Livy

“ Does Marcellus now a second time with impunity assail us with a band of raw recruits and Nolan auxiliaries? Where is that soldier of mine, who took off the head of Caius Flaminius, the consul, after dragging him from his horse? Where is the man who slew Lucius Paulus at Cannae? Is it that the steel hath lost its edge? or that your right hands are benumbed? or what other miracle is it? You who, when few, have been accustomed to conquer numbers, now scarce maintain your ground, the many against the few. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We, to whom nothing can be objected, except that it is owing to us that any Roman soldier has survived the battle of Cannae, are removed far away, not only from our country and Italy, but even from an enemy; where we may grow old in exile, where we can have no hope or opportunity of obliterating our disgrace, of appeasing the indignation of our countrymen, or, in short, of obtaining an honourable death. We seek neither to have our ignominy terminated, nor our virtue rewarded, we only ask to be allowed to make trial of our courage, and to exercise our virtue. ”

“ We seek for labour and danger that we may discharge the duty of men and soldiers. A war is carrying on in Sicily, now for the second year, with the utmost vigour on both sides. The Carthaginians are storming some cities, the Romans others, armies of infantry and horse are engaging in battle, at Syracuse the war is prosecuted by sea and by land. We hear distinctly the shout of the combatants, and the din of arms, while we ourselves lie inactive and unemployed, as if we had neither hands nor arms. The consul, Sempronius has now fought many pitched battles with the enemy with legions of slaves. ”

“ For your own soldiers will desire the same thing as those of the enemy: Varro, a Roman consul, and Hannibal, a Carthaginian general, will wish the same thing. You alone must resist two generals: and you will resist them sufficiently if you stand firm against the report and the rumours of men; if neither the empty glory of your colleague, and the unfounded calumnies against yourself, shall move you. They say that truth too often suffers, but is never destroyed. He who despises fame will have it genuine. ”

“ The lamentations of women were not only heard from private houses, but the matrons from every quarter, rushing into the public streets, ran up and down around the shrines of the gods, sweeping the altars with their dishevelled hair, throwing themselves upon their knees and stretching their uplifted hands to heaven and the gods, imploring them to rescue the city of Rome out of the hands of their enemies, and preserve the Roman mothers and their children from harm. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Cneius Lentulus, a military tribune, seeing, as he rode by, the consul sitting upon a stone and covered with blood, said to him: "Lucius Aemilius! the only man whom the gods ought to regard as being guiltless of this day's disaster, take this horse, while you have any strength remaining, and I am with you to raise you up and protect you. Make not this battle more calamitous by the death of a consul. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No man, when he gave his vote, took sufficient pains in ascertaining who it was to whom he was intrusting an army. What a difference was there between this man and Tiberius Sempronius! The latter having been intrusted with an army of slaves, had in a short time brought it to pass, by discipline and authority, that not one of them in the field of battle remembered his condition and birth, but they became a protection to our allies and a terror to our enemies. They had snatched, as it were, from the very jaws of Hannibal, and restored to the Roman people, Cumae, Beneventum, and other towns. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Now, suppose we had become sureties that the Roman people should quit this city; that they should set it on fire; that they should have no magistrates, no senate, no laws; that they should, in future, be ruled by kings: the gods forbid, you say. But, the enormity of the articles lessens not the obligation of a compact. If there is any thing in which the people can be bound, it can in all. Nor is there any importance in another circumstance, which weighs, perhaps, with some: whether a consul, a dictator, or a praetor, be the surety. ”

“ Works ought to be secured by arms, not arms by works. Let those keep a camp, and repair to it, whose interest it is to protract the war; but let us cut off from ourselves every other prospect but that of conquering. Advance the standards against the enemy; as soon as the troops shall have marched beyond the rampart, let those who have it in orders burn the camp. Your losses, soldiers, shall be compensated with the spoil of all the nations round who have revolted. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But in fact, in case of the destruction of this army, all these are betrayed, not preserved. For who will protect them? An unwarlike and unarmed multitude, shall I suppose? Yes, just as they defended them against the attack of the Gauls. Will they call to their succour an army from Veii, with Camillus at its head? Here on the spot, I repeat, are all our hopes and strength; by preserving which, we preserve our country; by delivering them up to death, we abandon and betray our country. But a surrender is shameful and ignominious. ”

“ Now if, in like manner as they had it in their power to run down from the Capitol in arms against their foe, as men besieged have often sallied out on the besiegers, it were possible for us to come to blows with the enemy, either on equal or unequal ground, I would not be wanting in the high quality of my father's spirit in stating my advice. I acknowledge, indeed, that death, in defence of our country, is highly glorious; and I am ready, either to devote myself for the Roman people and the legions, or to plunge into the midst of the enemy. ”

“ Do you doubt, therefore, whether by remaining quiet we shall not conquer him who is daily sinking into decrepitude? who has neither provisions nor money? How long before the walls of Geronium, a miserable fortress of Apulia, as if before the walls of Carthage--? But not even in your presence will I boast. See how Cneius Servilius and Atilius, the last consuls, fooled him. This is the only path of safety, Lucius Paulus, which your countrymen will render more difficult and dangerous to you than their enemies will. ”

“ Shall we be able then to withstand three generals and three armies, whom Cneius Scipio with his army unimpaired could not withstand? As our generals have perished by dividing their forces, so the enemy may be overpowered while separated and divided. There is no other mode of maintaining the war; let us, therefore, wait for nothing but the opportunity of the ensuing night. Now depart, with the favour of the gods, and refresh yourselves, that, unfatigued and vigorous, you may burst into the enemy's camp with the same spirit with which you have defended your own. ”

“ There is not one of us, conscript fathers, who is not aware that there never was a nation which held prisoners in greater contempt than our own. But unless our own cause is dearer to us than it should be, never did men fall into the hands of the enemy who less deserved to be disregarded than we do; for we did not surrender our arms in the battle through fear; but having prolonged the battle almost till night-fall, while standing upon heaps of our slaughtered countrymen, we betook ourselves to our camp. ”

“ Never did either the foot-soldier or horseman feel military service more laborious, under any general, because he was of a constitution not to be overcome by fatigue. The cavalry, on some occasion, venturing to request that, in consideration of their good behaviour, he would excuse them some part of their business, he told them, "Ye should not say that no indulgence has been granted you,--I excuse you from rubbing your horses' backs when ye dismount." He supported also the authority of command, in all its vigour, both among the allies and his countrymen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Let us then be delivered up to them by the heralds, naked, and in chains. Let us free the people of the religious obligation, if we have bound them under any such; so that there may be no restriction, divine or human, to prevent your entering on the war anew, without violating either religion or justice. I am also of opinion, that the consuls, in the mean time, enlist, arm, and lead out an army; but that they should not enter the enemy's territories before every particular, respecting the surrender of us, be regularly executed. You, O immortal gods! ”

“ Time, nay, everyday makes us better, wiser, and firmer. Hannibal, on the contrary, is in a foreign, a hostile land, amidst all hostile and disadvantageous circumstances, far from his home, far from his country; he has peace neither by land nor sea: no cities, no walls receive him: he sees nothing any where which he can call his own: he daily lives by plunder. He has now scarcely a third part of that army which he conveyed across the Iberus. Famine has destroyed more than the sword; nor have the few remaining a sufficient supply of provisions. ”

“ But beware lest you waste in bootless commiseration the brief opportunity of escaping from the hands of the enemy. Go and tell the fathers publicly, to fortify the city of Rome, and garrison it strongly before the victorious enemy arrive: and tell Quintus Fabius individually, that Lucius Aemilius lived, and now dies, mindful of his injunctions. Allow me to expire amid these heaps of my slaughtered troops, that I may not a second time be accused after my consulate, or stand forth as the accuser of my colleague, in order to defend my own innocence by criminating another. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Still I do not deny, conscript fathers, that compacts, on sureties given, are as sacred as treaties, in the eyes of all who regard faith between men, with the same reverence which is paid to duties respecting the gods: but I insist, that without the order of the people, nothing can be ratified that is to bind the people. Suppose that, out of the same arrogance with which the Samnites wrung from us the convention in question, they had compelled us to repeat the established form of words for the surrendering of cities, would ye, tribunes, say, that the Roman people was surrendered? ”