of force. Accordingly he himself, and the choicest of his cavalry, being surrounded, are cut to pieces. The rest in disorderly retreat fled first to Cales, and thence to the dictator, by ways almost impassable. It happened that on that day Minucius had formed a junction with Fabius, having been sent to secure with a guard the pass above Tarracina, which, contracted into a narrow gorge, overhangs the sea, in order that Hannibal might not be able to get into the Roman territory by the Appian way's being unguarded. The dictator and master of the horse, uniting their forces, lead them down into the road through which Hannibal was about to march his troops. The enemy was two miles from that place.

The following day the Carthaginians filled the whole road between the two camps with his troops in marching order; and though the Romans had taken their stand immediately under their rampart, having a decidedly superior position, yet the Carthaginian came up with his light horse and, with a view to provoke the enemy, carried on a kind of desultory attack, first charging and then retreating. The Roman line remained in its position. The battle was slow and more conformable to the wish of the dictator than of Hannibal. On the part of the Romans there fell two hundred, on the part of the enemy eight hundred. It now began to appear that Hannibal was hemmed in, the road to Casilinum being blockaded; and that while Capua, and Samnium, and so many wealthy allies in the rear of the Romans might supply them with provisions, the Carthaginian, on the other hand, must winter amid the rocks of Formiae and the sands and hideous swamps of Liternum. Nor did it escape Hannibal that he was assailed by his own arts; wherefore, since he could not escape by way of Casilinum, and since it was necessary to make for the mountains, and pass the summit of Callicula, lest in any place the Romans should attack his troops while enclosed in valleys; having hit upon a stratagem calculated to deceive the sight, and excite terror from its appearance, by means of which he might baffle the enemy, he resolved to come up by stealth to the mountains at the commencement of night. The preparation of his wily stratagem was of this description. Torches, collected from every part of the country, and bundles of rods and dry cuttings, are fastened before the horns of oxen, of which, wild and tame, he had driven away a great number among other plunder of the country: the number of oxen was made up to nearly two thousand. To Hasdrubal was assigned the task of driving to the mountains that herd, after having set fire to their horns, as soon as ever it was dark; particularly, if he could, over the passes beset by the enemy.

As soon as it was dark the camp was moved in silence; the oxen were driven a little in advance of the standards. When they arrived at the foot of the mountains and the narrow passes, the signal is immediately given for setting fire to their horns and driving them violently up the mountains before them. The mere terror excited by the flame, which cast a glare from their heads, and the heat now approaching the quick and the roots of their horns, drove on the oxen as if goaded by madness. By which dispersion, on a sudden all the surrounding shrubs were in a blaze, as if the mountains and woods had been on fire; and the unavailing tossing of their heads quickening the flame, exhibited an appearance as of men running to and fro on every side. Those who had been placed to guard the passage of the wood, when they saw fires on the tops of the mountains, and some over their own heads, concluding that they were surrounded, abandoned their post; making for the tops of the mountains in the direction in which the fewest fires blazed, as being the safest course; however they fell in with some oxen which had strayed from their herds. At first, when they beheld them at a distance, they stood fixed in amazement at the miracle, as it appeared to them, of creatures breathing fire; afterwards, when it showed itself to be a human stratagem, then, forsooth, concluding that there was an ambuscade, as they are hurrying away in flight, with increased alarm, they fall in also with the light-armed troops of the enemy. But the night, when the fear was equally shared, kept them from commencing the battle till morning. Meanwhile Hannibal, having marched his whole army through the pass, and having cut off some of the enemy in the very defile, pitches his camp in the country of Allifae.

Fabius perceived this tumult, but concluding that it was a snare, and being disinclined for a battle, particularly by night, kept his troops within the works. At break of day a battle took place under the summit of the mountain, in which the Romans, who were considerably superior in numbers, would have easily overpowered the light-armed of the enemy, cut off as they were from their party, had not a cohort of Spaniards, sent back by Hannibal for that very purpose, reached the spot. That body being more accustomed to mountains, and being more adapted, both from the agility of their limbs and also from the character of their arms, to skirmishing amid rocks and crags, easily foiled, by their manner of fighting, an enemy loaded with arms, accustomed to level ground and the steady kind of fighting. Separating from a contest thus by no means equal, they proceeded to their camps; the Spaniards almost all untouched; the Romans having lost a few. Fabius also moved his camp, and passing the defile, took up a position above Allifae, in a strong and elevated place. Then Hannibal, pretending to march to Rome through Samnium, came back as far as the Peligni, spreading devastation. Fabius led his troops along the heights midway between the army of the enemy and the city of Rome; neither avoiding him altogether, nor coming to an engagement. From the Peligni the Carthaginian turned his course, and going back again to Apulia, reached Geronium, a city deserted by its inhabitants from fear, as a part of its walls had fallen down together in ruins. The dictator formed a completely fortified camp in the territory of Larinum, and being recalled thence to Rome on account of some sacred rites, he not only urged the master of the horse, in virtue of his authority, but with advice and almost with prayers, that he would trust rather to prudence than fortune; and imitate him as a general rather than Sempronius and Flaminius; that he would not suppose that nothing had been achieved by having worn out nearly the whole summer in baffling the enemy; that physicians too sometimes gained more by rest than by motion and action. That it was no small thing to have ceased to be conquered by an enemy so often victorious, and to have taken breath after successive disasters. Having thus unavailingly admonished the master of the horse, he set out for Rome.

In the beginning of the summer in which these events occurred, the war commenced by land and sea in Spain also. To the number of ships which he had received from his brother, equipped and ready for action, Hasdrubal added ten. The fleet of forty ships he delivered to Himilco: and thus setting out from Carthage, kept his ships near the land, while he led his army along the shore, ready to engage with whichever part of his forces the enemy might fall in with. Cneius Scipio, when he heard that the enemy had quitted his winter quarters, at first formed the same plan; but afterwards, not daring to engage him by land, from a great rumour of fresh auxiliaries, he advances to meet him with a fleet of thirty-five ships, having put some chosen soldiers on board. Setting out from Tarraco, on the second day, he reached a convenient station, ten miles from the mouth of the Iberus. Two ships of the Massilians, sent forward from that place reconnoitering, brought word back that the Carthaginian fleet was stationed in the mouth of the river, and that the camp was pitched upon the bank. In order, therefore, to overpower them while off their guard and incautious, by a universal and wide-spread terror, he weighed anchor and advanced. In Spain there are several towers placed in high situations, which they employ both as watch-towers and as places of defence against pirates. From them first, a view of the ships of the enemy having been obtained, the signal was given to Hasdrubal; and a tumult arose in the camp, and on land sooner than on the ships and at sea; the dashing of the oars and other nautical noises not being yet distinctly heard, nor the promontories disclosing the fleet. Upon this, suddenly one horseman after another, sent out by Hasdrubal, orders those who were strolling upon the shore or resting quietly in their tents, expecting any thing rather than the enemy and a battle on that day, immediately to embark and take up arms: that the Roman fleet was now a short distance from the harbour. The horsemen, despatched in every direction, delivered these orders; and presently Hasdrubal himself comes up with the main army. All places resound with noises of various kinds; the soldiers and rowers hurrying together to the ships, rather like men running away from the land than marching to battle. Scarcely had all embarked, when some, unfastening the hawsers, are carried out against the anchors; others cut their cables, that nothing might impede them; and by doing every thing with hurry and precipitation, the duties of mariners were impeded by the preparations of the soldiers, and the soldiers were prevented from taking and preparing for action their arms, by the bustle of the mariners. And now the Roman was not only approaching, but had drawn up his ships for the battle. The Carthaginians, therefore, thrown into disorder, not more by the enemy and the battle than by their own tumult, having rather made an attempt at fighting than commenced a battle, turned their fleet for flight; and as the mouth of the river which was before them could not be entered in so broad a line, and by so many pressing in at the same time, they ran their ships on shore in every part. And being received, some in the shallows, and others on the dry shore, some armed and some unarmed, they escaped to their friends, who were drawn up in battle-array over the shore. Two Carthaginian ships were captured and four sunk on the first encounter.

The Romans, though the enemy was master of the shore, and they saw armed troops lining the whole bank, promptly pursuing the discomfited fleet of the enemy, towed out into the deep all the ships which had not either shattered their prows by the violence with which they struck the shore, or set their keels fast in the shallows. They captured as many as twenty-five out of forty. Nor was that the most splendid result of their victory: but they became masters of the whole sea on that coast by one slight battle; advancing, then, with their fleet to Honosca, and making a descent from the ships upon the coast, when they had taken the city by storm and pillaged it, they afterwards made for Carthage: then devastating the whole surrounding country, they, lastly, set fire also to the buildings contiguous to the wall and gates. Thence the fleet laden with plunder, arrived at Longuntica, where a great quantity of oakum for naval purposes had been collected by Hasdrubal: of this, taking away as much as was sufficient for their necessities, they burnt all the rest. Nor did they only sail by the prominent coasts of the continent, but crossed over into the island Ebusus; where, having with the utmost exertion, but in vain, carried on operations against the city, which is the capital of the island, for two days, when they found that time was wasted to no purpose upon a hopeless task, they turned their efforts to the devastation of the country; and having plundered and fired several villages, and acquired a greater booty than they had obtained on the continent, they retired to their ships, when ambassadors from the Baliares came to Scipio to sue for peace. From this place the fleet sailed back, and returned to the hither parts of the province, whither ambassadors of all the people who dwell on the Iberus, and of many people in the most distant parts of Spain, assembled. But the number of states who really became subject to the authority and dominion of the Romans, and gave hostages, amounted to upwards of one hundred and twenty. The Roman therefore, relying sufficiently on his land forces also, advanced as far as the pass of Castulo. Hasdrubal retired into Lusitania, and nearer the ocean.

After this, it seemed probable that the remainder of the summer would be peaceful; and so it would have been with regard to the Punic enemy: but besides that the tempers of the Spaniards themselves are naturally restless, and eager for innovation, Mandonius, together with Indibilis, who had formerly been petty prince of the Ilergetes, having stirred up their countrymen, came to lay waste the peaceful country of the Roman allies, after the Romans had retired from the pass to the sea-coast. A military tribune with some light-armed auxiliaries being sent against these by Scipio, with a small effort put them all to the rout, as being but a disorderly band: some having been captured and slain, a great portion of them were deprived of their arms. This disturbance, however, brought back Hasdrubal, who was retiring to the ocean, to protect his allies on this side the Iberus. The Carthaginian camp was in the territory of Ilercao, the Roman camp at the New Fleet, when unexpected intelligence turned the war into another quarter. The Celtiberians, who had sent the chief men of their country as ambassadors to the Romans, and had given them hostages, aroused by a message from Scipio, take up arms and invade the province of the Carthaginians with a powerful army; take three towns by storm; and after that, encountering Hasdrubal himself in two battles with, splendid success, slew fifteen thousand and captured four thousand, together with many military standards.

This being the state of affairs in Spain, Publius Scipio came into his province, having been sent thither by the senate, his command being continued to him after his consulate, with thirty long ships, eight thousand soldiers, and a large importation of provisions. That fleet, swelled to an enormous size by a multitude of transports, being descried at a distance, entered safe the port of Tarraco, to the great joy of the citizens and allies. Landing his troops there, Scipio set out and formed a junction with his brother, and thenceforward they prosecuted the war with united courage and counsels. While the Carthaginians, therefore, were occupied with the Celtiberian war, they promptly crossed the Iberus, and not seeing any enemy, pursue their course to Saguntum; for it was reported that the hostages from every part of Spain, having been consigned to custody, were kept in the citadel of that place under a small guard. That pledge alone checked the affections of all the people of Spain, which were inclined towards an alliance with the Romans; lest the guilt of their defection should be expiated with the blood of their children. One man, by a stratagem more subtle than honourable, liberated the Spaniards from this restraint. There was at Saguntum a noble Spaniard, named Abelux, hitherto faithful to the Carthaginians, but now (such are for the most part the dispositions of barbarians) had changed his attachment with fortune; but considering that a deserter going over to enemies without the betraying of something valuable, would be looked upon only as a stigmatized and worthless individual, was solicitous to render as great a service as possible to his new confederates. Having turned over in his mind, then, the various means which, under the favour of fortune, he might employ, in preference to every other, he applied himself to the delivering up of the hostages; concluding that this one thing, above all others, would gain the Romans the friendship of the Spanish chieftains. But since he knew that the guards of the hostages would do nothing without the authority of Bostar, the governor, he addresses himself with craft to Bostar himself. Bostar had his camp without the city, just upon the shore, in order to preclude the approach of the Romans from that quarter. He informs him, taken aside to a secret place, and as if uninformed, in what position affairs were: "That hitherto fear had withheld the minds of the Spaniards to them, because the Romans were at a great distance: that now the Roman camp was on this side the Iberus, a secure fortress and asylum for such as desired a change, that therefore those whom fear could not bind should be attached by kindness and favour." When Bostar, in astonishment, earnestly asked him, what sudden gift of so much importance that could be, he replied, "Send back the hostages to their states: this will be an acceptable boon, privately to their parents, who possess the greatest influence in their respective states, and publicly to the people. Every man wishes to have confidence reposed in him; and confidence reposed generally enforces the fidelity itself. The office of restoring the hostages to their homes, I request for myself; that I may enhance my project by the trouble bestowed, and that I may add as much value as I can to a service in its own intrinsic nature so acceptable." When he had persuaded the man, who was not cunning as compared with Carthaginian minds in general, having gone secretly and by night to the outposts of the enemy, he met with some auxiliary Spaniards; and having been brought by them into the presence of Scipio, he explains what brought him. Pledges of fidelity having been given and received, and the time and place for delivering the hostages having been appointed, he returns to Saguntum. The following day he spent with Bostar, in taking his commands for effecting the business; having so arranged it, that he should go by night, in order that he might escape the observation of the enemy, he was dismissed; and awakening the guards of the youths at the hour agreed upon with them, set out and led them, as if unconsciously, into a snare prepared by his own deceit. They were brought to the Roman camp, and every thing else respecting the restoration of the hostages was transacted as had been agreed upon with Bostar, and in the same course as if the affair had been carried on in the name of the Carthaginians. But the favour of the Romans was somewhat greater than that of the Carthaginians would have been in a similar case; for misfortune and fear might have seemed to have softened them, who had been found oppressive and haughty in prosperity. The Roman, on the contrary, on his first arrival, having been unknown to them before, had begun with an act of clemency and liberality: and Abelux, a man of prudence, did not seem likely to have changed his allies without good cause. Accordingly all began, with great unanimity, to meditate a revolt; and hostilities would immediately have commenced, had not the winter intervened, which compelled the Romans, and the Carthaginians also, to retire to shelter.

Such were the transactions in Spain also during the second summer of the Punic war; while in Italy the prudent delay of Fabius had procured the Romans some intermission from disasters; which conduct, as it kept Hannibal disturbed with no ordinary degree of anxiety, for it proved to him that the Romans had at length selected a general who would carry on the war with prudence, and not in dependence on fortune; so was it treated with contempt by his countrymen, both in the camp and in the city; particularly after that a battle had been fought during his absence from the temerity of the master of the horse, in its issue, as I may justly designate it, rather joyful than successful. Two causes were added to augment the unpopularity of the dictator: one arising out of a stratagem and artful procedure of Hannibal; for the farm of the dictator having been pointed out to him by deserters, he ordered that the fire and sword and every outrage of enemies should be restrained from it alone, while all around were levelled with the ground; in order that it might appear to have been the term of some secret compact: the other from an act of his own, at first perhaps suspicious, because in it he had not waited for the authority of the senate, but in the result turning unequivocally to his highest credit, with relation to the exchange of prisoners: for, as was the case in the first Punic war, an agreement had been made between the Roman and Carthaginian generals, that whichever received more prisoners than he restored, should give two pounds and a half of silver for every man. And when the Roman had received two hundred and forty-seven more than the Carthaginian, and the silver which was due for them, after the matter had been frequently agitated in the senate, was not promptly supplied, because he had not consulted the fathers, he sent his son Quintus to Rome and sold his farm, uninjured by the enemy, and thus redeemed the public credit at his own private expense. Hannibal lay in a fixed camp before the walls of Geronium, which city he had captured and burnt, leaving only a few buildings for the purpose of granaries: thence he was in the habit of sending out two-thirds of his forces to forage; with the third part kept in readiness, he himself remained on guard, both as a protection to his camp, and for the purpose of looking out, if from any quarter an attack should be made upon his foragers.

The Roman army was at that time in the territory of Larinum. Minucius, the master of the horse, had the command of it; the dictator, as was before mentioned, having gone to the city. But the camp, which had been pitched in an elevated and secure situation, was now brought down into the plain; plans of a bolder character, agreeably with the temper of the general, were in agitation; and either an attack was to be made upon the scattered foragers, or upon the camp now left with an inconsiderable guard. Nor did it escape the observation of Hannibal, that the plan of the war had been changed with the general, and that the enemy would act with more boldness than counsel. Hannibal himself too, which one would scarcely credit, though the enemy was near, despatched a third part of his troops to forage, retaining the remaining two-thirds in the camp. After that he advanced his camp itself nearer to the enemy, to a hill within the enemy's view, nearly two miles from Geronium; that they might be aware that he was on the alert to protect his foragers if any attack should be made upon them. Then he discovered an eminence nearer to, and commanding the very camp of the Romans: and because if he marched openly in the day-time to occupy it, the enemy would doubtless anticipate him by a shorter way, the Numidians having been sent privately in the night, took possession of it. These, occupying this position, the Romans, the next day, despising the smallness of their numbers, dislodge, and transfer their camp thither themselves. There was now, therefore, but a very small space between rampart and rampart, and that the Roman line had almost entirely filled; at the same time the cavalry, with the light infantry sent out against the foragers through the opposite part of the camp, effected a slaughter and flight of the scattered enemy far and wide. Nor dared Hannibal hazard a regular battle; because with so few troops, that he would scarcely be able to protect his camp if attacked. And now he carried on the war (for part of his army was away) according to the plans of Fabius, by sitting still and creating delays. He had also withdrawn his troops to their former camp, which was before the walls of Geronium. Some authors affirm that they fought in regular line, and with encountering standards; that in the first encounter the Carthaginian was driven in disorder quite to his camp; but that, a sally thence having been suddenly made all at once, the Romans in their turn became alarmed; that after that the battle was restored by the arrival of Numerius Decimius the Samnite; that this man, the first in family and fortune, not only in Bovianum, whence he came, but in all Samnium, when conducting by command of the dictator to the camp eight thousand infantry and five hundred horse, having shown himself on the rear of Hannibal, seemed to both parties to be a fresh reinforcement coming with Quintus Fabius from Rome; that Hannibal, fearing also some ambuscade, withdrew his troops; and that the Roman, aided by the Samnite, pursuing him, took by storm two forts on that day; that six thousand of the enemy were slain, and about five thousand of the Romans; but that though the loss was so nearly equal, intelligence was conveyed to Rome of a signal victory; and a letter from the master of the horse still more presumptuous.

These things were very frequently discussed, both in the senate and assemblies. When the dictator alone, while joy pervaded the city, attached no credit to the report or letter; and granting that all were true, affirmed that he feared more from success than failure; then Marcus Metilius, a Plebeian tribune, declares that such conduct surely could not be endured. That the dictator, not only when present was an obstacle to the right management of the affair, but also being absent from the camp, opposed it still when achieved; that he studiously dallied in his conduct of the war, that he might continue the longer in office, and that he might have the sole command both at Rome and in the army. Since one of the consuls had fallen in battle, and the other was removed to a distance from Italy, under pretext of pursuing a Carthaginian fleet; and the two praetors were occupied in Sicily and Sardinia, neither of which provinces required a praetor at this time. That Marcus Minucius, the master of the horse, was almost put under a guard, lest he should see the enemy, and carry on any warlike operation. That therefore, by Hercules, not only Samnium, which had now been yielded to the Carthaginians, as if it had been land beyond the Iberus, but the Campanian, Calenian, and Falernian territories had been devastated, while the dictator was sitting down at Casilinum, protecting his own farm with the legions of the Roman people: that the army, eager for battle, as well as the master of the horse, were kept back almost imprisoned within the rampart: that their arms were taken out of their hands, as from captured enemies: at length, as soon as ever the dictator had gone away, having marched out beyond their rampart, that they had routed the enemy and put him to flight. On account of which circumstances, had the Roman commons retained their ancient spirit, that he would have boldly proposed to them to annul the authority of Quintus Fabius; but now he would bring forward a moderate proposition, to make the authority of the master of the horse and the dictator equal; and that even then Quintus Fabius should not be sent to the army, till he had substituted a consul in the room of Caius Flaminius. The dictator kept away from the popular assemblies, in which he did not command a favourable hearing, and even in the senate he was not heard with favourable ears, when his eloquence was employed in praising the enemy, and attributing the disasters of the last two years to the temerity and unskilfulness of the generals; and when he declared that the master of the horse ought to be called to account for having fought contrary to his injunction. That "if the supreme command and administration of affairs were intrusted to him, he would soon take care that men should know, that to a good general fortune was not of great importance; that prudence and conduct governed every thing; that it was more glorious for him to have saved the army at a crisis, and without disgrace, than to have slain many thousands of the enemy." Speeches of this kind having been made without effect, and Marcus Atilius Regulus created consul, that he might not be present to dispute respecting the right of command, he withdrew to the army on the night preceding the day on which the proposition was to be decided. When there was an assembly of the people at break of day, a secret displeasure towards the dictator, and favour towards the master of the horse, rather possessed their minds, than that men had not sufficient resolution to advise a measure which was agreeable to the public; and though favour carried it, influence was wanting to the bill. One man indeed was found who recommended the law, Caius Terentius Varro, who had been praetor in the former year, sprung not only from humble but mean parentage. They report that his father was a butcher, the retailer of his own meat, and that he employed this very son in the servile offices of that trade.

This young man, when a fortune left him by his father, acquired in such a traffic, had inspired him with the hope of a higher condition, and the gown and forum were the objects of his choice, by declaiming vehemently in behalf of men and causes of the lowest kind, in opposition to the interest and character of the good, first came to the notice of the people, and then to offices of honour. Having passed through the offices of quaestor, plebeian, and curule aedile, and, lastly, that of praetor; when now he raised his mind to the hope of the consulship, he courted the gale of popular favour by maligning the dictator, and received alone the credit of the decree of the people. All men, both at Rome and in the army, both friends and foes, except the dictator himself, considered this measure to have been passed as an insult to him; but the dictator himself bore the wrong which the infuriated people had put upon him, with the same gravity with which he endured the charges against him which his enemies laid before the multitude; and receiving the letter containing a decree of the senate respecting the equalization of the command while on his journey, satisfied that an equal share of military skill was not imparted together with the equal share of command, he returned to the army with a mind unsubdued alike by his fellow-citizens and by the enemy.

But Minucius, who, in consequence of his success and the favour of the populace, was scarcely endurable before now especially, unrestrained by shame or moderation, boasted not more in having conquered Hannibal than Quintus Fabius. "That he, who had been sought out in their distress as the only general, and as a match for Hannibal; that he, an event which no record of history contains, was by the order of the people placed upon an equal footing with himself,--a superior with an inferior officer, a dictator with a master of the horse,--in that very city wherein the masters of the horse are wont to crouch and tremble at the rods and axes of the dictator. With such splendour had his valour and success shone forth. That he therefore would follow up his own good fortune, though the dictator persisted in his delay and sloth; measures condemned alike by the sentence of gods and men." Accordingly, on the first day on which he met Quintus Fabius, he intimated "that the first point to be settled was the manner in which they should employ the command thus equalized. That he was of opinion that the best plan would be for them to be invested with the supreme authority and command either on alternate days, or, if longer intervals were more agreeable, for any determinate periods; in order that the person in command might be a match for the enemy, not only in judgment, but in strength, if any opportunity for action should occur." Fabius by no means approved of this proposition: he said, "that Fortune would have at her disposal all things which the rashness of his colleague had; that his command had been shared with him, and not taken away; that he would never, therefore, willingly withdraw from conducting the war, in whatever post he could with prudence and discretion: nor would he divide the command with him with respect to times or days, but that he would divide the army, and that he would preserve, by his own measures, so much as he could, since it was not allowed him to save the whole." Thus he carried it, that, as was the custom of consuls, they should divide the legions between them: the first and fourth fell to the lot of Minucius, the second and third to Fabius. They likewise divided equally between them the cavalry, the auxiliaries of the allies and of the Latin name. The master of the horse was desirous also that they should have separate camps.

From this Hannibal derived a twofold joy, for nothing which was going on among the enemy escaped him, the deserters revealing many things, and he himself examining by his own scouts. For he considered that he should be able to entrap the unrestrained temerity of Minucius by his usual arts, and that half the force of the sagacity of Fabius had vanished. There was an eminence between the camps of Minucius and the Carthaginians, whoever occupied it would evidently render the position of his enemy less advantageous. Hannibal was not so desirous of gaining it without a contest, though that were worth his while, as to bring on a quarrel with Minucius, who, he well knew, would at all times throw himself in his way to oppose him. All the intervening ground was at first sight unavailable to one who wished to plant an ambuscade, because it not only had not any part that was woody, but none even covered with brambles, but in reality formed by nature to cover an ambush, so much the more, because no such deception could be apprehended in a naked valley and there were in its curvatures hollow rocks, such that some of them were capable of containing two hundred armed men. Within these recesses, five thousand infantry and cavalry are secreted, as many as could conveniently occupy each. Lest, however, in any part, either the motion of any one of them thoughtlessly coming out, or the glittering of their arms, should discover the stratagem in so open a valley, by sending out a few troops at break of day to occupy the before-mentioned eminence, he diverts the attention of the enemy. Immediately, on the first view of them, the smallness of their number was treated with contempt, and each man began to request for himself the task of dislodging the enemy. The general himself, among the most headstrong and absurd, calls to arms to go and seize the place, and inveighs against the enemy with vain presumption and menaces. First, he despatches his light-armed, after that his cavalry, in a close body, lastly, perceiving that succours were also being sent to the enemy, he marches with his legions drawn up in order of battle. Hannibal also, sending band after band, as the contest increased, as aids to his men when distressed, had now completed a regular army, and a battle was fought with the entire strength of both sides. First, the light infantry of the Romans, approaching the eminence, which was preoccupied, from the lower ground, being repulsed and pushed down, spread a terror among the cavalry, which was marching up also and fled back to the standards of the legions: the line of infantry alone stood fearless amidst the panic-struck; and it appeared that they would by no means have been inferior to the enemy, had it been a regular and open battle, so much confidence did the successful battle a few days before inspire. But the troops in ambush created such confusion and alarm, by charging them on both flanks and on their rear, that no one had spirit enough left to fight, or hope enough to try to escape.

Then Fabius, first having heard the shout of the terrified troops, and then having gotten a view of their disordered line, exclaims, "It is so; and no sooner than I feared, has adverse fortune overtaken temerity. Equalled to Fabius in command, he sees that Hannibal is superior to him in courage and in fortune. But another will be the time for reproaches and resentment. Now advance your standards beyond the rampart: let us wrest the victory from the enemy, and a confession of their error from our countrymen." A great part of the troops having been now slain, and the rest looking about for a way to escape; the army of Fabius showed itself on a sudden for their help, as if sent down from heaven. And thus, before he came within a dart's throw or joined battle, he both stayed his friends from a precipitate flight and the enemy from excessive fierceness of fighting. Those who had been scattered up and down, their ranks being broken, fled for refuge from every quarter to the fresh army; those who had fled together in parties, turning upon the enemy, now forming a circle, retreat slowly, now concentrating themselves, stand firm. And now the vanquished and the fresh army had nearly formed one line, and were bearing their standards against the enemy, when the Carthaginians sounded a retreat; Hannibal openly declaring that though he had conquered Minucius, he was himself conquered by Fabius. The greater part of the day having been thus consumed with varying success, Minucius calling together his soldiers, when they had returned to the camp, thus addressed them: "I have often heard, soldiers, that he is the greatest man who himself counsels what is expedient, and that he who listens to the man who gives good advice is the second, but that he who neither himself is capable of counselling, and knows not how to obey another, is of the lowest order of mind. Since the first place of mind and talent has been denied us, let us strive to obtain the second and intermediate kind, and while we are learning to command, let us prevail upon ourselves to submit to a man of prudence. Let us join camps with Fabius, and, carrying our standards to his pavilion, when I have saluted him as my parent, which he deserves on account of the service he has rendered us and of his dignity; you, my soldiers, shall salute those men as patrons, whose arms and right-hands just now protected you: and if this day has conferred nothing else upon us, it hath at least conferred upon us the glory of possessing grateful hearts."

The signal being given, there was a general call to collect the baggage: then setting out, and proceeding in order of march to the dictator's camp, they excited at once the surprise of the dictator himself and all around him. When the standards were planted before the tribunal, the master of the horse, advancing before the rest, having saluted Fabius as father, and the whole body of his troops having, with one voice, saluted the soldiers who surrounded him as patrons, said, "To my parents, dictator, to whom I have just now equalled you, only in name, as far as I could express myself, I am indebted for my life only; to you I owe both my own preservation and that of all these soldiers. That order of the people, therefore, with which I have been oppressed rather than honoured, I first cancel and annul, and (may it be auspicious to me and you, and to these your armies, to the preserved and the preserver,) I return to your authority and auspices, and restore to you these standards and these legions, and I entreat you that, being reconciled, you would order that I may retain the mastership of the horse, and that these soldiers may each of them retain their ranks." After that hands were joined, and when the assembly was dismissed, the soldiers were kindly and hospitably invited by those known to them and unknown: and that day, from having been a little while ago gloomy in the extreme, and almost accursed, was turned into a day of joy. At Rome, the report of the action was conveyed thither, and was afterwards confirmed, not less by letters from the common soldiers of both armies, than from the generals themselves, all men individually extolled Maximus to the skies. His renown was equal with Hannibal, and his enemies the Carthaginians and then at length they began to feel that they were engaged in war with Romans, and in Italy. For the two preceding years they entertained so utter a contempt for the Roman generals and soldiers, that they could scarcely believe that they were waging war with the same nation which their fathers had reported to them as being so formidable. They relate also, that Hannibal said, as he returned from the field that at length that cloud, which was used to settle on the tops of the mountains, had sent down a shower with a storm.

While these events occur in Italy, Cneius Servilius Geminus, the consul, having sailed round the coast of Sardinia and Corsica with a fleet of one hundred and twenty ships, and received hostages from both places, crossed over into Africa, and before he made a descent upon the continent, having laid waste the island of Meninx, and received from the inhabitants of Cercina ten talents of silver, in order that their fields too might not be burnt and pillaged, he approached the shores of Africa, and landed his troops. Thence the soldiers were led out to plunder, and the crews scattered about just as if they were plundering uninhabited islands and thus, carelessly falling upon an ambuscade, when they were surrounded--the ignorant of the country by those acquainted with it, the straggling by those in close array, they were driven back to then ships in ignominious flight, and with great carnage. As many as one thousand men, together with Sempionius Blaesus, the quaestor, having been lost, the fleet hastily setting sail from the shore, which was crowded with the enemy, proceeded direct for Italy, and was given up at Lilybaeum to Titus Otacilius, the praetor, that it might be taken back to Rome by his lieutenant, Publius Suia. The consul himself, proceeding through Sicily on foot, crossed the strait into Italy, summoned, as well as his colleague, Marcus Atilius, by a letter from Quintus Fabius, to receive the armies from him, as the period of his command, which was six months, had nearly expired. Almost all the annalists record that Fabius conducted the war against Hannibal, as dictator Caelius also writes, that he was the first dictator created by the people. But it has escaped Caelius and all the others that Cneius Servilius, the consul, who was then a long way from home in Gaul, which was his province, was the only person who possessed the right of appointing a dictator, and that as the state, terrified by the disasters which had just befallen it, could not abide the delay, it had recourse to the determination that the people should create a prodictator, that his subsequent achievements, his singular renown as a general, and his descendants, who exaggerated the inscription of his statue, easily brought it about that he should be called dictator, instead of prodictator.

The consuls, Atilius and Geminus Servilius, having received, the former the army of Fabius, the latter that of Minucius, and fortified their winter quarters in good time, (it was the close of the autumn,) carried on the war with the most perfect unanimity, according to the plans of Fabius. In many places they fell upon the troops of Hannibal when out on foraging excursions, availing themselves of the opportunity, and both harassing their march and intercepting the stragglers. They did not come to the chance of a general battle, which the enemy tried by every artifice to bring about. And Hannibal was so straitened by the want of provisions, that had he not feared in retiring the appearance of flight, he would have returned to Gaul, no hope being left of being able to subsist an army in those quarters, if the ensuing consuls should carry on the war upon the same plan. The war having been arrested in its progress at Geronium, the winter interrupting it, ambassadors from Naples came to Rome. They carried into the senate-house forty golden goblets, of great weight, and spoke to this effect. "That they knew the treasury of the Romans was exhausted by the war, and since the war was carried on alike in defence of the cities and the lands of the allies, and of the empire and city of Rome, the capital and citadel of Italy, that the Neapolitans thought it but fair that they should assist the Roman people with whatever gold had been left them by their ancestors as well for the decoration of their temples as for the relief of misfortune. If they had thought that there was any resource in themselves, that they would have offered it with the same zeal. That the Roman fathers and people would render an acceptable service to them, if they would consider all the goods of the Neapolitans as their own, and if they would think them deserving, that they should accept a present at their hands, rendered valuable and of consequence rather by the spirit and affection of those who gave it with cheerfulness, than by its intrinsic worth." Thanks were given to the ambassadors for their munificence and attention, and the goblet of least weight was accepted.

During the same days a Carthaginian spy, who had escaped for two years, was apprehended at Rome, and his hands having been cut off, was let go: and twenty-five slaves were crucified for forming a conspiracy in the Campus Martius; his liberty was given to the informer, and twenty thousand asses of the heavy standard. Ambassadors were also sent to Philip, king of the Macedonians, to demand Demetrius of Pharia, who, having been vanquished in war had fled to him. Others were sent to the Ligurians, to expostulate with them for having assisted the Carthaginians with their substance and with auxiliaries; and, at the same time, to take a near view of what was going on amongst the Boii and Insubrians. Ambassadors were also sent to the Illyrians to king Pineus, to demand the tribute, the day of payment of which had passed; or if he wished to postpone the day, to receive hostages. Thus, though an arduous war was on their shoulders, no attention to any one concern in any part of the world, however remote, escapes the Romans. It was made a matter of superstitious fear also, that the temple of Concord, which Lucius Manlius, the praetor, had vowed in Gaul two years ago, on occasion of a mutiny, had not been contracted for to that day. Accordingly, Cneius Pupius and Caeso Quinctius Flaminius, created duumviri by Marcus Aemilius, the city praetor, for that purpose, contract for the building a temple in the citadel. By the same praetor a letter was sent to the consuls, agreeably to a decree of the senate, to the effect that, if they thought proper, one of them should come to Rome to elect consuls; and that he would proclaim the election for whatever day they might name. To this it was replied by the consuls, that they could not leave the enemy without detriment to the public; that it would be better, therefore, that the election should be held by an interrex, than that one of the consuls should be called away from the war. It appeared more proper to the fathers, that a dictator should be nominated by a consul, for the purpose of holding the election Lucius Veturius Philo was nominated, who chose Manius Pomponius Matho master of the horse. These having been created with some defect, they were ordered to give up their appointment on the fourteenth day; and the state came to an interregnum.

To the consuls the authority was continued for a year longer. Caius Claudius Centho, son of Appius, and then Publius Cornelius Asina, were appointed interreges by the fathers. During the interregnum of the latter the election was held with a violent contest between the patricians and the people, Caius Terentius Varro, whom, as a man of their own order, commended to their favour by inveighing against the patricians and by other popular arts; who had acquired celebrity by maligning others, by undermining the influence of Fabius, and bringing into contempt the dictatorial authority, the commons strove to raise to the consulship. The patricians opposed him with all their might, lest men, by inveighing against them, should come to be placed on an equality with them. Quintus Boebius Herennius, a plebeian tribune, and kinsman of Caius Terentius, by criminating not only the senate, but the augurs also, for having prevented the dictator from completing the election, by the odium cast upon them, conciliated favour to his own candidate. He asserted, "that Hannibal had been brought into Italy by the nobility, who had for many years been desirous of a war. That by the fraudulent machinations of the same persons the war had been protracted, whereas it might have been brought to a conclusion. That it had appeared that the war could be maintained with an army consisting of four legions in all, from Marcus Minucius's having fought with success in the absence of Fabius. That two legions had been exposed to be slain by the enemy, and were afterwards rescued from absolute destruction, in order that that man might be saluted as father and patron, who had deprived them of victory before he delivered them from defeat. That subsequently the consuls, pursuing the plans of Fabius, had protracted the war, whereas it was in their power to have put a period to it. That this was an agreement made by the nobility in general; nor would they ever have the war concluded till they had created a consul really plebeian; that is, a new man: for that plebeians who had attained nobility were now initiated into the mysteries, and had begun to look down with contempt upon plebeians, from the moment they ceased to be despised by the patricians. Who was not fully aware that their end and object was, that an interregnum should be formed, in order that the elections might be under the influence of the patricians? That both the consuls had that in view in tarrying with the army: and that afterwards a dictator having been nominated to hold the election contrary to their wishes, they had carried it, as it were, by storm, that the augurs should declare the dictator informally elected. That they therefore had gotten an interregnum; but one consulate was surely in the hands of the Roman people. Thus the people would have that at their own unbiassed disposal, and that they would confer it on that man who would rather conquer in reality than lengthen the term of his command."

When the people had been inflamed by these harangues, though there were three patrician candidates for the consulship, Publius Cornelius Merenda, Lucius Manlius Vulso, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, two of plebeian families, who had been ennobled, Caius Atilius Serranus and Quintus Aelius Paetus, one of whom was pontiff, the other an augur, Terentius alone was created consul, that the comitia for choosing his colleague might be in his own management. Then the nobles, finding that the competitors whom they had set up were not strong enough, though he strenuously refused for a long time, prevail upon Aemilius Paulus, who was strongly opposed to the people, to become a candidate. He had been consul before with Marcus Livius, and from the condemnation of his colleague, and almost of himself, had come off scathed. On the next day of the election, all who had opposed Varro withdrawing, he is given to the consul rather as a match to oppose him than as a colleague. Afterwards the assembly for the election of praetors was held, and Manius Pomponius Matho and Publius Furius Philus were chosen. The city lot for the administration of justice at Rome fell to the lot of Pomponius; between Roman citizens and foreigners, to Philus. Two praetors were added, Marcus Claudius Marcellus for Sicily, and Lucius Postumius for Gaul. These were all appointed in their absence; nor was an honour which he had not previously borne committed to any one of them, except the consul Terentius, several brave and able men having been passed over, because, at such a juncture, it did not appear advisable that a new office should be committed to any one.

The forces also were augmented. But how great was the augmentation of infantry and cavalry authors vary so much, that I scarcely dare positively assert. Some state, that ten thousand soldiers were levied as a reinforcement; others, four fresh legions, that there might be eight legions in service. It is said also, that the complement of the legion was increased in respect both to foot and horse, one thousand foot and one hundred horse being added to each, so that each might contain five thousand foot and three hundred horse; and that the allies furnished twice as many cavalry, and an equal number of infantry. Some authorities affirm that there were eighty-seven thousand two hundred soldiers in the Roman camp when the battle of Cannae was fought. There is no dispute, that the war was prosecuted with greater energy and spirit than during former years, because the dictator had given them a hope that the enemy might be subdued. Before, however, the new-raised legions marched from the city, the decemviri were ordered to have recourse to and inspect the sacred volumes, on account of persons having been generally alarmed by extraordinary prodigies; for intelligence was brought, that it had rained stones on the Aventine at Rome and at Aricia at the same time. That among the Sabines, statues had sweated blood copiously, and at Caere the waters had flowed warm, from a fountain. The latter prodigy excited a greater degree of alarm, because it had frequently occurred. In a street called the Arched Way, near the Campus Martius, several men were struck by lightning and killed. These prodigies were expiated according to the books. Ambassadors from Paestum brought some golden goblets to Rome; they were thanked, as the Neapolitans were, but the gold was not accepted.

During the same time a fleet from Hiero arrived at Ostia with a large cargo of supplies. The Syracusan ambassadors, on being introduced into the senate, delivered this message: "That king Hiero was so much affected at the slaughter announced to him of Caius Flaminius the consul and his troops, that he could not have been more distressed at any disasters which could have befallen himself or his own kingdom; and accordingly, though he was well aware that the greatness of the Roman people was almost more admirable in adversity than prosperity, he had nevertheless sent every thing which good and faithful allies are wont to contribute to assist the operations of war, which he earnestly implored the conscript fathers not to refuse to accept. First of all, for the sake of the omen, they had brought a golden statue of Victory, of three hundred pounds' weight, which they begged them to accept, keep by them, and hold as their own peculiar and lasting possession. That they had also brought three hundred thousand pecks of wheat, and two hundred thousand of barley, that there might be no want of provisions, and that as much more as might be necessary they would convey, as a supply, to whatever place they might appoint. He knew that the Roman people employed no legionary troops or cavalry who were not Romans, or of the Latin confederacy, that he had seen foreign auxiliary as well as native light-armed troops in the Roman camps, he had, therefore, sent one thousand archers and slingers, a suitable force against the Bahares and Moors, and other nations which fought with missile weapons" To these presents they added also advice "That the praetor to whose lot the province of Sicily had fallen, should pass a fleet over to Africa, that the enemy also might have a war in their own country, and that less liberty should be afforded them of sending reinforcements to Hannibal" The senate thus replied to the king. "That Hiero was a good man and an admirable ally, and that from the time he first formed a friendship with the Roman people he had uniformly cultivated a spirit of fidelity, and had munificently assisted the Roman cause at all times and in every place. That this was, as it ought to be, a cause of gratitude to the Roman people. That the Roman people had not accepted gold which had been brought them also from certain states, though they felt gratitude for the act. The Victory and the omen," they said, "they would accept, and would assign and dedicate to that goddess, as her abode, the Capitol, the temple of Jupiter, the best and greatest of gods, hoping that, consecrated in that fortress of the city of Rome, she would continue there firm and immoveable, kind and propitious to the Roman people." The slingers, archers, and corn were handed over to the consuls. To the fleet which Titus Otacilius the proprietor had in Sicily, twenty-five quinqueremes were added, and permission was given him, if he thought it for the interest of the state to pass over into Africa.

The levy completed, the consuls waited a few days, till the allies of the Latin confederacy arrived. At this time the soldiers were bound by an oath, which had never before been the case, dictated by the military tribunes, that they would assemble at the command of the consuls, and not depart without orders; for up to that time the military oath only had been employed; and further, when the soldiers met to divide into decuries or centuries, the cavalry being formed into decuries and the infantry into centuries, all swore together, amongst themselves, of their own accord, that they would not depart or quit their ranks for flight or fear, except for the purpose of taking up or fetching a weapon, and either striking an enemy or saving a countryman. This, from being a voluntary compact among the soldiers themselves, was converted into the legal compulsion of an oath by the tribunes. Before the standards were moved from the city, the harangues of Varro were frequent and furious, protesting that the war had been invited into Italy by the nobles, and that it would continue fixed in the bowels of the state if it employed any more such generals as Fabius; that he would bring the war to conclusion on the very day he got sight of the enemy. His colleague Paulus made but one speech, on the day before they set out from the city, which was more true than gratifying to the people, in which nothing was said severely against Varro, except this only. "That he wondered how any general, before he knew any thing of his own army, or that of the enemy, the situation of the places, or the nature of the country, even now while in the city, and with the gown on, could tell what he must do when in arms, and could even foretell the day on which he would fight standard to standard with the enemy. That, for his own part, he would not, before the time arrived, prematurely anticipate those measures which circumstances imposed on men, rather than men on circumstances. He could only wish that those measures which were taken with due caution and deliberation might turn out prosperously. That temerity, setting aside its folly, had hitherto been also unsuccessful." This obviously appeared, that he would prefer safe to precipitate counsels; but that he might persevere the more constantly in this, Quintus Fabius Maximus is reported to have thus addressed him on his departure.