Livy

“ When elected consul, though all others wanted courage to defend Italy, you crossed over into Africa; where having cut to pieces two armies, having at once captured and burnt two camps in the same hour; having made prisoner Syphax, a most powerful king, and seized so many towns of his dominions and so many of ours, you have dragged me from Italy, the possession of which I had firmly held for now sixteen years. Your mind, I say, may possibly be more disposed to conquest than peace. I know the spirits of your country aim rather at great than useful objects. ”

“ In our attempts to acquire the possessions of others we have been compelled to fight for our own; and not only have you had a war in Italy, and we also in Africa, but you have beheld the standards and arms of your enemies almost in your gates and on your walls, and we now, from the walls of Carthage, distinctly hear the din of a Roman camp. What, therefore, we should most earnestly deprecate, and you should most devoutly wish for, is now the case: peace is proposed at a time when you have the advantage. ”

“ Philip, intent on hastening his march, and in no degree deterred by the clouds, which after the rain lowered over the face of the country, ordered his troops to march: and yet so thick a fog had obscured the day, that neither the standard-bearers could see the road, nor the soldiers the standards; so that all, led blindly by the shouts of uncertain guides, fell into disorder, like men wandering by night. When they had passed over the hills called Cynoscephalae, where they set a strong guard of foot and horse, they pitched their camp. ”

“ So courteous was the manner of Scipio, so naturally happy and universal was his genius, that by his conversation he gained the esteem not only of Syphax, a barbarian, and unused to Roman manners, but even of a most inveterate enemy, who openly avowed, that "he appeared to him more to be admired for the qualities he displayed on a personal interview with him, than for his exploits in war, and that he had no doubt that Syphax and his kingdom were already at the disposal of the Romans, such were the abilities that man possessed for gaining the esteem of others. ”

“ Would you rather have drawn away Hamilcar from Drepanum and Eryx than have expelled the Carthaginians and Hannibal from Italy? Although you naturally prize more highly the renown which you have acquired than that which you hope for, yet surely you would not boast more of having freed Spain from war than of having freed Italy. Hannibal is not as yet in such a state as that the man who prefers another war would not appear to have feared rather than to have despised him. ”

“ Now, if a hundred decked ships, and fifty lighter open ones, and thirty Issean barks, shall begin to lay waste our coasts, and attack the cities which stand exposed, almost on the very shore, shall we then retreat into the inland towns, as if we were not afflicted with an intestine war, though in truth it is rankling in our very bowels? When Nabis and the Lacedaemonians by land, and the Roman fleet by sea, shall press us, whence must I implore the support due from the king's alliance, whence the succours of the Macedonians? ”

“ It is indeed the right of him who grants, and not of him who solicits it, to dictate the terms of peace; but perhaps we may not be unworthy to impose upon ourselves the fine. We do not refuse that all those possessions on account of which the war was begun should be yours; Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, with all the islands lying in any part of the sea, between Africa and Italy. Let us Carthaginians, confined within the shores of Africa, behold you, since such is the pleasure of the gods, extending your empire over foreign nations, both by sea and land. ”

“ Lastly, suppose me to be such a man that it could not at all be a matter of astonishment that my army should be weary of my command, yet what had your country deserved of you, which you betrayed by making common cause with Mandonius and Indibilis? What the Roman people, when, taking the command from the tribunes appointed by their suffrages, you conferred it on private men? When, not content even with having them for tribunes, you, a Roman army, conferred the fasces of your general upon men who never had a slave under their command? ”

“ Neither ought they nor can they, wonder at this, when they see all the cities of Italy bending under the same yoke,--Rhegium, Tarentum Capua, not to mention those in their own neighbourhood, out of the ruins of which their city of Rome grew into power. Capua indeed subsists, the grave and monument of the Campanian people, that entire people having been either cut off or driven into banishment; the mutilated carcass of a city, without senate, without commons, without magistrates; a sort of prodigy, the leaving which to be inhabited, showed more cruelty than if it had been utterly destroyed. ”

“ Publius Licinius will wage war in Italy, Publius Scipio in Africa. What if, (an omen which may all the gods avert, and which my mind shrinks back with alarm from mentioning,--but what has happened may happen again,--) what I say, if Hannibal, having gained a victory, should advance to the city? Shall we then at length send for you, our consul, out of Africa, as we formerly sent for Quintus Fulvius from Capua? What shall we say when we consider that in Africa also both parties will be liable to the chances of war? ”

“ Let Italy, which has so long been harassed, at length enjoy some repose; let Africa, in her turn, be fired and devastated. Let the Roman camp overhang the gates of Carthage rather than that we should again behold the rampart of the enemy from our walls. Let Africa be the seat of the remainder of the war. Let terror and flight, the devastation of lands, the defection of allies, and all the other calamities of war which have fallen upon us, through a period of fourteen years, be turned upon her. ”

“ The wishes of the general himself tended rather to peace; for he saw that, as the enemy was shut up in the town, nothing remained but a siege, and that must be very tedious. For it was not Gythium that they must besiege, though even that place had been gained by capitulation, not by assault; but Lacedaemon, a city most powerful in men and arms. The only hope which they could have formed was, that, on the first approach of their army, dissensions and insurrections might have been raised within: but, though the standards had been seen to advance almost to the gates, not one person had stirred. ”

“ But why do I speak of Capua, when even to vanquished Carthage we granted peace and liberty? The greatest danger is, that, by our too great readiness to pardon the conquered, we may encourage others to try the fortune of war against us. Let so much suffice in our defence, and against Philip, whose domestic crimes, whose parricides and murders of his relations and friends, and whose lust, more disgraceful to human nature, if possible, than his cruelty, you, as being nearer to Macedonia, are better acquainted with. ”

“ If through fear, he ought to pardon the like fear in us. If he retired defeated by force of arms, let me ask you, Cleomedon, shall we, Achaeans, be able to withstand the Roman arms, which you, Macedonians, have not withstood? Are we to give credit to your assertion, that the Romans do not employ, in the present war, greater forces or greater strength than they did in the former, rather than regard the facts themselves? In the first instance, they aided the Aetolians with a fleet; they sent not to the war either a consul as commander, or a consular army. ”

“ This may be aptly applied to the forces of the king, which were so ostentatiously displayed a while ago; that those various kinds of armour, and multitudinous names of nations, never heard of before, Dahans, and Medes, and Caducians, and Elymaeans, are nothing more than Syrians, a race possessed of such grovelling souls, as to be much fitter for slaves than for soldiers. I wish, Achaeans, that I could exhibit to your view the rapid excursions of this mighty monarch from Demetrias; first, to Lamia, to the council of the Aetolians; then to Chalcis. ”

“ When Scipio was desirous of settling the dispute by argument and allaying their irritation, they both declared that they had refused that to their mutual kinsmen, and that they would appeal to no other judge, whether god or man, than Mars. The elder presuming upon his strength, the younger on the prime of youth, each wished to die in the combat rather than become the subject of the other; and every effort failing to prevent their prosecuting their mad design, they exhibited to the army a most interesting spectacle, and a proof how great mischief is occasioned among men by a thirst for power. ”

“ Does not the reason occur to the mind of any one of you why those, who are not yet our allies, require more than he who is? This arises not from modesty in Philip, nor from the want of it in the Romans. It is fortune, which, while it bestows confidence to requisitions on one side, precludes it on the other. We see nothing belonging to Philip but his ambassador: the Roman fleet lies at Cenchreae, exhibiting to our view the spoils of the cities of Euboea. We behold the consul and his legions, at the distance of a small tract of sea, overrunning Phocis and Locris. ”

“ And yet if he had been content to be the only person to vent his villany, his lust, and rapacity upon your allies, that one gulf, deep as it was, we would however have filled up by our patience. But the case is, he has made every one of your centurions and soldiers a Pleminius, so indiscriminately has he willed that licentiousness and wickedness should be practised. All plunder, spoil, beat, wound, and slay; all defile matrons, virgins, and free-born youths torn from the embraces of their parents. Our city is captured daily, plundered daily. ”

“ The considerations on which I ground my anticipations are the good fortune of the Roman people, the gods, the witnesses of the treaty violated by the enemy, the kings Syphax and Masinissa; on whose fidelity I will rely in such a manner as that I may be secure from danger should they prove perfidious. Many things which are not now apparent, at this distance, the war will develope; and it is the part of a man, and a general, not to be wanting when fortune presents itself, and to bend its events to his designs. I shall, Quintus Fabius, have the opponent you assign me, Hannibal ”

“ You then laid siege to Carthage, quite at your leisure, not one of the three Punic armies coming to the defence of their allies. The rest of your achievements, nor do I wish to disparage them, are by no means to be compared with what you will have to do in a war in Africa, where there is not a single harbour open to receive our fleet, no part of the country at peace with us, no state in alliance, no king in friendship with us, no room in any part either to take up a position or to advance. Whichever way you turn your eyes, all is hostility and danger. Do you trust in the Numidians and Syphax? ”

“ For if all the decrees of the senate and orders of the people, which were then made to answer the necessities of the times, are to be of perpetual obligation, why do we refund their money to private persons? Why do we contract for public works for ready money? Why are not slaves brought to serve in the army? Why do not we, private subjects, supply rowers as we did then? ”