Hannibal, after the battle of Cannae, having taken and plundered the enemy’s camp, had moved at once out of Apulia into Samnium, summoned into the country of the Hirpini by Statius Trebius, who promised to hand over Compsa. Trebius was a man of Compsa, noble among his own people; but the faction of the Mopsii pressed him hard, a family powerful through the favor of the Romans. When, after the report of the battle of Cannae and the coming of Hannibal noised abroad by the talk of Trebius, the Mopsian party had withdrawn from the town, the city was handed over to the Carthaginian without a struggle and a garrison received. There, leaving all the plunder and the baggage behind, he divided his army and bade Mago receive the cities of that region that should revolt from the Romans, or compel to revolt those that held back; he himself made through the Campanian country for the lower sea, meaning to assault Naples, that he might have a maritime city. When he had entered the territory of the Neapolitans, he posted the Numidians, some in ambush—and most of the roads there are sunken and the hollows hidden—wherever he aptly could, and bade others ride up to the gates flaunting before them the plunder driven off from the fields. Against these, because they seemed neither many nor in order, when a troop of cavalry had sallied out, it was drawn off of set purpose by their retreat into the ambush and surrounded; nor would any have escaped, had not the sea close at hand, and ships not far from the shore, fishing-boats for the most part, sighted, given to those skilled in swimming a means of flight. Some noble youths, however, were taken and slain in that fight, among them Hegeas, the prefect of the cavalry, who fell while pursuing the retreating enemy too hotly. From the assault of the city the Carthaginian was deterred by the sight of walls by no means easy for an assailant.

Thence he bends his march to Capua, luxuriating in its long prosperity and the indulgence of fortune, but above all, amid the general corruption, in the license of a commons that exercised its liberty without measure. The senate Pacuvius Calavius had made subject both to himself and to the commons, a man at once noble and a favorite of the people, but one who had won his wealth by evil arts. He, when by chance in the year in which the disaster befell at Trasimene he held the highest magistracy, judging that the commons, long hostile to the senate, would dare some great crime should occasion to overturn the state offer itself—namely, if Hannibal with his victorious army should come into those parts, that they would butcher the senate and hand Capua over to the Carthaginians—being a wicked man but not utterly abandoned, since he would rather be master in a commonwealth whole than ruined, and believed that none could be whole that was stripped of its public council, devised a plan whereby he might both preserve the senate and make it beholden to himself and to the commons. Having called the senate, when he had said by way of preface that the plan of revolting from the Romans could in no way please him unless it were necessary—seeing that he had children by a daughter of Appius Claudius, and had given his daughter in marriage at Rome to Marcus Livius—yet that a far greater matter, and more to be feared, was upon them: for the commons looked not, by revolt, to do away with the senate from the state, but, by the slaughter of the senate, to hand the commonwealth, emptied of it, to Hannibal and the Carthaginians; from that peril he could free them, if they would entrust the matter to him and, forgetting their quarrels in the commonwealth, would trust him—when all, overcome by fear, gave him leave, "I will shut you up," he said, "in the senate-house, and, as though I myself too were partner in the crime conceived, by approving the counsels which I should oppose in vain, I will find a way to your safety. For this take such pledge as you yourselves wish." The pledge given, he went out and bade the senate-house be shut, and left a guard in the vestibule, that none might approach the senate-house, nor go out of it, without his command.

Then, having summoned the people to an assembly, "What you have often wished for, Campanians," he said, "that you might have the power of taking vengeance upon a wicked and detestable senate—that power you have, not by storming through riot the houses of individual men, which they guard with garrisons of clients and slaves, at the utmost peril to yourselves, but safe and free of risk: receive them all shut up in the senate-house, alone, unarmed. And do nothing in haste or rashly by chance: I will give you the right of pronouncing sentence upon the life of each, that every man may pay the penalty he has deserved; but above all you must so indulge your anger as to hold your own safety and advantage dearer than your anger. For these senators, I take it, you hate—you do not wish to have no senate at all; since either a king must be had, which is a thing accursed, or a senate, which is the one council of a free state. And so two things must be done by you at once: that you both abolish the old senate and choose a new one. I will order the senators to be called up one by one, and consult you on the life of each; what you shall have decreed concerning each shall be done; but first you shall choose into his place a brave and energetic man as a new senator, before punishment is taken upon the guilty." Then he sat down, and, the names having been thrown into an urn, bade the name first drawn by lot be called and the man himself led out of the senate-house. When the name was heard, each for himself cried out that he was bad and wicked and worthy of punishment. Then Pacuvius: "I see what is the sentence upon this man; give me, then, in place of a bad and wicked man, a senator good and just." At first there was silence, from want of a better to put in his place; then, when someone, laying modesty aside, had named a man, straightway a far greater outcry arose, since some said they did not know him, others reproached him now with disgraceful deeds, now with low birth and sordid poverty and a shameful trade or means of livelihood. This happened much more at the second and third senator called up, so that it was plain that men repented of the man himself, but that there was no one to substitute in his place—since to name the same men was to no purpose, named only to hear reproaches, and the rest were far meaner and obscurer than those who came first to memory. So the people slipped away, saying that the best-known evil was the most bearable, and bidding the senate be let go from custody.

In this way Pacuvius, having made the senate beholden to him for the gift of life much more than to the commons, ruled without arms, all men now yielding to him. Henceforth the senators, forgetting their dignity and their freedom, fawned upon the commons: they greeted them, invited them graciously, received them with sumptuous banquets, took up those causes, always stood by that party, gave as judges men who would decide a suit on the side that was the more popular and the better fitted to win the favor of the crowd; and now nothing was done in the senate otherwise than as if it were an assembly of the commons sitting there. The state was ever prone to luxury, not only through the bent of men’s characters but through the abundant store of pleasures and the allurements of every charm of sea and land; but then indeed, through the obsequiousness of the leading men and the license of the commons, it ran so wild that there was measure neither to lust nor to expense. To contempt of the laws, of the magistrates, of the senate, there was now added, after the disaster of Cannae, that they spurned even the authority of Rome, for which once there had been some reverence. This alone delayed their immediate revolt, that an ancient intermarriage had mingled many famous and powerful families with the Romans; and—what was the strongest bond—that three hundred horsemen, every one of the noblest of the Campanians, while they were serving with the Romans, had been chosen by the Romans and sent to garrison the cities of Sicily.

The parents and kinsmen of these men hardly prevailed that envoys should be sent to the Roman consul. They found the consul not yet set out for Canusium, but at Venusia with a few men, half-armed—as pitiable a sight as he could be to good allies, and to be spurned by proud and faithless ones, as the Campanians were. And the consul increased the contempt for his own affairs and for himself by too much uncovering and laying bare the disaster. For when the envoys had announced that the Campanian senate and people took it ill that any reverse had befallen the Romans, and promised all that should be needful for the war, "You have kept rather the form of speaking with allies, Campanians," he said, "in bidding us require what is needful for the war, than spoken to the purpose of the present state of our fortunes. For what has been left us at Cannae, that, as though we had something, we should wish what is lacking to be filled up by allies? Shall we require infantry of you, as though we had cavalry? Shall we say money is lacking, as though that alone were lacking? Nothing—not even what we might fill up with—has fortune left us. Legions, cavalry, arms, standards, horses and men, money, supplies, all perished, either in the line or, the next day, with the loss of two camps. And so you must not help us in the war, Campanians, but well-nigh take up the war for us. Let it come into your minds how once we received within our protection at Saticula your forefathers, when they had been driven trembling within their walls and feared not the Samnite enemy only but the Sidicine as well, and how the war begun with the Samnites for your sakes we carried, with varying fortune, through nearly a hundred years to its issue. Add to this that we gave to you, when you surrendered, a fair treaty, that we gave you your own laws, that finally—what before the disaster of Cannae at least was the greatest gift—we gave to a great part of you our citizenship and shared it with you. And so you ought to believe, Campanians, that this disaster which has been suffered is a common one, and to think that a common fatherland must be defended. It is not with a Samnite or an Etruscan that we have to do, so that the empire taken from us should yet remain in Italy: a Carthaginian enemy drags after him a soldiery not even native to Africa, from the farthest shores of the earth, from the strait of Ocean and the Pillars of Hercules, having no part in any law or condition or in human speech, well-nigh. This soldiery, by nature and by custom savage and wild, their very leader has made the more brutish, by teaching them to make bridges and mounds of heaps of human bodies, and—what it shames one even to utter—to feed on human flesh. To see and to have as masters men fed on these unspeakable banquets, men whom it is impiety even to touch, and to seek law from Africa and from Carthage, and to suffer Italy to be a province of Numidians and Moors—to whom, born but in Italy, would this not be detestable? It will be a noble thing, Campanians, that the Roman empire, fallen low by disaster, should have been held up and recovered by your faith and your strength. Thirty thousand foot, four thousand horse, I reckon can be enrolled from Campania; of money there is now abundance, and of grain. If you have a faith equal to your fortune, neither will Hannibal feel that he has conquered, nor the Romans that they are conquered."

When, this speech of the consul ended, the envoys had been dismissed and were returning home, one of them, Vibius Virrius, says that the time has come at which the Campanians can recover not only the land once taken from them by the Romans through wrong, but can also seize the empire of Italy: for they will make a treaty with Hannibal on whatever terms they please; nor will there be any dispute but that, when Hannibal, the war finished, departs victorious into Africa and carries off his army, the empire of Italy will be left to the Campanians. To Virrius speaking thus all assented, and so they report their embassy that the very name of Rome seemed to all of them blotted out. At once the commons, and the greater part of the senate, looked toward revolt; yet the matter was drawn out for a few days by the authority of the elders. At last the opinion of the majority prevailed, that the same envoys who had gone to the Roman consul should be sent to Hannibal. Before this was done, and before the resolve of revolt was fixed, I find it stated in certain annals that envoys were sent by the Campanians to Rome, demanding that one of the consuls should be a Campanian, if they wished the Roman cause to be helped; and that, indignation arising, they were bidden to be removed from the senate-house, and a lictor was sent to lead them out of the city and to order them to remain that day beyond Roman territory. Because the demand was all too like that of the Latins of old, and because Coelius and other writers have passed it over not without reason, I have feared to set it down for certain.

The envoys came to Hannibal and made peace with him on these terms: that no Carthaginian commander or magistrate should have any jurisdiction over a Campanian citizen, nor should any Campanian citizen serve as a soldier or do any service against his will; that Capua should have its own laws and its own magistrates; that the Carthaginian should give to the Campanians three hundred of the Roman prisoners, whom they themselves should choose, with whom an exchange should be made of the Campanian horsemen who were serving in Sicily. These were the terms of the bargain: over and above what had been bargained, the Campanians committed these crimes—for the commons, on a sudden, ordered all the prefects of the allies and the other Roman citizens, some occupied in some military duty, some entangled in private business, to be seized and shut up, as though for safekeeping, in the baths, where, the breath stopped by the heat and the steam, they perished in a foul fashion. That these things should not be done, nor an embassy be sent to the Carthaginian, Decius Magius—a man to whom, for the highest authority, nothing was lacking save sound sense in his fellow citizens—had withstood with all his might. But when he heard that a garrison was being sent by Hannibal, recalling the examples of Pyrrhus’ proud domination and the wretched servitude of the Tarentines, he first openly cried out that the garrison should not be received, then, when received, that it should be cast out, or—if they wished to wipe out by a brave and memorable deed the foul crime of having revolted from their most ancient allies and kinsmen—that they should slay the Carthaginian garrison and restore themselves to the Romans. These things—for they were not done in secret—when they were reported to Hannibal, he first sent men to summon Magius to him at the camp; then, when Magius had fiercely refused to go—for Hannibal had, he said, no jurisdiction over a Campanian citizen—the Carthaginian, stirred to anger, bade the man be seized and dragged in chains before him. But fearing thereafter lest amid the violence some tumult, and from the excitement of men’s tempers some ill-considered struggle, might arise, he himself, having sent a messenger ahead to Marius Blossius, the Campanian praetor, that he would be at Capua the next day, sets out from the camp with a modest escort. Marius, having called an assembly, proclaims that they should go in throngs, with their wives and children, to meet Hannibal. By all this was done not obediently merely but eagerly, the favor of the crowd and their eagerness to see a commander now famous for so many victories conspiring. Decius Magius neither went out to meet him nor, lest he should seem by anything to betray fear from a guilty conscience, kept himself in private: in the forum, with his son and a few clients, he walked at his leisure, while the whole city was in a flutter to receive and to look upon the Carthaginian. Hannibal, having entered the city, at once demands the senate; and when the leading men of the Campanians thereupon begged him to do no serious business that day, and to keep it, as a day made festal by his coming, glad and willing, then, though he was headlong in temper toward anger, yet, that he might refuse nothing at the outset, he spent a great part of the day in viewing the city.

He lodged with the Ninnii Celeres, Sthenius and Pacuvius, men renowned for nobility and riches. Thither Pacuvius Calavius, of whom mention was made before, the head of that faction which had drawn the matter to the Carthaginians, brought his young son, dragged away from the side of Decius Magius, with whom he had stood most fiercely for the Roman alliance against the Punic treaty; nor had either the city’s leaning to the other side or his father’s authority driven him from his opinion. For this young man his father then appeased Hannibal rather by entreaty than by excuse, and, overcome by the father’s prayers and tears, Hannibal even bade him be invited to supper along with his father—a banquet to which he meant to admit no Campanian save his hosts and Vibellius Taurea, a man distinguished in war. They began to feast while it was yet day, and the banquet was not after the Punic fashion or the discipline of the camp, but, as in a wealthy and luxurious city, and indeed a wealthy and luxurious house, furnished with every allurement of pleasure. Only Calavius’ son could be enticed to wine neither by the invitation of his hosts nor at times of Hannibal himself, pleading ill health, while his father alleged as the cause a perturbation of mind in him not to be wondered at. About sunset the son, following his father Calavius as he went out from the banquet, when they had come into a private place—there was a garden behind the house—said, "I bring counsel, father, by which we shall not only obtain from the Romans pardon for our fault in revolting to Hannibal, but the Campanians shall stand in much greater honor and favor than ever we have stood." When his father, in wonder, asked what counsel this was, the youth, throwing back his toga from his shoulder, bared his side girt with a sword. "Now," he said, "I will ratify the treaty with Rome in the blood of Hannibal. I wished you to know it first, in case you would rather be away while the deed is done."

When the old man saw and heard this, as though he were already present at the doing of what he heard, beside himself with fear, "By every right," he said, "my son, that joins children to parents, I pray and beseech you, do not seek to do and to suffer all things unspeakable before a father’s eyes. A few hours are there within which, swearing by all that is of the gods, joining right hands to right hands, we have bound our faith—that, parted from the parley, we should straightway arm against him those hands hallowed by faith? You rise from the table of a host, to which you were admitted by Hannibal as third of the Campanians—that you should stain that very table with the blood of your host? Hannibal, a father, I could appease toward my son; my son toward Hannibal I cannot? But grant that nothing is sacred—not faith, not religion, not piety: let things unspeakable be dared, if they bring us not destruction along with the crime. Will you alone set upon Hannibal? What of that throng of so many freemen and slaves? What of all those eyes bent upon him alone? What of so many right hands? Will they grow numb in that madness of yours? The very face of Hannibal, which armed armies cannot bear, at which the Roman people shudders—will you bear it? And, though other helps be wanting, will you bear to strike me, when I set my own body against the body of Hannibal? But it is through my breast that he must be sought by you and pierced through. Suffer yourself to be deterred here rather than be conquered there. Let my prayers prevail with you, as they prevailed for you today." Then, seeing the youth in tears, he embraced him about the middle, and, clinging to him with a kiss, did not cease from his prayers until he prevailed that he should lay down the sword and give his pledge that he would do no such thing. Then the youth: "I, indeed, will pay to my father the piety I owe to my country. But I grieve for your lot, who must bear the charge of three times betraying your country: once when you entered upon revolt from the Romans, again when you were the author of peace with Hannibal, a third time today, when you are the delay and the hindrance to restoring Capua to the Romans. Thou, my country, take back the steel with which, armed for thee, I entered this citadel of the enemy, since my father wrenches it from me." When he had said this, he flung the sword into the public street over the garden wall, and, that the matter might be the less suspected, restored himself to the banquet.

The next day a full senate was granted to Hannibal; whose first speech was most winning and gracious, in which he thanked the Campanians for having set his friendship before the Roman alliance, and, among other magnificent promises, pledged that Capua would shortly be the head of all Italy, and that from there the Roman people too, with the rest, would seek their laws. One man there was, he said, who had no share in the Punic friendship and the treaty made with him, who ought neither to be nor to be called a Campanian: Magius Decius. Him he demanded should be surrendered to him, and that in his presence a motion be made concerning him and a decree of the senate be passed. All went over to that opinion, although to a great part both the man seemed unworthy of that calamity and it seemed that the right of liberty was being diminished by no slight beginning. Going out of the senate-house, he sat down on the tribunal of the magistrates and bade Decius Magius be seized and, set before his feet, plead his cause. When the man, with the fierceness of his spirit yet abiding, denied that this could be enforced by the law of the treaty, then chains were thrown upon him and he was ordered to be led to the camp before a lictor. As long as he was led with his head uncovered, he went on haranguing, crying to the multitude poured round him on every side, "You have the liberty, Campanians, that you sought. In the midst of the forum, in broad daylight, while you look on, I, second to no Campanian, am dragged in chains to my death. What more violent thing would be done were Capua taken? Go to meet Hannibal, deck out the city and consecrate the day of his coming, that you may behold this triumph over a fellow citizen of yours." As he cried out thus, since the crowd seemed to be moved, his head was muffled, and he was ordered to be hurried the more swiftly outside the gate. So he is led to the camp and at once put aboard a ship and sent to Carthage, lest, some commotion arising at Capua from the indignity of the deed, the senate too should repent of the leading man surrendered, and, an embassy being sent to demand him back, they must, by denying the first thing they should ask, offend their new allies, or, by granting it, keep at Capua the author of sedition and disorder. A storm carried the ship to Cyrene, which was then under the dominion of the kings. There, when Magius had fled for refuge to the statue of King Ptolemy, he was carried off by the guards to Ptolemy at Alexandria, and, when he had shown that he had been bound by Hannibal contrary to the law of the treaty, he was freed of his bonds, and leave was given him to return whither he chose, to Rome or to Capua. Magius said that Capua was not safe for him, and that Rome, at a time when there was war between Romans and Campanians, would be a dwelling for him rather of a deserter than of a guest; nowhere would he rather live than in the realm of him whom he had as the champion and the author of his liberty.

While these things were being done, Quintus Fabius Pictor, an envoy, returned to Rome from Delphi and read out the response from a written copy. In it were the gods and goddesses to whom, and in what manner, supplication should be made; then: "If you do thus, Romans, your affairs shall be better and easier, and your commonwealth shall go forward more after your wish, and the victory in the war shall be the Roman people’s. To Pythian Apollo, your commonwealth being well managed and preserved, send a gift out of the gains you have merited, and of the booty, the spoils, and the plunder do him honor; and keep wantonness far from you." When he had read these things out, translated from the Greek verse, he then said that on coming out from the oracle he had at once made offering to all those gods with incense and wine, and that he had been bidden by the steward of the temple that, just as he had approached the oracle and made his offering crowned with a laurel crown, so crowned he should go aboard the ship and not lay the crown aside before he had reached Rome; that he had performed whatever was enjoined with the utmost scruple and care, and had laid the crown at Rome upon the altar of Apollo. The senate decreed that those divine rites and supplications should be performed with care at the earliest possible time. While these things were being done at Rome and in Italy, the messenger of the victory at Cannae, Mago, son of Hamilcar, had come to Carthage—not sent from the battlefield itself by his brother, but kept back for some days in receiving the cities of the Bruttii that were revolting. He, when the senate was granted him, sets forth his brother’s deeds in Italy: that he had joined battle in the line with six commanders, of whom four were consuls, two a dictator and a master of the horse, with six consular armies; that he had slain above two hundred thousand of the enemy and taken above fifty thousand; that of the four consuls he had slain two; that of the two remaining, one was wounded, the other had escaped with scarce fifty men, his whole army lost; that the master of the horse, whose power is consular, had been routed and put to flight; that the dictator, because he had never committed himself to a pitched battle, was held the one and only general; that the Bruttii and Apulians, and part of the Samnites and Lucanians, had revolted to the Carthaginians; that Capua—which was the head not of Campania only but, after the Roman cause was shattered in the battle of Cannae, of Italy—had given itself over to Hannibal. For these so great and so many victories it was right, he said, that thanks be rendered and paid to the immortal gods.

Then, as proof of these so joyful tidings, he bade be poured out in the vestibule of the senate-house the golden rings, which made so great a heap that, by some authorities’ account, the measure being taken, they filled three measures and a half above—the report has prevailed, which is nearer the truth, that there were not more than a measure. He then added in words, that the indication of the disaster might be the greater, that none but a horseman, and of those the foremost, wore that badge. The sum of his speech was, that the nearer was the hope of finishing the war, the more must Hannibal be helped with all resource: for his warfare was far from home, in the midst of the enemy’s country; a great quantity of grain and money was being consumed, and so many battles, as they had destroyed the enemy’s armies, had also in some part diminished the conqueror’s forces; reinforcement therefore must be sent, money and grain must be sent as pay to soldiers who had deserved so well of the Punic name. After these words of Mago, while all were glad, Himilco, a man of the Barcine faction, judging that here was occasion to upbraid Hanno, said: "What is it, Hanno? Do you even now repent of the war undertaken against the Romans? Bid Hannibal be surrendered; forbid that, in such prosperity, thanks be rendered to the immortal gods; let us hear a Roman senator in the senate-house of the Carthaginians." Then Hanno: "I should have been silent today, conscript fathers, that I might say nothing less joyful than was fitting in the common gladness of all; but now, when a senator asks me whether I yet repent of the war undertaken against the Romans, if I keep silence I shall seem either proud or servile—the one the mark of a man forgetful of another’s freedom, the other of his own. Let me answer Himilco," he said, "that I have not ceased to repent of the war, nor shall I cease to accuse your unconquered commander, until I see the war ended on some tolerable condition; nor shall anything but a new peace put an end to my longing for the old peace. And so those things which Mago has just been vaunting are already a joy to Himilco and the rest of Hannibal’s satellites; to me they can be a joy, because the affairs of the war well managed will, if we are willing to use our fortune, give us a fairer peace; for if we let slip this time, in which we can seem to grant peace rather than to receive it, I fear lest this gladness too run riot with us and prove vain. And yet what is it even now, such as it is? ’I have slain the armies of the enemy: send me soldiers.’ What else would you ask, were you conquered? ’I have taken two camps of the enemy, full, doubtless, of booty and supplies: give me grain and money.’ What else, were you despoiled, were you stripped of your camp, would you seek? And, that I may not marvel at all this myself—for to me too, since I have answered Himilco, it is right and lawful to ask questions—I should wish that either Himilco or Mago would answer me: when the fight at Cannae was for the utter destruction of the Roman empire, and it is agreed that all Italy is in revolt, first, has any people of the Latin name revolted to us; and next, has any single man of the five-and-thirty tribes deserted to Hannibal?" When Mago had denied both, "Of the enemy, then," he said, "there still remains all too much. But I should wish to know what spirit, what hope, that multitude has."

When Mago said he did not know, "Nothing is easier to know," he said. "Have the Romans sent any envoys to Hannibal about peace? In short, has any mention of peace at Rome been brought word of to you?" When he had denied this also, "We have, then," he said, "a war as untouched as we had it on the day Hannibal crossed into Italy. How varying the victory was in the former Punic war most of us who remember it survive to tell. Never did our affairs seem more prosperous by land and sea than they were before the consuls Gaius Lutatius and Aulus Postumius; under the consuls Lutatius and Postumius we were utterly beaten at the Aegates islands. But if now too—which the gods avert as an omen—fortune shall have varied at all, do you hope for peace, when we shall be conquered, which now, when we conquer, no man gives? I, for my part, if any shall take counsel about peace, whether to be offered to the enemy or to be accepted, have what opinion to give; but if you bring forward what Mago demands, I think it is to no purpose to send to victors, and I judge much less should it be sent to those who mock us with a false and empty hope." Hanno’s speech moved not many; for his feud with the Barcine family made him a lighter authority, and minds taken up with the present gladness let into their ears nothing that should make their joy the vainer, and they thought that the war would soon be done, if only they were willing to strain a little. And so by a vast consensus a decree of the senate was passed, that to Hannibal four thousand Numidians should be sent as reinforcement, and forty elephants, and silver in talents; and a dictator was sent ahead with Mago into Spain to levy twenty thousand foot and four thousand horse, with which the armies that were in Italy and in Spain might be filled up.

But these things, as is the way in prosperity, were done sluggishly and at leisure; the Romans, besides the industry inborn in their spirits, fortune too forbade to delay. For neither was the consul wanting to any matter that was to be done by him, and the dictator, Marcus Junius Pera, the divine rites finished and the law carried, as the custom is, to the people that he might be allowed to mount his horse, besides the two city legions which had been enrolled by the consuls at the beginning of the year, and the levy of slaves and the cohorts gathered from the Picene and Gallic country, came down to a last help, well-nigh of a commonwealth despaired of—when honorable things yield to useful—and proclaimed that those who had dared a capital crime, and those who were in chains for money adjudged against them, if they would become soldiers with him, he would order to be released from their guilt and their debt. These six thousand men he armed with the Gallic spoils that had been carried in the triumph of Gaius Flaminius, and so set out from the city with twenty-five thousand under arms. Hannibal, Capua received, when he had again tried in vain the temper of the Neapolitans, partly by hope, partly by fear, leads his army across into the territory of Nola—not minded to act at once with hostility, since he did not despair of a voluntary surrender, yet, if they should put off his hope, resolved to omit nothing of what they could suffer or fear. The senate, and above all its leading men, stood with good faith in the Roman alliance; the commons, as is its way, were all for revolution and for Hannibal, and set before their minds the fear of the ravaging of their fields and the many grievous and unworthy things to be endured in a siege; nor were there wanting authors of revolt. And so, when fear seized the senate, that, if they should strive openly, the excited multitude could not be withstood, they find a postponement of the evil by feigning compliance. For they pretend that the revolt to Hannibal pleases them; but on what terms they should pass over into the new treaty and friendship was, they said, not yet settled. Thus, time being gained, they send envoys in haste to the Roman praetor Marcus Claudius, who was at Casilinum with his army, and show in how great peril the Nolan state stands: the country is Hannibal’s and the Carthaginians’, the city will at once be so unless help come; that by yielding to the commons that they would revolt when they pleased, the senate had brought it about that they did not over-hasten their revolt. Marcellus, having commended the Nolans, bade the matter be drawn out by the same pretense till his coming; meanwhile that what had passed with him should be kept secret, and all hope of Roman help. He himself from Casilinum makes for Caiatia, and thence, the river Volturnus crossed, through the Saticulan and Trebian country, above Suessula, over the mountains, came to Nola.

At the coming of the Roman praetor the Carthaginian withdrew from the Nolan territory and came down to the sea near Naples, desirous of getting a maritime town, that there might be a safe course for ships from Africa; but when he learned that Naples was held by a Roman prefect—it was Marcus Junius Silanus, summoned by the Neapolitans themselves—giving up Naples too, as he had Nola, he makes for Nuceria. This, when he had besieged it some while, often by force, often by soliciting now the commons, now the leading men, but in vain, he received at last by famine into surrender, on the terms that they should depart unarmed, each with a single garment. Then, as one who from the first wished to seem mild toward all the Italians save the Romans, he set forth rewards and honors for those who should remain and be willing to soldier with him. But by that hope he held no man: they all slipped away, wherever ties of hospitality or the chance impulse of the mind carried each, through the cities of Campania, chiefly to Nola and Naples. When about thirty senators, and by chance every man of the first rank, had made for Capua, and, shut out thence because they had closed their gates to Hannibal, betook themselves to Cumae. The plunder of Nuceria was given to the soldiery; the city was sacked and burned. Nola Marcellus held, not so much by trust in his garrison as by the goodwill of the leading men: the commons were feared, and before all Lucius Bantius, whom the consciousness of an attempted revolt, and fear of the Roman praetor, spurred now to the betrayal of his country, now, if fortune should fail him for that, to desertion. He was a keen youth, and at that season well-nigh the noblest horseman among the allies. Found half-dead at Cannae in a heap of slaughtered bodies, and kindly tended, even with gifts Hannibal had sent him home. In gratitude for that service he had wished to give over Nola into the jurisdiction and power of the Carthaginian, and the praetor saw him anxious and troubled with a passion for revolution. But since he must be either checked by punishment or won over by kindness, Marcellus chose rather to take to himself than to take away from the enemy a brave and energetic ally, and, summoning him, addresses him graciously: he had many, he said, who envied him among his own people, easy to gather from this—that no Nolan citizen had told him how many were the man’s distinguished military exploits; but one who had served in Roman camps, his valor could not be obscure. Many who had served with him reported to him what a man he was, and what perils, and how often, he had faced for the safety and dignity of the Roman people, and especially that in the battle of Cannae he had not ceased from the fight until, well-nigh bloodless, he was overwhelmed by the falling ruin of men, horses, and arms heaped upon him. "And so," he said, "blessing on your valor. With me you shall have every honor and every reward, and the oftener you are with me, you shall feel that the thing is to your dignity and your profit." And to the youth, glad at these promises, he gives a choice horse as a gift, and bids the quaestor count out five hundred silver pieces; the lictors he commands to suffer the man to approach him as often as he wished.

By this courtesy of Marcellus the spirit of the fierce youth was so softened that thereafter no one of the allies aided the Roman cause more bravely and faithfully. When Hannibal was at the gates—for he moved his camp back from Nuceria to Nola—and the Nolan commons looked anew toward revolt, Marcellus, at the enemy’s approach, withdrew within the walls, not in fear for his camp, but lest he should give the chance of betraying the city to the all too many who were watching for it. Then on both sides the lines began to be drawn up, the Romans before the walls of Nola, the Carthaginians before their own camp. From this there were small engagements between the city and the camp, with varying issue, since the leaders wished neither to forbid the few who rashly challenged nor to give the signal for a general battle. While the two armies stood thus in their daily posts, the leading men of the Nolans bring word to Marcellus that nightly parleys were being held between the commons and the Carthaginians, and that it had been resolved that, when the Roman line should have gone out of the gates, they would plunder their baggage and packs, then close the gates and seize the walls, that, being masters of their own affairs and of the city, they might thereupon receive the Carthaginian in place of the Roman. When this was reported to Marcellus, having commended the Nolan senators, he resolved, before any commotion should arise in the city, to try the fortune of battle. At the three gates that faced the enemy he drew up his army in three divisions; the baggage he bade follow close behind, and the camp-servants and sutlers and the weaker soldiers carry the palisade-stakes. At the middle gate he stationed the flower of the legions and the Roman cavalry, at the two gates round about the new soldiers and the light-armed and the allied cavalry. The Nolans were forbidden to approach the walls and gates, and the reserves appointed were given to the baggage, lest, while the legions were busy with the battle, an attack should be made upon it. Thus drawn up, they stood within the gates. Hannibal, who under his standards—as he had done for several days—stood in line till far into the day, at first marveled that neither did the Roman army come out of the gate nor was any armed man on the walls. Then, judging that the parleys had been betrayed and that they had been made inactive by fear, he sends part of his soldiers back to the camp, bidden to bring up in haste to the front line all the apparatus for assaulting the city, confident enough that, if he pressed them while they delayed, the commons would stir up some tumult in the city. While each man hurries in disorder to his own task, and the line draws up to the standards and comes near the walls, the gate suddenly thrown open, Marcellus bids the trumpets sound and the shout be raised, and the infantry first, then the cavalry, burst out upon the enemy with the greatest force they could. They had carried terror and confusion enough into the enemy’s center, when at the two gates round about Publius Valerius Flaccus and Gaius Aurelius, the legates, broke out upon the wings. The sutlers and camp-servants and the other crowd set to guard the baggage added their shout, so that to the Carthaginians, who most of all despised the small numbers, they on a sudden made the appearance of a huge army. I should hardly venture to affirm, what some authorities state, that two thousand eight hundred of the enemy were slain, with no more than five hundred of the Romans lost; but, whether the victory was so great or less, a great thing was done that day, and perhaps the greatest in that war: for not to be conquered by Hannibal was harder for the conquerors than it was afterwards to conquer.

Hannibal, the hope of getting Nola taken from him, when he had withdrawn to Acerrae, Marcellus at once, the gates shut and guards posted that none might go out, held an inquiry in the forum concerning those who had been secretly in parley with the enemy. Above seventy condemned of treason he beheaded, and bade their goods be confiscated to the Roman people; and, the sum of affairs handed over to the senate, he set out with his whole army and pitched his camp above Suessula. The Carthaginian first tried to entice Acerrae to a voluntary surrender; then, after he sees them obstinate, prepares to besiege and assault it. But the Acerrans had more spirit than strength; and so, despairing of the defense of the city, when they saw the walls being circumvallated, before the enemy’s works should be made continuous, through the gaps in the fortifications and the neglected watches, in the silence of night they slipped away, and through roads and trackless places, wherever counsel or error carried each, they fled to those cities of Campania which it was certain enough had not changed their faith. Hannibal, Acerrae sacked and burned, when word came that the Roman dictator and his legions were being summoned from Casilinum, lest, with the enemy’s camp so near, some new thing should befall Capua too, leads his army to Casilinum. Casilinum at that time five hundred Praenestines held, with a few Romans and men of the Latin name, whom the news of the disaster of Cannae had brought thither. These, the levy at Praeneste not finished by the appointed day, having set out late from home, when they had come to Casilinum before the report of the unhappy battle, and others were joining themselves to them—Romans and allies—and they were going from Casilinum in a column large enough, the news of the battle of Cannae turned them back to Casilinum. There, when they had spent several days, suspected by the Campanians and themselves fearful, in guarding against and in turn laying ambushes, and held it certain enough that the revolt of Capua was in train and that Hannibal was being received, they slew the townsmen by night and seized the part of the city which is on this side of the Volturnus—for it is divided by that river—and that the Romans held as their garrison at Casilinum. There is added a Perusine cohort too, four hundred and sixty men, driven to Casilinum by the same news as the Praenestines a few days before. And there were nigh enough armed men to guard walls so small and girt on one side by the river: a scarcity of grain, of men even too many, as it seemed, made the trouble.

Hannibal, when he was now not far off, sends the Gaetuli ahead with a prefect named Isalca, and at first, if a chance of parley offer, bids him with gracious words entice them to open the gates and receive a garrison: if they persist in obstinacy, to do the work by force, and to try whether at any point he can break into the city. When they had come up to the walls, because there was silence, the place seemed deserted; and the barbarian, thinking it had been yielded out of fear, makes ready to force the gates and break the bars, when, the gates suddenly thrown open, two cohorts, drawn up within for that very purpose, burst out with a great uproar and make havoc of the enemy. So, the first being repulsed, Maharbal, sent with a greater strength of men, could not himself withstand the sally of the cohorts. At last Hannibal, his camp set up before the very walls, prepares to assault the small town and the small garrison with all his force and all his troops, and, while he presses and harasses them, the walls being girded all round with his ring of men, he lost several soldiers, and the most forward of all, struck from the wall and the towers. Once, as they sallied out of their own accord, with a line of elephants thrown across he all but cut them off and drove them in their alarm into the city, with men enough out of so small a number slain; more would have fallen had not night come between the battle. The next day all minds are kindled to the assault, especially after a golden mural crown was set forth, and the leader himself upbraided the stormers of Saguntum with their sluggish assault of a fortress set on level ground, reminding them, each and all, of Cannae and Trasimene and the Trebia. Thereupon mantlets too began to be brought up, and mines; nor against the enemy’s various attempts was either any force or any skill wanting to the allies of the Romans. They set up outworks against the mantlets, intercepted the enemy’s mines with cross-mines, and met their attempts both open and secret, until shame at last turned even Hannibal from the undertaking, and, his camp fortified and a modest garrison set over it, that the matter might not seem given up, he withdrew into winter quarters at Capua. There he kept his army the greater part of the winter under roofs—an army often and long hardened against every human ill, but untried and unused to good fortune. And so those whom no force of hardship had conquered, excessive comforts and immoderate pleasures undid, and the more grievously the more greedily, out of their unwonted state, they plunged themselves into them. For sleep and wine and feasting and harlots and baths and idleness, by use growing day by day more enticing, so unstrung their bodies and minds that thereafter their past victories rather than their present strength protected them; and this was reckoned among men skilled in the arts of war a greater fault in their leader than that he had not led them straight from the field of Cannae to the city of Rome: for that delay might seem only to have put off victory, this error to have taken away the strength to conquer. And so, by Hercules, as though he went out from Capua with another army, he kept nothing anywhere of the old discipline. For most of them came back entangled with harlots, and, as soon as they began to be kept under tents, and the march and other military toil took them in hand, they failed in body and spirit like raw recruits; and thereafter, throughout the whole season of the summer campaigns, a great part slipped away from the standards without leave, nor had the deserters any other lurking-place than Capua.

But, the winter now growing mild, the soldier led out of winter quarters, he returns to Casilinum, where, though the assault had ceased, yet the unbroken blockade had brought the townsmen and the garrison to the last extremity of want. The Roman camp Tiberius Sempronius commanded, the dictator having set out for Rome to take the auspices anew. Marcellus too, though himself eager to bring help to the besieged, both the river Volturnus, swollen with waters, and the prayers of the Nolans and Acerrans held back, who feared the Campanians if the Roman garrison should withdraw. Gracchus, merely sitting before Casilinum—because it had been enjoined by the dictator that he should do nothing in his absence—made no move, though things were reported from Casilinum that would easily overcome all patience: for it was certain that some, not bearing the famine, had thrown themselves down, and that men stood unarmed on the walls, offering their naked bodies to the strokes of the missiles. Gracchus, bearing this ill, since he dared neither join battle without the dictator’s command—and he saw that fight he must, if he openly brought in grain—nor was there hope of bringing it in by stealth, having gathered spelt from the fields all round, when he had filled a number of jars, sent a messenger to the magistrate at Casilinum to take up the jars which the river should carry down. The following night, while all watched the river and the hope held out by the Roman messenger, the jars sent down the middle of the stream floated to them; the grain was divided equally among all. This was done the next day too, and the third; by night they were both sent and arrived: thereby they eluded the enemy’s watches. Then, by continuous rains the river running swifter than its wont, a cross-eddy drove the jars to the bank which the enemy guarded. There they are spied sticking among the willows that grew along the banks, and word was brought to Hannibal, and thereafter by a more attentive watch it was guarded that nothing sent down the Volturnus to the city should pass unseen. Yet nuts poured out from the Roman camp, when they floated down the middle of the stream to Casilinum, were caught on hurdles. At last it came to such a pitch of want that they tried to chew thongs and the hides stripped from their shields, when they had softened them in hot water, and abstained not from mice or any other animal, and dug out every kind of grass and root from the lowest part of the mound of the wall. And when the enemy had plowed over whatever grassy ground there was outside the wall, they sowed turnip-seed, so that Hannibal cried, "Am I to sit before Casilinum until these things come up?" and he who before had let no terms reach his ears, then at last suffered the matter to be treated with him concerning the ransom of the free men. Seven-twelfths of a pound of gold a head was agreed as the price. On the faith given they surrendered themselves. As long as all the gold was being paid, they were kept in chains; then they were sent back with the utmost good faith. This is the truer account than that they were slain by cavalry let loose upon them as they departed. The Praenestines were the greater part. Of the five hundred and seventy who had been in the garrison, less than half the sword and famine consumed: the rest returned safe to Praeneste with their praetor Marcus Anicius—he had before been a clerk. His statue was the evidence, set up at Praeneste in the forum, in a cuirass, clad in a toga, with the head veiled, and three images, with an inscription on a bronze plate, that Marcus Anicius had paid his vow for the soldiers who had been in the garrison at Casilinum. The same inscription was set beneath three images placed in the temple of Fortune.

The town of Casilinum was given back to the Campanians, secured by a garrison of seven hundred soldiers of Hannibal’s army, lest, when the Carthaginian had withdrawn thence, the Romans should attack it. To the Praenestine soldiers the Roman senate decreed double pay and exemption from military service for five years; when they were offered the citizenship for their valor, they did not change their own. The fortune of the Perusines is less known to fame, because it was illustrated neither by any monument of their own nor by a decree of the Romans. At the same time the Petelini, who alone of the Bruttii had remained in friendship with Rome, were assailed, not by the Carthaginians only, who held the region, but by the rest of the Bruttii too, for their counsels at variance with them. When the Petelini could not withstand these evils, they sent envoys to Rome to ask for a garrison. Their prayers and tears—for they poured themselves out in tearful lamentations in the vestibule of the senate-house, when they were bidden to take counsel for themselves—moved a great pity in the fathers and the people; and the fathers, consulted again by the praetor Marcus Aemilius, having surveyed all the resources of the empire, were forced to confess that there was now no help in them for distant allies, and bade them go home, and, their faith fulfilled to the utmost, take thought for themselves henceforth in their present fortune. When this embassy was reported back to the Petelini, so great suddenly a grief and dread seized their senate that some were for fleeing each where he could and deserting the city, others, since they were forsaken by their old allies, for joining themselves to the rest of the Bruttii and through them surrendering to Hannibal. Yet that party prevailed which held that nothing should be done in haste or rashly, and that the matter should be deliberated anew. When it was brought forward the next day, with less alarm, the nobles carried their point, that, all things being brought in from the fields, they should make strong the city and the walls.

About the same time letters from Sicily and Sardinia were brought to Rome. Those from Sicily, of the propraetor Titus Otacilius, were first read out in the senate: that Publius Furius the praetor had come with a fleet from Africa to Lilybaeum; that he himself was grievously wounded and in the last peril of his life; that to the soldiers and the naval allies neither pay nor grain was given at the appointed day, nor was there whence it might be given; that he earnestly urged that these be sent as soon as possible, and that, if it seemed good, they should send him from the new praetors a successor. Much the same was written about pay and grain by Aulus Cornelius Mammula, the propraetor, from Sardinia. The answer to both was that there was no source whence it might be sent, and they were bidden themselves to take thought for their own fleets and armies. Titus Otacilius, having sent envoys to the one resource of the Roman people, Hiero, received as much silver as was needed for pay, and grain for six months; in Sardinia the allied states bountifully contributed to Cornelius. And at Rome too, because of the scarcity of silver, on the motion of Marcus Minucius, tribune of the plebs, a board of three commissioners of the bank was created: Lucius Aemilius Papus, who had been consul and censor, and Marcus Atilius Regulus, who had been twice consul, and Lucius Scribonius Libo, who was then tribune of the plebs. And two commissioners were created, Marcus and Gaius Atilius, who dedicated the temple of Concord which Lucius Manlius the praetor had vowed; and three pontiffs were created, Quintus Caecilius Metellus and Quintus Fabius Maximus and Quintus Fulvius Flaccus, in place of Publius Scantinius deceased and of Lucius Aemilius Paulus the consul and Quintus Aelius Paetus, who had fallen in the battle of Cannae.

When the fathers had filled up, so far as human counsels could attain it, the other things which fortune had diminished by unbroken disasters, at last they took thought for themselves too, and for the emptiness of the senate-house and the fewness of those who came together to the public council; for the senate had not been chosen since the censors Lucius Aemilius and Gaius Flaminius, when so many senators the unhappy battle, and besides each man’s own mischance through five years, had carried off. When concerning this matter Marcus Aemilius the praetor—the dictator having now set out for the army after the loss of Casilinum—at the demand of all had brought the question forward, then Spurius Carvilius, when in a long speech he had bewailed not only the want but the very fewness of citizens from whom men might be chosen into the fathers, said that, for the sake of filling up the senate and of binding the Latin name more closely to the Roman people, he strongly advised that to two senators from each of the Latin peoples, whom the Roman fathers should approve, the citizenship be given, and that they be chosen into the senate in the place of the dead. That opinion the fathers heard with no calmer minds than once the demand of the Latins themselves; and when there was a murmur of indignant men through the whole senate-house, and Titus Manlius above all said that there was even now a man of that stock from which once on the Capitol a consul had threatened that whatever Latin he should see in the senate-house he would slay with his own hand—Quintus Fabius Maximus says that never had mention of any matter been made in the senate at a more unfit time than, amid minds of the allies so wavering and their faith uncertain, that thing now flung out which should further trouble them; that the rash word of one man must be quenched in the silence of all, and that, if ever there was anything secret or sacred to be kept silent in the senate-house, this above all must be covered, hidden, forgotten, held as unspoken. So mention of that matter was suppressed. It was resolved that a dictator be created to choose the senate—one who had before been censor and was the eldest of those living who had held the censorship—and they bade Gaius Terentius the consul be summoned to name the dictator. He, leaving a garrison in Apulia, when by great marches he had returned to Rome, the next night, as the custom was, named, by decree of the senate, Marcus Fabius Buteo, without a master of the horse, dictator for six months.

He, when he had mounted the Rostra with his lictors, said that he approved neither of two dictators at one time, which had never before been done, nor of a dictator without a master of the horse, nor of the censorial power entrusted to one man, and to the same man a second time, nor of command given to a dictator for six months unless he had been created for the doing of some particular business. To the excesses which chance, the crisis, and necessity had made, he would himself set a measure: for he would remove no man from the senate of those whom the censors Gaius Flaminius and Lucius Aemilius had chosen into the senate; he would order them only to be transcribed and read out, that the judgment and arbitrament concerning a senator’s repute and character might not rest with one man; and he would so choose in the place of the dead that an order might seem preferred to an order, not a man to a man. The old senate read out, he then chose into the place of the dead first those who, since the censors Lucius Aemilius and Gaius Flaminius, had held a curule magistracy and had not yet been chosen into the senate, each as he had first been elected; then he chose those who had been aediles, tribunes of the plebs, or quaestors; then, from those who had held no magistracy, men who had spoils taken from an enemy fixed up at home or had received the civic crown. So, a hundred and seventy-seven men having been chosen into the senate with the great approval of all, he at once abdicated his office and came down from the Rostra a private man, his lictors bidden to depart, and mingled himself with the throng of those going about their private affairs, purposely wearing out the time in this, that he might not draw the people from the forum to escort him home. Yet men’s interest in him did not slacken for that delay, and they escorted him home in throngs. The consul the following night returned to the army, the senate not made aware of it, lest he should be kept in the city on account of the elections.

The next day, the senate being consulted by Marcus Pomponius the praetor, it was decreed that the dictator should be written to, that, if he judged it for the public good, he should come to choose consuls in their place, together with the master of the horse and the praetor Marcus Marcellus, that from these, present, the fathers might learn in what state the commonwealth was, and take counsel according to the facts. Those who had been summoned all came, leaving behind the legates to command the legions. The dictator, having spoken of himself little and modestly, turned a great part of the glory upon the master of the horse, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, and proclaimed the elections, at which Lucius Postumius, for the third time, in his absence—who then held Gaul as his province—and Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, who was then master of the horse and curule aedile, were created consuls. Then were created as praetors Marcus Valerius Laevinus, for the second time, Appius Claudius Pulcher, Quintus Fulvius Flaccus, and Quintus Mucius Scaevola. The dictator, the magistrates created, returned to the winter quarters at Teanum to the army, leaving the master of the horse at Rome, that he, since he was to enter on his magistracy in a few days, might consult the fathers concerning the enrolling and providing of armies for the year. While these matters were chiefly being handled, a new disaster was announced, fortune heaping one upon another in that year: Lucius Postumius, consul-elect, was himself, with his army, destroyed in Gaul. There was a vast forest—the Gauls called it Litana—through which he was to lead his army. The trees of that forest, to right and left along the road, the Gauls so cut that, untouched, they stood, but, pushed by a light force, would fall. Two Roman legions Postumius had, and he had enrolled so many of the allies from the upper sea that he led twenty-five thousand armed men into the enemy’s fields. The Gauls, when they had beset the edge of the forest’s outskirts, when the column entered the pass, then push the outermost of the cut trees; which, falling one upon another—each of itself unstable and ill-holding—overwhelmed in a double ruin arms, men, and horses, so that scarce ten men escaped. For when most had been killed by the trunks of the trees and the fragments of the boughs, the rest of the multitude, in their alarm at the unlooked-for calamity, the Gauls, armed and beset round the whole pass, slew, few out of so great a number being taken—those who, making for the bridge of the river, were cut off, the bridge having been beforehand beset by the enemy. There Postumius fell, fighting with all his might that he might not be taken. The spoils of his body and the head, struck off, of the leader the Boii carried in triumph into the temple which is the most hallowed among them. The head cleansed, as is their custom, they overlaid the skull with gold, and it was for them a sacred vessel from which on solemn days to pour libation, and the same a drinking-cup for the priest and the keepers of the temple. The plunder too was to the Gauls no less than the victory; for although a great part of the animals was crushed in the ruin of the forest, yet the rest of the spoil, because nothing was scattered in flight, was found strewn along the whole order of the prostrate column.

When this disaster had been announced, since for many days the state had been in such alarm that, the shops shut, a stillness as of night being upon the city, the senate gave the aediles the task of going about the city and bidding the shops be opened and the show of public mourning be taken from the city, then Tiberius Sempronius held a meeting of the senate and consoled the fathers, and exhorted them that men who had not sunk under the ruin of Cannae should not abase their spirits at lesser calamities: that, as for the Carthaginian enemy and Hannibal, provided only matters went prosperously, as he hoped they would, the Gallic war could both safely be let alone and put off, and the avenging of that treachery would be in the power of the gods and the Roman people; concerning the Punic enemy and the armies by which that war was being waged, there must be deliberation and action. He himself first set forth what foot and horse, what citizens, what allies were in the dictator’s army; then Marcellus laid out the sum of his own forces. What was in Apulia with Gaius Terentius the consul was inquired of the experienced; nor could a reckoning be reached whence two consular armies strong enough for so great a war might be made up. And so it was resolved that Gaul, though just anger goaded them, be let alone for that year. The dictator’s army was decreed to the consul. Of Marcellus’ army, those who were of the survivors from the rout at Cannae it was resolved should be transferred to Sicily and serve there as long as there was war in Italy; thither too from the dictator’s legions should be sent back the soldiers of least strength, with no fixed term of service set save what was the lawful number of campaigns. Two city legions were decreed to the other consul, who should be elected in the place of Lucius Postumius, and it was resolved that he be created as soon as it could be done with the auspices unimpaired; and that besides two legions be summoned at the earliest time from Sicily, and that thence the consul to whom the city legions had fallen should take as many soldiers as were needed; that to Gaius Terentius the consul the command be prolonged for a year, and that nothing be diminished of that army which he kept for the protection of Apulia.

While these things were being done and made ready in Italy, no less briskly was the war pressed in Spain, but to this day more prosperously for the Romans. Publius and Gnaeus Scipio had divided their forces between them, so that Gnaeus should carry on the war by land, Publius by ship; Hasdrubal, the Carthaginian commander, trusting sufficiently in neither part of his strength, kept himself at a distance from the enemy, safe by space and by his position, until, after much and long entreaty, four thousand foot and five hundred horse were sent him as reinforcement from Africa. Then, his hope at last revived, he moved his camp nearer the enemy and bade a fleet too be built and made ready for himself, to guard the islands and the seacoast. In the very heat of setting all things anew in motion, the desertion of his ships’ captains struck him—men who, after the fleet had been deserted in panic at the Ebro, had been sharply rebuked, and were thereafter never sufficiently faithful either to their leader or to the Carthaginian cause. These deserters had stirred up a movement among the people of the Tartesii, and at their instigation several cities had revolted; one even had been taken by force by themselves. Against that people the war was turned by the Romans, and Hasdrubal, entering the enemy’s territory with a hostile army, resolved to attack, before the walls of a city taken a few days before, Chalbus, a noble leader of the Tartesii, who with a strong army kept himself in his camp. Therefore, the light-armed sent ahead to entice the enemy to battle, he sent part of the cavalry to plunder here and there through the fields, and to catch the stragglers. At once there was both tumult about the camp and through the fields flight and slaughter; then, when on every side by different ways they had recovered themselves into camp, on a sudden their panic so departed from their spirits that there was courage enough not only to defend their fortifications but even to provoke the enemy to battle. They burst out, then, in a column from the camp, dancing after their fashion, and their sudden boldness struck terror into an enemy that a little before had been the challenger. And so Hasdrubal himself too led his forces up onto a hill steep enough, and made safe besides by a river set before it, and there received the light-armed sent ahead and the scattered cavalry, and, trusting neither sufficiently to hill nor to river, fortified his camp with a rampart. In this alternating panic some engagements were brought on; nor was the Numidian a match for the Spanish horseman, nor the Moorish javelin-man for the targeteer, equal in swiftness but somewhat superior in steadiness of spirit and in strength.

After they could neither, by hovering about the camp, entice the Carthaginian to battle, nor was the assault of the camp easy, they take by force the city of Ascua, whither Hasdrubal, entering the enemy’s borders, had brought grain and other supplies, and get possession of all the country round; nor could they now be held by any command either on the march or in camp. When Hasdrubal had perceived this negligence arising, as it does, out of success, having exhorted his soldiers to attack the scattered, standardless enemy, he came down from the hill and went forward, his line drawn up, toward the camp. When messengers, fleeing in alarm from the lookouts and outposts, brought word that he was at hand, the call to arms was raised. As each had taken up his arms, without command, without standard, unmarshaled, in no order, they rush into battle. Already the foremost had joined hands, while some ran up in bands, and some had not yet gone out of the camp; yet at first by their very boldness they terrified the enemy; then, falling scattered upon close-set ranks, since their fewness was too little safe, they began to look one to another, and, beaten from every side, to gather into a ring, and, while they press body to body and join arms to arms, driven into a narrow space, when there was scarce room enough to wield their weapons, hemmed in by the enemy’s ring, they are cut down till far into the day. A small part, having made a sally, sought the woods and the mountains. With equal terror both the camp was deserted and the whole nation the next day came into surrender. Nor did it long abide in the compact; for presently word was brought from Carthage that Hasdrubal should at the earliest time lead his army into Italy—a thing which, noised abroad through Spain, turned the minds of almost all to the Romans. And so Hasdrubal at once sends a letter to Carthage, showing how great a loss the report of his departure had been: that if in truth he should go thence, Spain would be the Romans’ before he crossed the Ebro; for, besides that he had neither garrison nor leader to leave in his stead, the Roman generals were such as could scarce be withstood with equal forces. And so, if they had any care for Spain, they should send him a successor with a strong army; to whom, even if all things fell out prosperously, the province would yet be no idle charge.

That letter, although at first it greatly moved the senate, yet, because the care of Italy was prior and weightier, nothing was changed concerning Hasdrubal or his forces: Himilco was sent with a full army and an enlarged fleet to hold and guard Spain by land and sea. When he had carried over his land and naval forces, the camp fortified and the ships drawn up and surrounded with a rampart, he himself, with picked horsemen, hastening as much as he could, came through wavering and hostile peoples, alike heedful, to Hasdrubal. When he had set forth the decrees and instructions of the senate, and had himself in turn been taught how the war in Spain should be handled, he returned back into his own camp, safe in nothing but his speed, because he had got away from every quarter before the peoples could agree together. Hasdrubal, before he moved his camp, levies moneys from all the peoples of his dominion, well knowing that Hannibal had bought certain passes with money, and had had Gallic auxiliaries no otherwise than as hirelings, and that, had he entered upon so great a march empty-handed, he would scarce have made his way to the Alps. The moneys, therefore, hastily exacted, he came down to the Ebro. When the decrees of the Carthaginians and Hasdrubal’s march were reported to the Romans, both leaders, all things else laid aside, prepare, their forces joined, to go to meet his enterprise and to withstand it, judging that, if to Hannibal—an enemy scarce of himself to be endured by Italy—Hasdrubal as a leader and the Spanish army should be joined, that would be the end of the Roman empire. Anxious with these cares, they draw together their forces at the Ebro, and, the river crossed, when they had long deliberated whether to set camp against camp or to think it enough to delay the enemy from his proposed march by assailing the allies of the Carthaginians, they prepare to assault a city named Hibera from the neighboring river, the richest at that season of that region. When Hasdrubal perceived this, instead of bringing help to his allies, he himself goes to assault a city lately surrendered into the faith of the Romans. So the siege already begun was abandoned by the Romans, and the war was turned against Hasdrubal himself.

For a few days they kept their camps apart at an interval of five miles, not without light skirmishes, yet without coming out into line: at last, on one and the same day, as if by agreement, the signal for battle was set forth on either side, and with all their forces they came down into the plain. In triple line stood the Roman array; of the light-armed, part was placed among the front-rank men, part received behind the standards; the cavalry girt the wings. Hasdrubal made strong his center with Spaniards; on the wings, on the right he placed the Carthaginians, on the left the Africans and the auxiliaries of the mercenaries; of the cavalry, the Numidians he set before the Carthaginian foot, the rest before the Africans, for wings. Nor were all the Numidians placed on the right wing, but those who, after the manner of trick-riders leading two horses each, were wont, often in the very fiercest of the fight, to leap fully armed from a tired to a fresh horse: so great is their own swiftness, and so docile the breed of their horses. When they stood drawn up in this fashion, the hopes of the commanders on either side were well-nigh not unequal; for not even much in number or in kind of soldiers did these or those excel; in the soldiers’ spirit there was a wide disparity. For the Romans, though they fought far from their fatherland, their leaders had easily persuaded that they fought for Italy and the city of Rome; and so, as men for whom return to their fatherland turned upon the issue of that battle, they had set their minds firmly to conquer or to die. The other line had less stubborn men; for the greater part were Spaniards, who would rather be conquered in Spain than, as victors, be dragged into Italy. So at the first encounter, when the javelins had scarce been thrown, the center drew back its foot, and, as the Romans bore down with great force, turned its back. Yet on the wings the battle was no whit slacker. Here the Carthaginian, there the African presses, and they fight as upon men hemmed in, in a battle on two sides; but when the whole Roman line had now drawn together to the center, it had strength enough to thrust apart the enemy’s wings. So there were two separate battles. In both the Romans, as those who, the center already routed before, excelled in number and in strength of men, conquered without doubt. A great host of men was there slain, and, had not the Spaniards fled so wildly when the battle was scarce joined, very few out of the whole line would have survived. There was hardly any cavalry-fight at all, because, as soon as the Moors and Numidians saw the center give way, at once in headlong flight they deserted the bare wings, driving the elephants too before them. And Hasdrubal, having tarried to the very last issue of the battle, fled with a few from the midst of the slaughter. The Romans took and plundered the camp. That battle, if Spain had been in any doubt, joined it to the Romans, and to Hasdrubal there remained no hope, not only of leading his army into Italy, but not even of remaining safely in Spain. When these things had been published at Rome by the Scipios’ letters, they rejoiced not so much in the victory as in the barring of Hasdrubal’s passage into Italy.

While these things were being done in Spain, Petelia in Bruttium, some months after it had begun to be besieged by Himilco, Hannibal’s prefect, was taken by storm. With much blood and many wounds did that victory cost the Carthaginians, nor did any force overcome the besieged so much as famine. For, the stores of grain consumed, and the flesh of every kind of four-footed beast, accustomed and unaccustomed, at last on hides and grass and roots and tender bark and stripped leaves they lived, nor were they taken until their strength failed them for standing on the walls and bearing arms. Petelia recovered, the Carthaginian led his forces over to Consentia, which, defended less stubbornly, he received within a few days into surrender. About the same days too the army of the Bruttii beset Croton, a Greek city, once rich in arms and men, then by now so afflicted with many and great disasters that of all ages there were fewer than two thousand citizens left. And so, the city emptied of defenders, the enemy easily got possession of it: the citadel only was held, into which, amid the tumult of the city’s capture, some had escaped from the midst of the slaughter. The Locrians too revolted to the Bruttii and the Carthaginians, their multitude betrayed by the leading men. The Rhegians only of that region remained, both in faith toward the Romans and in their own power, to the last. To Sicily too the same leaning of men’s minds reached, and not even the house of Hiero kept wholly clear of revolt. For Gelo, the eldest of the stock, despising at once his father’s old age and, after the disaster of Cannae, the Roman alliance, went over to the Carthaginians, and would have set Sicily in motion, had not death—so timely that it touched even his father with suspicion—carried him off as he was arming the multitude and soliciting the allies. These things were done that year in Italy, in Africa, in Sicily, in Spain with varying issue. At the year’s end Quintus Fabius Maximus demanded of the senate that he be allowed to dedicate the temple of Venus Erycina which he had vowed as dictator. The senate decreed that Tiberius Sempronius, consul-elect, as soon as he had entered on his magistracy, should propose to the people that they order Quintus Fabius to be a commissioner of two for the dedicating of the temple. And to Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who had been twice consul and an augur, his three sons, Lucius, Marcus, and Quintus, gave funeral games for three days, and two-and-twenty pairs of gladiators, in the forum. The curule aediles, Gaius Laetorius and Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, consul-elect, who in his aedileship had been master of the horse, held the Roman games, which were repeated for three days. The plebeian games of the aediles Marcus Aurelius Cotta and Marcus Claudius Marcellus were repeated thrice. The third year of the Punic war having come round, Tiberius Sempronius the consul enters on his magistracy on the Ides of March. Of the praetors, Quintus Fulvius Flaccus, who had before been consul and censor, had by lot the city jurisdiction, Marcus Valerius Laevinus the foreign; Appius Claudius Pulcher drew Sicily, Quintus Mucius Scaevola Sardinia. To Marcus Marcellus the people ordered that there be command as proconsul, because, since the disaster of Cannae, he alone of the Roman commanders had had success in Italy.

The senate, on the day it was first consulted on the Capitol, decreed that, whereas a double tribute was to be imposed that year, the single should be exacted at once, out of which present pay should be given to all the soldiers save those who had been soldiers at Cannae. Concerning the armies they decreed thus: that for the two city legions Tiberius Sempronius the consul should proclaim Cales as the day’s meeting-place; thence those legions should be led down into the Claudian camp above Suessula. The legions that were there—and they were chiefly the army of Cannae—Appius Claudius Pulcher the praetor should transfer to Sicily, and those that were in Sicily should be brought over to Rome. To the army for which Cales had been proclaimed as the day of meeting Marcus Claudius Marcellus was sent, and he was bidden to lead the city legions down into the Claudian camp. To receive the old army and lead it thence into Sicily Tiberius Maecilius Croto was sent as legate by Appius Claudius. Men had at first silently expected that the consul would hold the elections for choosing his colleague; then, when they saw Marcus Marcellus sent away, as it were of set purpose—the man whom they most wished to be made consul for that year, for his deeds excellently done in the praetorship—a murmur arose in the senate-house. When the consul perceived it, "Both," he said, "were for the public good, conscript fathers—both that Marcus Claudius should set out into Campania to exchange the armies, and that the elections should not be proclaimed before he had returned thence, his charge done, that you might have the consul whom the crisis of the commonwealth demanded, whom you most wish." So concerning the elections there was silence until Marcellus returned. Meanwhile two commissioners were created, Quintus Fabius Maximus and Titus Otacilius Crassus, for the dedicating of temples—Otacilius to Mens, Fabius to Venus Erycina; both are on the Capitol, parted by a single channel. And concerning the three hundred Campanian horsemen who had served their time with good faith in Sicily and come to Rome, it was proposed to the people that they be Roman citizens; likewise that they be municipal townsmen of Cumae from the day before the Campanian people revolted from the Roman people. What chiefly had moved this proposal was that they themselves said they did not know whose men they were, having left their old fatherland and not yet been admitted into that to which they had returned. After Marcellus came back from the army, elections were proclaimed for choosing one consul in the place of Lucius Postumius. Marcellus was created by a vast consensus, to enter at once on his magistracy. But as he entered on the consulship, when it had thundered, the augurs being summoned pronounced that he seemed to have been faultily created; and the fathers commonly spread it abroad by report that, because then for the first time two plebeian consuls had been made, this was not pleasing to the gods. In the place of Marcellus, when he had abdicated his office, was substituted Quintus Fabius Maximus, for the third time. The sea burned that year; at Sinuessa a cow bore a foal; at Lanuvium the images at the temple of Juno Sospita ran with blood, and about that temple it rained stones, for which shower the nine-day rite was held, as is the custom; and the other prodigies were expiated with care.

The consuls divided the armies between them. To Fabius fell the army at Teanum, which Marcus Junius the dictator had commanded; to Sempronius the slave-volunteers who were there and twenty-five thousand of the allies; to Marcus Valerius the praetor were decreed the legions which had returned from Sicily; Marcus Claudius as proconsul was sent to the army which guarded Nola above Suessula; the praetors set out for Sicily and Sardinia. The consuls proclaimed that, as often as they should summon the senate, the senators and those to whom it was lawful to speak their opinion in the senate should assemble at the Porta Capena. The praetors whose office was jurisdiction set their tribunals at the Public Fishpond; thither they bade recognizances be made, and there that year justice was administered. Meanwhile to Carthage—whence Mago, Hannibal’s brother, was about to ship over into Italy twelve thousand foot and fifteen hundred horse, twenty elephants, a thousand talents of silver, with an escort of sixty warships—word is brought that in Spain things had gone ill and that nearly all the peoples of that province had revolted to the Romans. There were some who would have turned Mago aside with that fleet and those forces, Italy abandoned, into Spain, when a sudden hope of recovering Sardinia shone out: that the Roman army there was small; that the old praetor, Aulus Cornelius, skilled in the province, was leaving it, and a new one was awaited; that besides, the spirits of the Sardinians were now wearied by the long duration of Roman rule, and in the last year had been ruled harshly and greedily; that they were pressed by a heavy tribute and an unfair levy of grain; that nothing was lacking but an author to whom they might revolt. This secret embassy had been sent through the leading men, Hampsicora chiefly setting the matter in motion, who then in authority and resources was by far the first. Stirred and lifted up by these tidings well-nigh at one time, they send Mago with his fleet and forces into Spain, and for Sardinia they choose Hasdrubal as leader, and decree him about as great a force as Mago’s. And at Rome the consuls, the business that had to be done in the city dispatched, were now bestirring themselves toward the war. Tiberius Sempronius proclaimed Sinuessa as the day’s meeting-place for his soldiers, and Quintus Fabius, the senate first consulted, that all should bring in their grain from the fields into the fortified towns before the next Kalends of June; that whoever should not have brought it in, his field he would lay waste, his slaves he would sell under the spear, his farm-buildings he would burn. Not even to the praetors who had been created to administer justice was exemption from the conduct of the war given. It was resolved that Valerius the praetor should go into Apulia to receive the army from Terentius; that, when the legions came from Sicily, they should be used chiefly for the protection of that region, and the Terentian army be sent to Tarentum with one of the legates; and twenty-five ships were given with which he might guard the seacoast between Brundisium and Tarentum. An equal number of ships was decreed to Quintus Fulvius the city praetor for guarding the shores near the city. To Gaius Terentius the proconsul the task was given to hold a levy of soldiers in the Picene country and to be a protection to those places. And Titus Otacilius Crassus, after he had dedicated the temple of Mens on the Capitol, was sent into Sicily with command to take charge of the fleet.

To this struggle of the two wealthiest peoples on earth all kings and nations had bent their minds, and among them Philip, king of the Macedonians, the more because he was nearer to Italy and parted from it only by the Ionian sea. He, when first by report he learned that Hannibal had crossed the Alps, as he had been glad that war had arisen between the Roman and the Carthaginian, so, the strength of the two yet uncertain, he had wavered in mind as to which people’s victory he would rather have. But after now a third battle, a third victory, was the Carthaginians’, he inclined to fortune and sent envoys to Hannibal; who, avoiding the harbors of Brundisium and Tarentum, because they were held by the watch of Roman ships, went ashore at the temple of Lacinian Juno. Thence, making through Apulia for Capua, they fell into the midst of the Roman garrisons and were brought to Valerius Laevinus the praetor, who had his camp about Luceria. There, undaunted, Xenophanes, the head of the embassy, says that he had been sent by King Philip to join friendship and alliance with the Roman people; that he had instructions for the consuls and the senate and the Roman people. The praetor, glad, amid the defections of old allies, at the new alliance of so famous a king, received the enemy most courteously as guests. He gives men to escort them; he points out their routes with care, and what places and what passes the Roman or the enemy held. Xenophanes, through the Roman garrisons into Campania, thence by the nearest way, came to the camp of Hannibal, and joined with him a treaty and friendship on these terms: that King Philip with as great a fleet as he could—and it seemed he could make two hundred ships—should cross into Italy and lay waste the seacoast, and wage war by land and sea for his part; that, when the war should be finished, all Italy, with the city of Rome itself, should be the Carthaginians’ and Hannibal’s, and that all the booty should fall to Hannibal; that, Italy wholly subdued, they should sail into Greece and wage war with whom the king pleased; that what states of the mainland and what islands incline toward Macedonia should be Philip’s and of his kingdom.

On well-nigh these terms was the treaty struck between the Carthaginian leader and the Macedonian envoys; and there were sent with them, to confirm the pledge of the king himself, envoys—Gisgo and Bostar and Mago—who came to the same place, the temple of Lacinian Juno, where the ship lay hidden at anchor. Setting out thence, when they held the deep, they were sighted by the Roman fleet which guarded the shores of Calabria; and when Valerius Flaccus had sent light vessels to pursue and bring back the ship, at first the king’s men tried to flee, then, when they perceived they were being beaten in speed, they surrendered to the Romans, and, brought to the prefect of the fleet, when he asked who, and whence, and whither they steered their course, Xenophanes at first, with a lie that had once already served well enough, framed it that he had been sent by Philip to the Romans, had come through to Marcus Valerius, to whom alone the road had been safe, and had not been able to get over Campania, hedged about by the enemy’s garrisons. But when the Punic dress and bearing made Hannibal’s envoys suspected, and their speech, on being questioned, betrayed them, then, their companions drawn aside and frightened with fear, a letter too from Hannibal to Philip was found, and the compact between the king of the Macedonians and the Carthaginian leader. When these had been sufficiently learned, it seemed best to carry the prisoners and their companions to Rome, to the senate or to the consuls, wherever they might be, at the earliest time. For that, the five swiftest ships were chosen, and Lucius Valerius Antias sent to command them, and he was charged to distribute the envoys among all the ships, to be kept apart, and to take care that there be no parley among them nor any communication of counsel. About the same time, at Rome, when Aulus Cornelius Mammula, leaving his province of Sardinia, had reported what was the state of affairs in the island—that all looked toward war and revolt; that Quintus Mucius, who had succeeded him, on his arrival had been seized by the heaviness of the climate and the waters and entangled in a sickness not so much dangerous as long, and would for a good while be useless for sustaining the duties of war; and that the army there, though strong enough to garrison a peaceful province, was too little for the war that seemed likely to be stirred up—the fathers decreed that Quintus Fulvius Flaccus should enroll five thousand foot and four hundred horse, and take care to ship that legion over into Sardinia at the earliest time, and should send, with command, whomever he saw fit, to manage matters until Mucius recovered. For that task was sent Titus Manlius Torquatus, who had been twice consul and censor, and in his consulship had subdued the Sardinians. About the same time too a fleet sent from Carthage to Sardinia, under the leader Hasdrubal surnamed the Bald, vexed by a foul storm, is driven onto the Balearic islands, and there—so battered were not the rigging only but even the hulls of the ships—the ships were beached and, while they are repaired, wore away no little time.

In Italy, when, after the battle of Cannae, the strength of the one side being broken and the spirit of the other softened, the war was waged the more sluggishly, the Campanians of themselves set about bringing the Cuman state under their dominion, at first soliciting them to revolt from the Romans; when that went forward too little, they contrive a trick to take them. There was for all the Campanians a fixed sacrifice at Hamae. Thither, they informed the Cumans, the Campanian senate would come, and asked that the Cuman senate too should come thither to take counsel in common, that each people might have the same allies and enemies; they would keep an armed garrison there, that there might be no danger from Roman or Carthaginian. The Cumans, although the fraud was suspected, refused nothing, thinking that thus their own deceitful design could be cloaked. Meanwhile Tiberius Sempronius the Roman consul, at Sinuessa, where he had proclaimed the day for meeting, his army reviewed and the river Volturnus crossed, pitched his camp about Liternum. There, because the post was idle, he often made the soldiers drill, that the recruits—and the greater part were slave-volunteers—might grow used to follow the standards and to know their own ranks in the line. Amid these things the leader’s chiefest care—and so he had charged the legates and tribunes—was that no reproach of anyone’s former lot should sow discord between the ranks; that the old soldier should let himself be made equal with the recruit, the free man with the slave-volunteer; that they should hold all honorable and well-born enough to whom the Roman people had entrusted its arms and standards; that the fortune which had forced things to be so done forced them also to guard the deed. These charges were not more carefully given by the leaders than observed by the soldiers, and in a short time all minds had grown together into such concord that it well-nigh came to be forgotten from what condition each had been made a soldier. As Gracchus was busied with this, the Cuman envoys brought word what embassy from the Campanians had come a few days before, and what they themselves had answered: that on the third day after that was the festal day; that not only would the whole senate be there, but the Campanian camp and army too. Gracchus, bidding the Cumans bring in everything from the fields into the city and stay within the walls, himself, the day before the fixed sacrifice was to be the Campanians’, moves his camp to Cumae. Hamae is three miles thence. Already the Campanians had gathered there in throngs, as agreed, and not far off, in hiding, Marius Alfius, the medix tuticus—he was the highest magistrate among the Campanians—had his camp with fourteen thousand armed men, somewhat more intent on preparing the sacrifice, and meanwhile on contriving the fraud, than on fortifying the camp or any military work. For three days was the sacrifice made at Hamae. The rite was nocturnal, so timed that it should be completed before midnight. For this season Gracchus, judging it must be ambushed, having set guards at the gates that none might be able to carry word of his enterprise, and from the tenth hour of the day having made the soldiers refresh their bodies and give themselves to sleep, that at the first dark they might be able to assemble at the signal, about the first watch bade the standards be taken up, and, setting out with a silent column, when he had come to Hamae at midnight, fell upon the Campanian camp, neglected as on a night of vigil, at all the gates at once; some, stretched in sleep, others, the rite finished, returning unarmed, he cut down. In that nocturnal confusion were slain above two thousand men, with their leader Marius Alfius himself; and four-and-thirty military standards were taken.

Gracchus, having got the enemy’s camp at the loss of fewer than a hundred soldiers, withdrew in haste to Cumae, fearing Hannibal, who above Capua had his camp on Tifata. Nor did his foresight of what was to come deceive him. For, as soon as that disaster was announced at Capua, Hannibal, thinking that he would find at Hamae an army of recruits, slaves for the most part, insolently rejoicing at their success, despoiling the conquered and driving off plunder, hurried a forced column past Capua, and bade those of the fleeing Campanians whom he met be taken under escort to Capua, and the wounded be carried in wagons. He himself found at Hamae the camp empty of the enemy and nothing but the traces of recent slaughter and the bodies of the allies strewn here and there. Some advised that he should lead straight thence to Cumae and assault the city. Although Hannibal desired this not moderately—that, since he could not have Naples, he might have at least Cumae, a maritime city—yet, because the soldier had hurriedly carried out with him in his swift march nothing but his arms, he withdrew back to his camp above Tifata. Thence, wearied by the prayers of the Campanians, the next day he returns to Cumae with all the apparatus for assaulting the city, and, the Cuman country thoroughly ravaged, sets his camp a mile from the city, where Gracchus had halted, rather out of shame to forsake in such a strait allies imploring his faith and that of the Roman people, than out of confidence enough in his army. Nor did the other consul, Fabius, who had his camp at Cales, dare lead his army across the river Volturnus, occupied at first with taking the auspices anew, then with prodigies which were announced one upon another; and to him expiating them the soothsayers answered that the omens were not easily made favorable.

These causes holding Fabius, Sempronius was under siege and now assailed by siege-works. Against a huge wooden tower brought up to the city the Roman consul raised from the wall itself another, much higher, because, the wall being of itself high enough, he had used strong piles set beneath for a foundation. Thence at first with stones and stakes and the rest of the missiles the defenders guarded the walls and the city; at last, when they saw the tower brought close up against the wall, they hurled at it at once a great quantity of fire with blazing torches. By that conflagration, when the alarmed crowd of armed men was hurling itself headlong from the tower, a sally from the town at once from two gates routed and put to flight the enemy’s outposts and drove them into the camp, so that on that day the Carthaginian was liker to one besieged than besieging. About thirteen hundred of the Carthaginians were slain and fifty-nine taken alive, who, about the walls and at the outposts behaving carelessly and negligently, when they feared nothing less than a sally, had been overwhelmed unawares. Gracchus, before the enemy could recover from their sudden panic, gave the signal to retreat and withdrew his men within the walls. The next day Hannibal, thinking that the consul, glad at his success, would contend in a pitched battle, drew up his line between the camp and the city; but after he saw no one stir from the wonted guard of the city, and nothing committed to rash hope, he returned to Tifata, his purpose unaccomplished. In the days in which Cumae was freed from siege, in those same days too in Lucania, at Grumentum, Tiberius Sempronius—surnamed Longus—fought prosperously with Hanno the Carthaginian. Above two thousand men he slew and lost two hundred and eighty soldiers, and took military standards to the number of one-and-forty. Driven from the Lucanian borders, Hanno withdrew back into Bruttium. And of the Hirpini three towns which had revolted from the Roman people were recovered by force through Marcus Valerius the praetor—Vercellium, Vescellium, Sicilinum—and the authors of the revolt beheaded. Above five thousand captives were sold under the spear; the rest of the plunder was given to the soldiery, and the army led back to Luceria.

While these things were being done in Lucania and among the Hirpini, the five ships which were carrying to Rome the captured envoys of the Macedonians and the Carthaginians, having sailed round well-nigh all the coast of Italy from the upper to the lower sea, when they were being borne under sail past Cumae and it was not known well enough whether they were the enemy’s or allies’, Gracchus sent ships from his own fleet to meet them. When by mutual questioning it had been learned that the consul was at Cumae, the ships put in to Cumae, the captives were brought to the consul, and the letters delivered. The consul, having read through the letters of Philip and Hannibal, sent everything sealed up to the senate by the land route, and bade the envoys be conveyed by ship. When on well-nigh the same day both the letters and the envoys had come to Rome, and, inquiry made, the spoken words agreed with the written, at first a heavy care fell upon the fathers, as they perceived how great a weight of Macedonian war hung over men scarce sustaining the Punic; yet so far were they from sinking under it that at once it was debated how, by carrying war against him of their own accord, they might turn the enemy away from Italy. The captives being ordered to be put in chains, and their companions sold under the spear, they decree, besides the twenty-five ships over which Publius Valerius Flaccus as prefect presided, twenty-five others. These got ready and launched, and five ships added which had brought the captive envoys, thirty ships set out from Ostia for Tarentum, and Publius Valerius was bidden, the Varronian soldiers, over whom Lucius Apustius the legate commanded at Tarentum, being put aboard the ships, with a fleet of five-and-fifty ships not only to guard the coast of Italy but to gather intelligence about the Macedonian war; if Philip’s designs were in accord with the letters and the disclosures of the envoys, that he should inform Marcus Valerius the praetor by letter, and he, setting Lucius Apustius the legate over the army and going to Tarentum to the fleet, should at the earliest time cross over into Macedonia and take pains to keep Philip within his kingdom. The money for maintaining the fleet and for the Macedonian war was that which had been sent to Appius Claudius in Sicily to be paid back to King Hiero; it was conveyed to Tarentum by Lucius Antistius the legate. At the same time were sent by Hiero two hundred thousand pecks of wheat and a hundred thousand of barley.

While the Romans prepare and do these things, to Philip one captured ship out of those that were being sent to Rome escaped from its course; thence it was learned that the envoys with their letters had been taken. And so the king, not knowing what had been agreed between his envoys and Hannibal, nor what his envoys had been about to bring back to him, sends another embassy with the same instructions. The envoys sent to Hannibal were Heraclitus, surnamed Scotinus, and Crito of Boeotia, and Sositheus of Magnesia. These prosperously carried and brought back their charges; but the summer wheeled itself round before the king could move or set anything in motion—so much did one ship taken with the envoys avail toward the postponement of the war that threatened the Romans. And about Capua, Fabius having crossed the Volturnus, the prodigies being at last expiated, both consuls were carrying on the war. Combulteria and Trebula and Austicula, cities which had revolted to the Carthaginian, Fabius took by force, and Hannibal’s garrisons in them, and very many Campanians, were captured. At Nola, as in the year before, the senate was on the Romans’ side, the commons on Hannibal’s, and secret designs for the slaughter of the leading men and the betrayal of the city were entered upon. To keep these undertakings from going forward, Fabius, having led his army across between Capua and the camp of Hannibal that was on Tifata, sat down above Suessula in the Claudian camp; thence he sent Marcus Marcellus the propraetor with the forces he had to Nola as a garrison.

In Sardinia too matters began to be administered through Titus Manlius the praetor, which had been let go after Quintus Mucius the praetor was caught by a heavy sickness. Manlius, the warships beached at Carales and the naval allies armed to carry on the war by land, and the army received from the praetor, made up two-and-twenty thousand foot, twelve hundred horse. With these forces of horse and foot he set out into the enemy’s country and pitched his camp not far from the camp of Hampsicora. Hampsicora then had by chance set out among the Pellite Sardinians to arm the young men by whom he might increase his forces; his son, Hostus by name, commanded the camp. He, fierce in his youth, having rashly joined battle, was routed and put to flight. About three thousand of the Sardinians were slain in that battle, some eight hundred taken alive; the rest of the army, at first scattered in flight through the fields and woods, then, whither rumor had it their leader had fled, to a city named Cornus, the head of that region, took refuge; and the war in Sardinia would have been finished by that battle, had not the Punic fleet, with its leader Hasdrubal, which had been driven by a storm to the Balearic islands, arrived in time to revive the hope of renewing the war. Manlius, on the report that the Punic fleet had put in, withdrew to Carales; that gave Hampsicora the chance of joining himself to the Carthaginian. Hasdrubal, his forces set ashore and his fleet sent back to Carthage, set out, with Hampsicora for guide, to lay waste the fields of the allies of the Roman people, and would have come to Carales, had not Manlius, his army meeting him, restrained him from his unbridled ravaging. At first camp was set against camp at a moderate interval; then, by skirmishings, light engagements were begun with varying issue; at last they came down into line. In a set battle, the standards joined, the fight went on for four hours. Long did the Carthaginians make the battle doubtful—for the Sardinians were wont to be easily conquered; at last they too, when all around was filled with the slaughter and flight of the Sardinians, were routed; but as they turned their backs, the Roman, wheeling round the wing with which he had driven the Sardinians, hemmed them in. Thereafter it was slaughter rather than battle. Twelve thousand of the enemy were slain, Sardinians and Carthaginians together, some three thousand seven hundred taken, and seven-and-twenty military standards.

Above all, the commander Hasdrubal taken, and Hanno and Mago, noble Carthaginians, made the battle famous and memorable—Mago of the Barcine house, joined to Hannibal by near kinship, Hanno the author of the revolt of the Sardinians and beyond doubt the kindler of that war. Nor did the Sardinian leaders make that battle less notable by their disasters; for both the son of Hampsicora, Hostus, fell in the line, and Hampsicora, fleeing with a few horsemen, when, upon his ruined fortunes, he heard too of the death of his son, by night, lest the coming of anyone should hinder his design, took his own life. For the rest the city of Cornus was the same refuge of flight as before; which Manlius, attacking with his victorious army, recovered within a few days. Then the other states also which had revolted to Hampsicora and the Carthaginians surrendered themselves, hostages given; on these, tribute and grain imposed in proportion each to its strength or its fault, he led the army back to Carales. There, the warships launched and the soldiers he had brought with him put aboard, he sails to Rome and announces to the fathers that Sardinia is wholly subdued; and the tribute he hands over to the quaestors, the grain to the aediles, the captives to Quintus Fulvius the praetor. At the same time Titus Otacilius the praetor, having carried his fleet over from Lilybaeum to Africa and laid waste the Carthaginian territory, when he made thence for Sardinia, whither report had it Hasdrubal had lately crossed from the Balearic islands, met the fleet making back for Africa, and, a light engagement joined on the deep, took thence seven ships with their naval crews. The rest fear scattered here and there no otherwise than a storm. About the same days by chance Bomilcar too, with soldiers sent from Carthage as reinforcement, and elephants, and supplies, put in at Locri. To overwhelm him off his guard, Appius Claudius, under pretense of going round his province, having led his army in haste to Messana, crossed over with wind and tide in his favor to Locri. But Bomilcar had by now set out thence to Hanno among the Bruttii, and the Locrians shut their gates against the Romans; and Appius, with a great effort and nothing done, made back for Messana. That same summer Marcellus from Nola, which he held with a garrison, made frequent inroads into the Hirpine country and the Caudine Samnites, and so wasted everything with sword and fire that he renewed in Samnium the memory of its ancient disasters.

And so at once envoys were sent to Hannibal from both peoples together, and thus addressed the Carthaginian: "Enemies of the Roman people, Hannibal, we were, first by ourselves, as long as our own arms, our own strength, could protect us. After we trusted these too little, we joined ourselves to King Pyrrhus; forsaken by him, we accepted a peace we could not but accept, and were in it for well-nigh fifty years, down to the time when you came into Italy. Your valor and fortune, no more than your singular courtesy and kindness toward our citizens, whom you took captive and sent back to us, so won us to you that, with you safe and unhurt as our friend, we feared not the Roman people, nay, nor even the gods angry, if it be lawful to say so. But, by Hercules, not only with you safe and victorious, but with you present—when you might have heard well-nigh the wailing of our wives and children, and seen our houses ablaze—we have been so often this summer laid waste that it is Marcus Marcellus, not Hannibal, who seems to have conquered at Cannae, and the Romans boast that you, vigorous only for a single blow, lie torpid, your sting, as it were, shot away. For a hundred years we waged war with the Roman people, aided by no foreign leader or army, save that for two years Pyrrhus rather increased his own strength with our soldiery than defended us with his. I will not boast of our successes—two consuls and two consular armies sent by us under the yoke, and whatever else either glad or glorious has befallen us. The harsh and adverse things that then befell we can recall with less indignation than what happens today. Great dictators with their masters of the horse, two consuls with two consular armies, used to enter our borders; with scouting done beforehand and reserves posted, and under their standards, they led to the plundering: now we are the prey of a single propraetor and a small garrison for guarding Nola; now not even in companies, but in the fashion of brigands, they range over all our borders more carelessly than if they wandered in Roman territory. And the cause is this, that neither do you defend us, and our young men, who, were they at home, would protect us, all serve under your standards. I should not know either you or your army, did I not say that, for one by whom I know so many Roman lines to have been routed and laid low, it were easy to crush our plundering foes, who wander without standards, scattered wherever the empty hope of booty draws each. They will be the prey of a few Numidians, and you will rid both us and Nola of a garrison at once, if only those whom you have thought worthy to have as allies you judge not unworthy, when taken into your faith, to protect."

To this Hannibal answered that the Hirpini and Samnites did all things at once—both declared their disasters and asked for a garrison and complained of being left undefended and neglected; whereas they ought first to have declared them, then asked for a garrison, and last, if it were not obtained, then at length to have complained that they had implored aid in vain. His army he would lead, not into the Hirpine or Samnite country, lest he too be a burden, but into the nearest places of the allies of the Roman people. By laying these waste he would both fill out his own soldiery and remove the enemy far off by fear. As for the Roman war, if the battle of Trasimene was more famous than that of the Trebia, that of Cannae than that of Trasimene, he would make even the memory of Cannae dim by a greater and more brilliant victory. With this answer and ample gifts he dismissed the envoys; and he himself, a modest garrison left on Tifata, set out with the rest of the army and went on toward Nola. To the same place came Hanno from Bruttium with the reinforcement brought from Carthage and with elephants. His camp pitched not far off, he found, on inquiry, all things far otherwise than as he had heard them from the allies’ envoys. For Marcellus had done nothing in such a way that it could be said to have been committed to fortune or rashly to the enemy. With scouting done and with strong garrisons securing his retreat, he had gone out to plunder, and all things had been guarded and provided as though against Hannibal in person. Then, when he perceived the enemy drawing near, he kept his forces within the walls; he bade the Nolan senators walk upon the walls and observe all that was being done among the enemy round about. Of these Hanno, when he had come up to the wall, called out Herennius Bassus and Herius Pettius to a parley, and, when by Marcellus’ leave they had gone out, addresses them through an interpreter. He extols the valor and fortune of Hannibal; he disparages the majesty of the Roman people, grown old together with its strength; which, even were they equal, as once they had been, yet, since the allies had learned by experience how heavy was the Roman empire, how great the indulgence of Hannibal even toward all captives of the Italian name, the Punic alliance and friendship ought to be preferred to the Roman. If both consuls with their armies were at Nola, yet they would be no more a match for Hannibal than they had been at Cannae, much less could a single praetor with a few new soldiers protect Nola. It concerned themselves more than Hannibal whether Nola were taken or surrendered; for he would get possession of it as he had got Capua and Nuceria; but what the difference was between the fortune of Capua and of Nuceria the Nolans, set well-nigh midway between, themselves knew. He would not utter ill omen of what would befall a city taken, and would rather pledge that, if they should surrender Marcellus with his garrison and Nola, no other than themselves should dictate the terms on which they should come into the alliance and friendship of Hannibal.

To this Herennius Bassus answered that for many years now there had been friendship between the Roman and the Nolan people, of which neither to that day repented, and that for himself, if faith must be changed with fortune, it was now too late to change it. Were they who meant to surrender to Hannibal bound to summon a Roman garrison? With those who had come to protect them all his interests were bound up, and would be to the last. This parley took from Hannibal the hope of recovering Nola by betrayal. And so he girt the town with a ring, that he might assault the walls at once on every side. When Marcellus saw him come up to the walls, his line drawn up within the gate, he burst out with a great uproar. Some at the first onset were struck down and slain; then, a rush being made to the fighters and the forces made equal, the battle began to be fierce, and would have been memorable among the few, had not the rain, poured out in mighty squalls, parted the combatants. That day, a slight engagement joined and spirits whetted, the Romans withdrew into the city, the Carthaginians into the camp; yet of the Carthaginians, struck down by the first sally, there fell no more than thirty, of the Romans fifty. The rain held on through the whole night up to the third hour of the next day. And so, although either side was eager for the fight, that day they kept nonetheless within their defenses. On the third day Hannibal sent part of his forces to plunder in the Nolan country. When Marcellus marked this, he at once led out his forces into line; nor did Hannibal decline it. About a mile lay between the city and the camp; in that space—and all is level country round Nola—they ran together. The shout raised on either side recalled to the battle now joined the nearest of those cohorts which had gone out to plunder in the fields. And the Nolans too swelled the Roman line; whom Marcellus, with praise, bade stand in the reserves and carry the wounded out of the line, but keep from the fight unless they received the signal from him.

The battle was doubtful; with the utmost effort both the leaders exhorted and the soldiers fought. Marcellus bids them press on—men whom he had conquered three days before, put to flight a few days before at Cumae, driven the year before from Nola, the same leader, though other soldiers: not all were in the line; they were straggling and plundering in the fields; but those who fought were sodden with Campanian luxury, worn out the whole winter through with wine and harlots and every debauchery. Gone was that force and vigor, sunk the strength of body and spirit by which the ridges of the Pyrenees and the Alps had been surmounted. The remnants of those men, scarce sustaining their arms and limbs, were fighting now. Capua had been Cannae to Hannibal: there warlike valor, there military discipline, there the fame of the time past, there the hope of the time to come had been quenched. While Marcellus by thus reproaching the enemy lifted the spirits of his own soldiers, Hannibal upbraided his with far heavier reproaches: he recognized the same arms and standards which he had seen and had with him at the Trebia and Trasimene, and last at Cannae; but assuredly he had led one soldier into winter quarters at Capua and led out another thence. "Do you, with great struggle, scarce sustain the fight of a Roman legate and of a single legion and a single ala—you whom two consular lines never withstood? Marcellus, with raw soldiers and Nolan reserves, twice now unpunished provokes us. Where is that soldier of mine who tore Gaius Flaminius the consul from his horse and bore off his head? Where is he who slew Lucius Paulus at Cannae? Is the steel now blunt? Or are your right hands numb? Or is it some other portent? You who, fewer, were wont to conquer the more, now, a few against the more, scarce stand your ground. To storm Rome, if anyone would lead you, you used to boast bravely with your tongues. Lo, here is a smaller matter: here I would test your force and valor. Storm Nola, a city of the plain, hedged by no river, by no sea. Hence, from so rich a city, laden with booty and spoils, I will either lead you whither you would, or follow."

Neither his good words nor his ill availed to steady their spirits. When they were being beaten back on every side, and the Romans’ courage rose, the leader not only exhorting them but the Nolans too, by their shouting that betokened their favor, kindling the ardor of the fight, the Carthaginians gave their backs and were driven into the camp. The Roman soldiers, eager to assault it, Marcellus led back to Nola, with great rejoicing and congratulation even of the commons, who before had been more inclined to the Carthaginians. Of the enemy more than five thousand were slain that day, six hundred taken alive, and nineteen military standards and two elephants; four elephants were killed in the line; of the Romans fewer than a thousand were slain. The following day, by a tacit truce, both sides spent in burying their slain in the line. The spoils of the enemy Marcellus burned, vowed to Vulcan. On the third day after, by reason, I suppose, of some grievance, or in hope of more generous service, two hundred and seventy-two horsemen, Numidians and Spaniards mixed, deserted to Marcellus. Of their brave and faithful service the Romans often availed themselves in that war. Land in Spain to the Spaniards, and in Africa to the Numidians, after the war, was given for their valor. Hannibal, from Nola, having sent Hanno back into Bruttium with the forces he had come with, himself made for the winter quarters of Apulia and sat down about Arpi. Quintus Fabius, when he heard that Hannibal had set out into Apulia, having brought grain from Nola and Naples into that camp which was above Suessula, and the fortifications strengthened and a garrison left such as should suffice to hold the place through the winter, himself moved his camp nearer to Capua and laid waste the Campanian country with sword and fire, until the Campanians, trusting their own strength not at all, were forced to come out of the gates and fortify a camp in the open before the city. They had six thousand under arms, the infantry unwarlike, in cavalry the stronger; and so with cavalry-engagements they harassed the enemy. Among the many noble Campanian horsemen was Cerrinus Vibellius, surnamed Taurea. He was a citizen of that same place, by far the bravest horseman of all the Campanians, so that, while he served among the Romans, one Roman only, Claudius Asellus, matched him in cavalry-renown. Then Taurea, when he had long ridden up and down scanning with his eyes the enemy’s squadrons, at last, silence made, asked where Claudius Asellus was, and, since he had been wont to dispute with him in words about valor, why he did not decide it with the steel, and either, conquered, yield the spoils of honor, or, conqueror, win them.

When this was reported to Asellus in the camp, delaying only so far as to ask the consul whether it were allowed him to fight out of his rank against a challenging enemy, by his leave he at once took up his arms, and, riding out before the outposts, hailed Taurea by name and bade him meet him where he would. By now the Romans had come out in throngs to the spectacle of that fight, and the Campanians, looking forth not from the rampart of the camp only but from the very walls of the city, filled them. When they had already ennobled the matter with fierce words, they spurred their horses with leveled lances; then, in the open space, mocking each other, they drew out the fight without a wound. Then the Campanian to the Roman: "This will be a contest of horses, not of horsemen, unless we send our horses down from the level into this sunken road. There, with no room to wheel about, we shall close hand to hand." Almost quicker than the word Claudius drove his horse into the road. Taurea, fiercer in word than in deed, said, "Nay, not the nag into the ditch, prithee"—which saying passed thereafter into a rustic proverb. Claudius, when he had ridden far down that road, no enemy meeting him, riding back out into the level, rebuking the cowardice of the foe, returned victor into the camp with great rejoicing and congratulation. To this cavalry-fight some annals add a thing marvelous, certainly—how true it is, common judgment may decide: that, when Claudius pursued Taurea fleeing to the city, he rode in by an open gate of the enemy and out by another, and, while the enemy stood stupefied at the marvel, escaped untouched.

Thereafter the standing camp was quiet, and the consul even moved his camp back, that the Campanians might do their sowing, nor did he ravage the Campanian land until the blades now high in the cornfields could afford fodder. This he carried into the Claudian camp above Suessula, and there built winter quarters. He ordered Marcus Claudius the proconsul that, the garrison necessary for the protection of the city kept at Nola, he should send the rest of the soldiers to Rome, that they might not be a burden to the allies and a charge to the commonwealth. And Tiberius Gracchus, when he had led his legions from Cumae to Luceria in Apulia, sent thence Marcus Valerius the praetor to Brundisium with the army he had had at Luceria, and bade him guard the coast of the Sallentine country and provide for what concerned Philip and the Macedonian war. At the close of that summer in which the things we have written were done, letters came from Publius and Gnaeus Scipio, telling how great and how prosperous things they had done in Spain; but that money for pay, and clothing, and grain for the army, and all things for the naval allies, were lacking. As for the pay, if the treasury were poor, they would themselves contrive some plan how it might be got from the Spaniards; the rest must at all events be sent from Rome, nor otherwise could either the army or the province be held. When the letters were read out, there was no one of them all but confessed that the things written were true and the demands fair; but it came home to their minds how great armies, by land and sea, they were maintaining, and how great a new fleet must soon be got ready if the Macedonian war were stirred up; that Sicily and Sardinia, which before the war had been tributary, scarce maintained the armies that guarded the provinces; that expenses were supplied by the tribute; that the very number of those who paid the tribute had been diminished by such slaughters of armies at the Trasimene lake and at Cannae; and that the few who survived, if they should be burdened with manifold payments, would perish by another plague. And so, unless the state stood by its credit, it would not stand by its resources. It was resolved that Fulvius the praetor should come forward into an assembly, lay before the people the public needs, and exhort those who had increased their patrimonies by contracts to grant to the commonwealth, out of which they had grown, the loan of time, and to undertake to furnish, on this condition, the things needful for the army in Spain—that, when there should be money in the treasury, they should be paid first. These things the praetor laid before the assembly, and named a day on which he would let out the contract for furnishing clothing and grain to the Spanish army, and whatever else was needful for the naval allies.

When that day came, three companies of nineteen men were there to take the contract; whose demands were two: one, that they should be exempt from military service while they were engaged in that public business; the other, that for what they should put aboard ship the state should bear the risk against the violence of the enemy and against storms. Both being granted, they took the contract, and with private money the commonwealth was administered. Such was the temper, such the love of country, that spread alike through all orders. As all the contracts were generously undertaken, so were they performed with the utmost good faith, nor was anything given to the soldiers more sparingly than if, as before, ample money were being supplied from a wealthy treasury. When these supplies had come, the town of Iliturgi, because of the going over to the Romans, was being besieged by Hasdrubal and Mago and Hamilcar, Bomilcar’s son. Between these three camps of the enemy the Scipios fought their way into the town with great slaughter of the foe, and brought in grain, of which there was want, and, having exhorted the townsmen to defend their walls with the spirit with which they saw the Roman army fighting on their behalf, set out to assault the chief camp, where Hasdrubal commanded. Thither too—for it was the same crisis of war—came the two other Carthaginian leaders with their armies. And so the fight was waged from the camp. Sixty thousand of the enemy were that day in the line, of the Romans about sixteen thousand; yet the victory was so far from doubtful that the Romans slew more than the enemy of their own number, took above three thousand men, won a little less than a thousand horses, two-and-fifty military standards, seven elephants, of which five were killed in the line, and on one day took possession of the three camps of the enemy. The siege of Iliturgi being raised, the Punic armies were led against Intibili to assault it, their forces filled up out of the province, which, of all things, was the most eager for war, provided only there were plunder or pay, and at that time abounded in youth. Again a pitched battle was joined, with like fortune to both sides. Above thirteen thousand of the enemy were slain, above two thousand taken, with two-and-forty standards and nine elephants. Then well-nigh all the peoples of Spain went over to the Romans, and far greater things were done that summer in Spain than in Italy.