Livy

“ If ye act thus, Romans, your estate will be better and less troubled, your republic will go forward as ye would have it, and the victory in the war will belong to the people of Rome. When your commonwealth is prosperous and safe send to Pythian Apollo a gift from the gains you have earned and honour him with your substance out of the plunder, the booty, and the spoils. Put away from you all wanton and godless living. ”

“ Savage and barbarous by nature and habit, their general has made them still more brutal by building up bridges and barriers with human bodies and - I shudder to say it - teaching them to feed on human flesh. What man, if he were merely a native of Italy, would not be horrified at the thought of looking upon men who feast upon what it is impious even to touch as his lords and masters, looking to Africa and above all to Carthage for his laws, and having to submit to Italy becoming a dependency of the Numidians and the Moors? ”

“ And that I may not be the only one to be surprised at your delight - for as I have answered Himilco, I have a perfect right to ask questions in my turn - I should be glad if either Himilco or Mago would tell me, since, you say, the battle of Cannae has all but destroyed the power of Rome and the whole of Italy is admittedly in revolt, whether, in the first place, any single community of the Latin nation has come over to us, and, secondly, whether a single man out of the thirty-five Roman tribes has deserted to Hannibal. ”

“ You have often wished, citizens of Capua, that you had the power to execute summary justice on the unscrupulous and infamous senate. You can do so now safely, and none can call you to account. You need not risk your lives in desperate attempts to force the houses of individual senators guarded as they are by their clients and slaves; take them as they now are, locked up in the Senate-house, all by themselves, unarmed. Do not be in a hurry, do nothing rashly. I will put you in a position to pass sentence of life and death so that each of them in turn may pay the penalty he deserves. ”

“ But if (which heaven forfend!) fortune should now turn to any extent, do you hope to obtain when you are defeated a peace which no one offers to give you now that you are victorious? If any one should ask my opinion about offering or accepting terms of peace I would say what I thought. But if the question before us is simply whether Mago's demands should be granted, I do not think that we are concerned with sending supplies to a victorious army, much less do I consider that they ought to be sent if we are being deluded with false and empty hopes." Very few were influenced by Hanno's speech. ”

“ For what was left us at Cannae that we should wish what is lacking - as though we still possessed something - to be made up by our allies? Are we to ask you to furnish infantry as though we still possessed any cavalry? Are we to say that we want money, as though that were the only thing we want? Fortune has not even left us anything which we can supplement. Legions, cavalry, arms, standards, men and horses, money, supplies - all have gone either on the battlefield or when the two camps were lost the following day. ”

“ I should be utterly ignorant of you and your army if I did not think it an easy task for the man, by whom to my knowledge so many Roman armies have been routed and laid low, to crush these plunderers of our country while they are roving about in disorder and wandering wherever any one is led by hopes of plunder, however futile such hopes may be. They will be the prey of a few Numidians, and you will relieve both us and Nola of its garrison if only you count the men whom you thought worthy of your alliance still worthy of your protection. ”

“ If we let this opportunity slip, when we are in a position to offer rather than submit to terms of peace, I fear that our rejoicing will become extravagant and finally turn out to be groundless. But even now, what is it that you are rejoicing at? 'I have slain the armies of the enemy; send me troops.' What more could you ask for, if you had been defeated? 'I have captured two of the enemy's camps, filled, of course, with plunder and supplies; send me corn and money.' What more could you want if you had been despoiled, stripped of your own camp? ”

“ I do not approve of there being two Dictators at the same time, a thing wholly unprecedented, nor of there being a Dictator without a Master of the Horse, nor of the censorial powers being entrusted to one individual and that for the second time, nor of the supreme authority being placed in the hands of a Dictator for six months unless he has been created to wield executive powers. ”

“ He invited him to come and see him and spoke to him most kindly. "You can easily understand," he told him, "that many of your countrymen are jealous of you, from the fact that not a single citizen of Nola has pointed out to me your many distinguished military services. But the bravery of a man who has served in a Roman camp cannot be hidden. Many of your fellow-soldiers tell me what a young hero you are, and how many perils and dangers you have undergone in defence of the safety and honour of Rome. ”

“ Then great Dictators with their Masters of the Horse would invade our borders, two consuls and two consular armies found it necessary to act together against us, and they took every precaution, careful scouting, reserves duly posted, their army in order of battle, when they ravaged our country; now we are the prey of a solitary propraetor and a small garrison at Nola! They do not even march in military detachments, but they scour the whole of our country like brigands and more carelessly than if they were roaming about on Roman ground. ”

“ It will be a splendid thing, men of Capua, if the dominion of Rome, which has collapsed in defeat, should be saved and restored by your loyalty, your strength. I think that in Campania you can raise 30,000 infantry and 4000 cavalry; you have already sufficient money and corn. If you show a loyalty corresponding to your means Hannibal will not feel that he has conquered or that the Romans are vanquished. ”

“ The battle was no less famous for the fate which overtook the Sardinian generals; Hampsicora's son, Hostus, fell on the field, and when Hampsicora, who was fleeing from the carnage with a few horsemen, heard of his son's death, he was so crushed by the tidings, coming as it did on the top of all the other disasters, that in the dead of night, when none could hinder his purpose, he slew himself with his own hand. The rest of the fugitives found shelter as they had done before in Cornus, but Manlius leading his victorious troops against it effected its capture in a few days. ”

“ Marcellus urged his men to press vigorously on those whom they had vanquished only three days ago, who had been driven in flight from Cumae, and whom he had himself, with another army, defeated the year before. "All his forces," he said, "are not in the field, some are roving through the land bent on plunder, whilst those who are fighting are enervated by the luxury of Capua and have worn themselves out through a whole winter's indulgence in wine and women and every kind of debauchery. ”

“ There he kept his army under shelter for the greater part of the winter. A long and varied experience had inured that army to every form of human suffering, but it had not been habituated to or had any experience of ease and comfort. So it came about that the men whom no pressure of calamity had been able to subdue fell victims to a prosperity too great and pleasures too attractive for them to withstand, and fell all the more utterly the more greedily they plunged into new and untried delights. ”

“ But I should like to know how much courage and confidence that vast multitude possess."
13 Mago said he did not know. "Nothing," replied Hanno, "is easier to find out. Have the Romans sent any envoys to Hannibal to sue for peace? Has any rumour reached your ears of any one even mentioning the word 'peace' in Rome?" Again Mago replied in the negative. "Well, then," said Hanno, "we have as much work before us in this war as we had on the day when Hannibal first set foot in Italy. Many of us are still alive who can remember with what changeful fortunes the first Punic war was fought. ”

“ The Boii stripped the body of its spoils and cut off the head, and bore them in triumph to the most sacred of their temples. According to their custom they cleaned out the skull and covered the scalp with beaten gold; it was then used as a vessel for libations and also as a drinking cup for the priest and ministers of the temple. The plunder, too, which the Gauls secured was as great as their victory, for although most of the animals had been buried beneath the fallen trees, the rest of the booty, not having been scattered in flight, was found strewn along the whole line where the army lay. ”

“ He was a noble, and at the same time a favourite with the people, but he had gained his influence and power by resorting to base practices. He happened to be chief magistrate in the year in which the defeat at Trasumennus occurred, and knowing the hatred which the populace had long felt towards the senate, he thought it highly probable that they would seize their opportunity, create a violent revolution, and, if Hannibal with his victorious army should visit their neighbourhood, murder the senators and hand over Capua to him. ”

“ If we are successful, as I trust we shall be, in our operations against Hannibal and the Carthaginians, we can safely leave the war with the Gauls out of account for the present; the gods and the Roman people will have it in their power to avenge that act of treachery. It is with regard to the Carthaginians and the armies with which the war is to be carried on that we have now to deliberate and decide." He first gave details as to the strength of infantry and cavalry, and the proportion in each of Roman and allied troops, which made up the Dictator's army ”

“ The city had always been disposed to luxury and extravagance, not only through the weakness of the character of its citizens, but also through the superabundance of the means of enjoyment and the incitements to every kind of pleasure which land or sea could furnish, and now, owing to the obsequiousness of the nobility and the licence of the populace, it was becoming so demoralised that the sensuality and extravagance which prevailed exceeded all bounds. ”

“ All soldierly courage; all military discipline, all glory won in the past, all hopes for the future have been extinguished there." By showing his contempt for the enemy, Marcellus raised the spirits of his men. Hannibal, on the other hand, reproached his own men in much more severe terms. "I recognise," he said, "the same arms and standards here which I saw and used at the Trebia, at Trasumennus, and finally at Cannae, but not the same soldiers. It is quite certain that I led one army into winter quarters at Capua and marched out with quite a different one. ”

“ In the case of the three hundred Campanian knights, who after loyally serving their time in Sicily had now come to Rome, a proposal was made to the people that they should receive the full rights of Roman citizenship and should be entered on the roll of the burghers of Cumae, reckoning from the day previous to the revolt of the Campanians from Rome. The main reason for this proposal was their declaration that they did not know to what people they belonged, as they had abandoned their old country and had not yet been admitted as citizens into that to which they had returned. ”

“ Hasdrubal soon became aware of this, and seeing that success had made them careless, he urged his men to attack them whilst they were scattered away from their standards; he himself meanwhile descended from the hill and marched with his men in attack formation straight to their camp. News of his approach was brought by men rushing in from the look-out stations and outposts and there was a general call to arms. As each man seized his weapons he hurried with the others into battle, without order or formation, or word of command or standards. ”

“ Besides all this you must remember that after you had surrendered we gave you a treaty on equal terms, we allowed you to retain your own laws, and - what was, before our defeat at Cannae at all events, the greatest privilege - we granted our citizenship to most of you and made you members of our commonwealth. Under these circumstances, men of Capua, you ought to realise that you have suffered this defeat as much as we have, and to feel that we have a common country to defend. ”

“ This same summer Marcellus made frequent excursions from Nola, which he was holding with a garrison, into the territory of the Hirpini and in the neighbourhood of Samnite Caudium. Such utter devastation did he spread everywhere with fire and sword that he revived throughout Samnium the memory of her ancient disasters.
42 Both nations sent envoys simultaneously to Hannibal, who addressed him thus: "We have been the enemies of Rome, Hannibal, from very early times. At first we fought her in our own might as long as our arms, our strength, sufficed to protect us. ”

“ The Gauls had posted themselves round the outskirts of the forest, and as soon as the Roman army entered they pushed the sawn trees on the outside, these fell upon those next to them, which were tottering and hardly able to stand upright, until the whole mass fell in on both sides and buried in one common ruin arms and men and horses. Hardly ten men escaped, for when most of them had been crushed to death by the trunks or broken branches of the trees, the remainder, panic-struck at the unexpected disaster, were killed by the Gauls who surrounded the forest. ”