26
As Hannibal, who gained one and lost the other of the two battles which he fought the preceding year with Marcellus, would have equal grounds for hope and fear, should he encounter the same general again; so was he far from thinking himself a match for the two consuls together. Directing his attention, therefore, wholly to his own peculiar arts, he looked out for an opportunity for planting an ambuscade. Slight battles, however, were fought between the two camps with varying success. But the consuls, thinking it probable that the summer would be spun out in engagements of this kind, and being of opinion that the siege of Locri might be going on notwithstanding, wrote to Lucius Cincius to pass over to Locri with his fleet from Sicily. And that the walls might be besieged by land also, they ordered one half of the army, which formed the garrison of Tarentum, to be marched thither. Hannibal having found from certain Thurians that these things would be done, sent a body of troops to lie in ambush on the road leading from Tarentum. There, under the hill of Petelia, three thousand cavalry and two thousand foot were placed in concealment. The Romans, who proceeded without exploring their way, having fallen into the ambuscade, as many as two thousand soldiers were slain, and about twelve hundred made prisoners. The others, who were scattered in flight through the fields and forests, returned to Tarentum. There was a rising ground covered with wood situated between the Punic and Roman camps, which was occupied at first by neither party, because the Romans were unacquainted with its nature on that side which faced the enemy's camp, while Hannibal had supposed it better adapted for an ambuscade than a camp. Accordingly, he had sent thither, by night, several troops of Numidians, concealing them in the midst of the wood. Not one of them stirred from his position by day, lest their arms or themselves should be observed from a distance. There was a general murmur in the Roman camp, that this eminence ought to be occupied and secured by a fort, lest if it should be seized by Hannibal they should have the enemy, as it were, immediately over their heads. Marcellus was moved by this consideration, and observed to his colleague, "Why not go ourselves with a few horsemen and reconnoitre? The matter being examined with our own eyes, will make our measures more certain." Crispinus consenting, they set out with two hundred and twenty horsemen, of which forty were Fregellans, the rest Tuscans. Marcus Marcellus, the consul's son, and Aulus Manlius, military tribunes, together with two prefects of the allies, Lucius Arennius and Manius Aulius, accompanied them. Some historians have recorded, that Marcellus had offered sacrifices on that day, and that in the first victim slain, the liver was found without its head; in the second, that all the usual parts were present, and that there was also an excrescence in the head. That the aruspex was not, indeed, pleased that the entrails should first have appeared mutilated and foul, and then too exuberant.
27
But the consul Marcellus was influenced by so ardent a desire of engaging with Hannibal, that he never thought their camps close enough. At that time also, as he quitted the rampart, he gave orders that the troops should be ready when occasion required, in order that if the hill, which they were going to examine, were thought convenient, they might collect their baggage and follow them. Before the camp there was a small plain; the road thence to the hill was open and exposed to view on all sides. A watchman who was stationed, not under the expectation of so important an event, but in order that they might be able to intercept any stragglers who had gone too far from the camp in search of wood or forage, gave a signal to the Numidians to rise simultaneously one and all from their concealment. Those who were to rise from the very summit of the hill, and meet the enemy, did not show themselves until those whose business it was to intercept their passage in the rear, had gone round. Then they all sprang up from every side, and, raising a shout, commenced an attack. Although the consuls were in such a position in the valley that they could neither make good their way up the hill, which was occupied by the enemy, nor retreat as they were intercepted in the rear, yet the contest might have been continued longer had not a retreat, commenced by the Tuscans, dismayed the rest of the troops. The Fregellans, however, did not give over fighting, though deserted by the Tuscans, while the consuls, uninjured, kept up the battle by encouraging their men and fighting themselves. But when they saw both the consuls wounded, and Marcellus transfixed with a lance and falling lifeless from his horse, then they too, and but a very few survived, betook themselves to flight, together with Crispinus the consul, who had received two javelin wounds, and young Marcellus, who was himself also wounded. Aulus Manlius, a military tribune, was slain, and of the two praefects of allies, Manius Aulius was slain, Lucius Arennius made prisoner. Five of the consul's lictors fell into the enemy's hands alive, the rest were either slain or fled with the consul. Forty-three horsemen fell in the battle or in the flight, and eighteen were taken alive. An alarm had been excited in the camp, and the troops were hastening to go and succour the consuls, when they saw one of the consuls and the son of the other wounded, and the scanty remains of this unfortunate expedition returning to the camp. The death of Marcellus was an event to be deplored, as well from other circumstances which attended it, as because that in a manner unbecoming his years, for he was then more than sixty, and inconsistently with the prudence of a veteran general, he had so improvidently plunged into ruin himself, his colleague, and almost the whole commonwealth. I should launch out into too many digressions for a single event, were I to relate all the various accounts which authors give respecting the death of Marcellus. To pass over others, Lucius Caelius gives three narratives ranged under different heads; one as it is handed down by tradition; a second, written in the panegyric of his son, who was engaged in the affair; a third, which he himself vouched for, being the result of his own investigation. The accounts, however, though varying in other points, agree for the most part in the fact, that he went out of the camp for the purpose of viewing the ground; and all state that he was cut off by an ambuscade.
28
Hannibal, concluding that the enemy were greatly dismayed by one of their consuls being slain and the other wounded, that he might not be wanting on any opportunity presenting itself, immediately transferred his camp to the eminence on which the battle had been fought. Here he found the body of Marcellus, and interred it. Crispinus, disheartened by the death of his colleague and his own wound, set out during the silence of the following night, and encamped upon the nearest mountains he could reach, in a position elevated and secured on all sides. Here the two generals exerted their sagacity, the one in effecting, the other in guarding against, a deception. Hannibal got possession of the ring of Marcellus, together with his body. Crispinus, fearing lest any artifice should be practised by the Carthaginian's employing this signet as the means of deception, had sent round messengers to the neighbouring states, informing them, that "his colleague had been slain, and that the enemy were in possession of his seal, and that they must not give credit to any letters written in the name of Marcellus." This message of the consul arrived at Salapia a little before a letter was brought from Hannibal, written in the name of Marcellus, to the effect, that "he should come to Salapia on the night which followed that day; that the soldiers in the garrison should hold themselves in readiness, in case he might want to employ them on any service." The Salapians were aware of the fraud, and concluding that an opportunity for punishing them was sought by Hannibal, from resentment, not only on account of their defection, but also because they slew his horsemen, sent his messenger, who was a deserter from the Romans, back again, in order that the soldiers might do what was thought necessary, without his being privy to it, and then placed the townsmen in parties to keep guard along the walls, and in convenient parts of the city. The guards and watches they formed with extraordinary care for that night, and on each side of the gate at which they supposed the enemy would come, they opposed to them the choicest of the troops in the garrison. About the fourth watch, Hannibal approached the city. His vanguard was composed of Roman deserters, with Roman arms. These, all of whom spoke the Latin language, when they reached the gate, called up the guards, and ordered the gate to be opened, for the consul had arrived. The guards, as if awakened at their call, began to be in a hurry and bustle, and exert themselves in opening the gate, which was closed by letting down the portcullis; some raised this with levers, others drew it up with ropes to such a height that the men could come in without stooping. The opening was scarcely wide enough, when the deserters eagerly rushed through the gate, and after about six hundred had got in, the rope being let go by which it was suspended, the portcullis fell with a loud noise. Some of the Salapians fell upon the deserters, who were carrying their arms carelessly suspended upon their shoulders, as is customary after a march, as if among friends; others frightened away the enemy by discharging stones, pikes, and javelins from the tower adjoining the gate and from the walls. Thus Hannibal withdrew, having been caught by his own stratagem, and proceeded to raise the siege of Locri, which Cincius was carrying on with the greatest vigour, with works and engines of every kind, which were brought from Sicily. Mago, who by that time almost despaired of retaining and defending the town, derived his first gleam of hope on the death of Marcellus being reported. This was followed by a message, that Hannibal had despatched his Numidian cavalry in advance, and was himself following them with all possible speed with a body of infantry. As soon, therefore, as he was informed, by a signal displayed from the watch-towers, that the Numidians were drawing near, suddenly throwing open the gate he sallied out boldly upon the enemy, and at first, more because he had done it unexpectedly than from the equality of his strength, the contest was doubtful; but afterwards, when the Numidians came up, the Romans were so dismayed that they fled on all hands to the sea and their ships, leaving their works and the engines with which they battered the walls. Thus the siege of Locri was raised by the approach of Hannibal.
29
When Crispinus found that Hannibal had gone into Bruttium, he ordered Marcus Marcellus, a military tribune, to march the army, which his colleague had commanded, to Venusia. Having set out himself with his own legions for Capua, though scarcely able to endure the motion of the litter, from the severity of his wounds, he sent a letter to Rome stating the death of his colleague, and in how great danger he himself was. He said, "it was impossible for him to go to Rome to hold the election, both because he did not think he could bear the fatigue of the journey, and because he was anxious about Tarentum, lest Hannibal should direct his course thither from Bruttium. That it was expedient that commissioners should be sent to him, men of sound judgment, with whom he might communicate, when he pleased, respecting the commonwealth." The reading of this letter excited great grief for the death of one of the consuls, and apprehension for the safety of the other. They therefore sent Quintus Fabius the younger to Venusia to the army; and to the consul three commissioners, Sextus Julius Caesar, Lucius Licinius Pollio, and Lucius Cincius Alimentus, though but a few days before he had returned from Sicily. These were directed to convey a message to the consul, to the effect, that if he could not himself go to Rome to hold the election, he should nominate a dictator within the Roman territory for that purpose. If the consul should have gone to Tarentum, that it was the pleasure of the senate that Marcus Claudius, the praetor, should march off his legions to that quarter in which he could protect the greatest number of the cities of the allies. The same summer Marcus Valerius crossed over from Sicily into Africa with a fleet of a hundred ships, and making a descent near the city Clupea, devastated the country to a wide extent, scarcely meeting with a single person in arms. Afterwards the troops employed in making these depredations were hastily led back to their ships, and a report had suddenly reached them that a Carthaginian fleet was drawing near. It consisted of eighty-three ships. With these the Romans fought successfully, not far from the city Clupea, and after taking eighteen and putting the rest to flight, returned to Lilybaeum with a great deal of booty gained both by land and sea. The same summer also Philip gave assistance to the suppliant Achaeans. They were harassed by Machanidas, tyrant of the Lacedaemonians, with a war in their immediate neighbourhood; and the Aetolians, having passed over an army in ships through the strait which runs between Naupactus and Patrae, called by the neighbouring people Rhion, had devastated their country. It was reported also, that Attalus, king of Asia, would pass over into Europe, because the Aetolians, in their last council, had offered to him the office of chief magistrate of their nation.
30
Philip, when marching down into Greece, for these reasons, was met at the city Lamia by the Aetolians, under the command of Pyrrhias, who had been created praetor that year jointly with Attalus, who was absent. They had with them also auxiliaries from Attalus, and about a thousand men sent from the Roman fleet by Publius Sulpicius. Against this general and these forces, Philip fought twice successfully, and slew full a thousand of his enemies in each battle. Whence, as the Aetolians were compelled by fear to keep themselves under the walls of Lamia, Philip led back his army to Phalara. This place is situated in the Malian bay, and was formerly thickly inhabited on account of its excellent harbour, the safe anchorage in its neighbourhood, and other conveniences of sea and land. Hither came ambassadors from Ptolemy, king of Egypt, the Rhodians, Athenians, and Chians, to put a stop to hostilities between the Aetolians and Philip. The Aetolians also called in one of their neighbours as a mediator, Amynander, king of the Athamanians. But all these were less concerned for the Aetolians, whose arrogance of disposition exceeded that of any other nation of Greece, than lest Philip and his empire, which was likely to prove injurious to the cause of liberty, should be intermixed with the affairs of Greece. The deliberations concerning a peace were put off, to a council of the Achaeans, for which a place and certain day were fixed upon; for the mean time a truce of thirty days was obtained. The king, setting out thence, went through Thessaly and Boeotia to Chalcis in Euboea, to prevent Attalus, who he heard was about to come to Euboea with a fleet, from entering the harbours and approaching the coasts. Leaving a force to oppose Attalus, in case he should cross over in the mean time, he set out thence with a small body of cavalry and light-armed troops, and came to Argos. Here the superintendence of the Heraean and Nemaean games having been conferred upon him by the suffrages of the people, because the kings of the Macedonians trace their origin from that state, after completing the Heraean games, he set out directly after the celebration for Aegium, to the council of allies, fixed some time before. Here measures were proposed for putting an end to the Aetolian war, in order that neither the Romans nor Attalus might have a pretext for entering Greece; but they were all upset by the Aetolians, before the period of the truce had scarcely expired, after they heard that Attalus had arrived at Aegina, and that a Roman fleet was stationed at Naupactus. For when called into the council of the Achaeans, where the same embassies were present which had negotiated for peace at Phalara, they at first complained of some trifling acts committed during the period of the truce, contrary to the faith of the convention; but at last they asserted, that it was impossible the war could be terminated unless the Achaeans gave back Pylus to the Messenians, unless Atintania was restored to the Romans, and Ardyaea to Scerdilaedus and Pleuratus. But Philip, conceiving it an indignity that the vanquished should presumptuously dictate terms to him the victor, said, "that he did not before either listen to proposals for peace, or agree to a truce, from any hope he entertained that the Aetolians would remain quiet, but in order that he might have all the allies as witnesses that he was desirous of peace, and that they were the occasion of this war." Thus, without effecting a peace, he dismissed the council; and leaving four thousand troops for the protection of the Achaeans, and receiving five men of war, with which, if he could have joined them to the fleet of the Carthaginians lately sent to him, and the ships which were coming from Bithynia, from king Prusias, he had resolved to challenge the Romans, who had long been masters of the sea in that quarter, to a naval battle, the king himself went back from the congress to Argos; for now the time for celebrating the Nemaean games was approaching, which he wished to be celebrated in his presence.
31
While the king was occupied with the exhibition of the games, and was indulging himself during the days devoted to festivity with more freedom than in time of war, Publius Sulpicius, setting out from Naupactus, brought his fleet to the shore, between Sicyon and Corinth, and devastated without restraint a country of the most renowned fertility. Intelligence of this proceeding called Philip away from the games. He set out hastily with his cavalry, ordering his infantry to follow him closely; and attacking the Romans as they were scattered through the fields and loaded with booty, like men who feared nothing of the kind, drove them to their ships. The Roman fleet returned to Naupactus by no means pleased with their booty. The fame of a victory gained by Philip over the Romans, of whatever magnitude, increased the celebrity of the remaining part of the games. The festival was celebrated with extraordinary mirth, the more so as the king, in order to please the people, took the diadem off his head, and laid aside his purple robe with the other royal apparel, and placed himself, with regard to appearance, on an equality with the rest, than which nothing is more gratifying to free states. By this conduct he would have afforded the strongest hopes of the enjoyment of liberty, had he not debased and marred all by his intolerable lust; for he ranged night and day through the houses of married people with one or two companions, and in proportion as he was less conspicuous by lowering his dignity to a private level, the less restraint he felt; thus converting that empty show of liberty, which he had made to others, into a cover for the gratification of his own unbounded desires. For neither did he obtain his object in all cases by money or seductive arts, but he also employed violence in the accomplishment of his flagitious purposes; and it was dangerous both to husbands and parents to have presented any impediment to the gratification of royal lust, by an unseasonable strictness. From one man, Aratus, of the highest rank among the Achaeans, his wife, named Polycratia, was taken away and conveyed into Macedonia under the hope of a matrimonial connexion with royalty. After passing the time appointed for the celebration of the Nemaean games, and a few days more, in the commission of these profligate acts, he set out for Dymae to expel the garrison of the Aetolians, which had been invited by the Eleans, and received into the town. Cycliadas, who had the chief direction of affairs, met the king at Dymae, together with the Achaeans, who were inflamed with hatred against the Eleans, because they had disunited themselves from the rest of the Achaeans, and were incensed against the Aetolians, because they considered that they had stirred up a Roman war against them. Setting out from Dymae, and uniting their forces, they passed the river Larissus, which separates the Elean from the Dymaean territory.
32
The first day on which they entered upon the enemy's confines, they employed in plundering. The following day they approached the city in battle-array, having sent their cavalry in advance, in order that, by riding up to the gates, they might provoke the Aetolians to make a sally, a measure to which they were naturally inclined. They were not aware that Sulpicius had passed over from Naupactus to Cyllene with fifteen ships, and landing four thousand armed men, had entered Elis during the dead of night, that his troops might not be seen. Accordingly, when they recognised the Roman standards and arms among the Aetolians, so unexpected an event occasioned the greatest terror; and at first the king had wished to withdraw his troops; but afterwards, an engagement having taken place between the Aetolians and Trallians, a tribe of Illyrians, when he saw his men hard pressed, the king himself with his cavalry charged a Roman cohort. Here his horse being pierced with a javelin threw the king, who fell over his head; when a conflict ensued, which was desperate on both sides; the Romans making a furious attack upon the king, and the royal party protecting him. His own conduct was highly meritorious, when though on foot he was obliged to fight among horsemen. Afterwards, when the contest was unequal, many were falling and being wounded around him, he was snatched away by his soldiers, and, being placed upon another horse, fled from the field. On that day he pitched his camp five miles from the city of the Eleans, and the next day led out all his forces to a fort called Pyrgus, whither he had heard that a multitude of rustics had resorted through fear of being plundered. This unorganized and unarmed multitude he took immediately on his approach, from the first effects of alarm; and by this capture compensated for the disgrace sustained at Elis. While engaged in distributing the spoil and captives, and there were four thousand men and as many as twenty thousand head of cattle of every kind, intelligence reached him from Macedonia that one Eropus had gained possession of Lychnidus by bribing the praefect of the citadel and garrison; that he held also certain towns of the Dassaretians, and that he was endeavouring to incite the Dardanians to arms. Desisting from the Achaean war, therefore, but still leaving two thousand five hundred armed troops of every description under the generals Menippus and Polyphantas for the protection of his allies, he set out from Dymae, and passing through Achaea, Boeotia, and Euboea, arrived on the tenth day at Demetrias in Thessaly.
33
Here he was met by other messengers with intelligence of still greater commotions; that the Dardanians, having poured into Macedonia, were in possession of Orestis, and had descended into the Argestaean plain; and that there was a general report among the barbarians that Philip was slain. In that expedition in which he fought with the plundering party near Sicyon, being carried by the fury of his horse against a tree, he broke off the extremity of one of the horns of his helmet against a projecting branch; which being found by a certain Aetolian and carried into Aetolia to Scerdilaedus, who knew it to be the ornament of his helmet, spread the report that the king was killed. After the king had departed from Achaea, Sulpicius, going to Aegina with his fleet, formed a junction with Attalus. The Achaeans fought successfully with the Aetolians and Eleans not far from Messene. King Attalus and Publius Sulpicius wintered at Aegina. In the close of this year Titus Quinctius Crispinus, the consul, after having nominated Titus Manlius Torquatus dictator for the purpose of holding the election and celebrating the games, died of his wound. Some say that he died at Tarentum, others in Campania. The death of the two consuls, who were slain without having fought any memorable battle, a coincidence which had never occurred in any former war, had left the commonwealth in a manner orphan. The dictator, Manlius, appointed as his master of the horse Caius Servilius, then curule aedile. On the first day of its meeting the senate ordered the dictator to celebrate the great games which Marcus Aemilius, the city praetor, had celebrated in the consulship of Caius Flaminius and Cneius Servilius, and had vowed to be repeated after five years. The dictator then both performed the games and vowed them for the following lustrum. But as the two consular armies without commanders were so near the enemy, disregarding every thing else, one especial care engrossed the fathers and the people, that of creating the consuls as soon as possible; and that they might create those in preference whose valour was least in danger from Carthaginian treachery; since, through the whole period of the war, the precipitate and hot tempers of their generals had been detrimental, and this very year the consuls had fallen into a snare for which they were not prepared, in consequence of their excessive eagerness to engage the enemy, but the immortal gods, in pity to the Roman name, had spared the unoffending armies, and doomed the consuls to expiate their temerity with their own lives.
34
On the fathers' looking round to see whom they should appoint as consuls, Caius Claudius Nero appeared pre-eminently. They then looked out for a colleague for him, and although they considered him a man of the highest talents, they also were of opinion that he was of a more forward and vehement disposition than the circumstances of the war, or the enemy, Hannibal, required, they resolved that it would be right to qualify the impetuosity of his temper by uniting with him a cool and prudent colleague. The person fixed upon was Marcus Livius, who, many years ago, was, on the expiration of his consulship, condemned in a trial before the people; a disgrace which he took so much to heart, that he retired into the country, and for many years absented himself from the city, and avoided all public assemblies. Much about the eighth year after his condemnation, Marcus Claudius Marcellus and Marcus Valerius Laevinus, the consuls, had brought him back into the city; but he appeared in a squalid dress, his hair and beard allowed to grow, and exhibiting in his countenance and attire the deep impression of the disgrace he had sustained. Lucius Veturius and Publius Licinius, the censors, compelled him to have his beard and hair trimmed, to lay aside his squalid garb, to come into the senate, and discharge other public duties. But even then he either gave his assent by a single word, or signified his vote by walking to one side of the house, till the trial of Marcus Livius Macatus, a kinsman of his, whose character was at stake, obliged him to deliver his sentiments in the senate upon his legs. On being heard in the senate on this occasion, after so long an interval, he drew the eyes of all upon him, and gave occasion to conversations to the following effect: "That the people had injuriously disgraced a man who was undeserving of it and that it had been greatly detrimental to the state that, in so important a war, it had not had the benefit of the service and counsels of such a man. That neither Quintus Fabius nor Marcus Valerius Laevinus could be given to Caius Nero as colleagues, because it was not allowed for two patricians to be elected. That the same cause precluded Titus Manlius, besides that he had refused a consulship when offered to him, and would refuse it. That they would have two most distinguished consuls if they should add Marcus Livius as a colleague to Caius Claudius." Nor did the people despise a proposal, the mention of which originated with the fathers. The only person in the state who objected to the measure was the man to whom the honour was offered, who accused his countrymen of inconstancy, saying, "that, having withheld their pity from him when arrayed in a mourning garment and a criminal, they now forced upon him the white gown against his will; that honours and punishments were heaped upon the same person. If they esteemed him a good man, why had they thus passed a sentence of condemnation upon him as a wicked and guilty one? If they had proved him a guilty man, why should they thus trust him with a second consulate after having improperly committed to him the first?" While thus remonstrating and complaining, the fathers rebuked him, putting him in mind, that "Marcus Furius too, being recalled from exile, had reinstated his country when shaken from her very base. That we ought to soothe the anger of our country as we would that of parents, by patience and resignation." All exerting themselves to the utmost, they succeeded in uniting Marcus Livius in the consulate with Caius Claudius.
35
The third day afterwards the election of praetors was held. The praetors created were, Lucius Porcius Licinus, Caius Mamilius, Aulus Hostilius Cato, and Caius Hostilius Cato. The election completed, and the games celebrated, the dictator and master of the horse abdicated their offices. Caius Terentius Varro was sent as propraetor into Etruria, in order that Caius Hostilius might quit that province and go to Tarentum to that army which Titus Quinctius, the consul, had commanded, and that Lucius Manlius might go as ambassador across the sea, and observe what was going on there; and at the same time, as the games at Olympia, which were attended by the greatest concourse of persons of any solemnity in Greece, were about to take place that summer, that if he could without danger from the enemy, he might go to that assembly, in order that any Sicilians who might be there, having been driven away by the war, or any Tarentine citizens banished by Hannibal, might return to their homes, and be informed that the Roman people would restore to them every thing which they had possessed before the war. As a year of the most dangerous character seemed to threaten them, and there were no consuls to direct the government, all men fixed their attention on the consuls elect, wishing them to draw lots for their provinces, as soon as possible, and determine beforehand what province and what enemy each should have. The senate also took measures, at the instance of Quintus Fabius Maximus, to effect a reconciliation between them. For the enmity between them was notorious; and in the case of Livius his misfortunes rendered it more inveterate and acrimonious, as he considered that in that situation he had been treated with contempt. He was, therefore, the more inexorable, and said, "that there was no need of a reconciliation, for that they would use greater diligence and activity in every thing they did for fear lest they should give their colleague, who was an enemy, an opportunity of advancing himself at their expense." However, the authority of the senate prevailed; and, laying aside their private differences, they conducted the affairs of the state in friendship and unanimity. Their provinces were not districts bordering upon each other, as in former years, but quite separate, in the remotest confines of Italy. To one was decreed Bruttium and Lucania, to act against Hannibal; to the other Gaul, to act against Hasdrubal, who, it was reported, was now approaching the Alps; and that he to whose lot Gaul fell should choose whichever he pleased of the two armies, one of which was in Gaul, the other in Etruria, and receive the city legions in addition; and that he to whose lot Bruttium fell, should, after enlisting fresh legions for the city, take the army of whichever of the consuls of the former year he pleased. That Quintus Fulvius, proconsul, should take the army which was left by the consul, and that his command should last for a year. To Caius Hostilius, to whom they had given the province of Tarentum in exchange for Etruria, they gave Capua instead of Tarentum, with one legion which Fulvius had commanded the preceding year.
36
The anxiety respecting the approach of Hasdrubal to Italy increased daily. At first, ambassadors from the Massilians had brought word that he had passed over into Gaul and that the expectations of the Gauls were raised by his coming, as he was reported to have brought a large quantity of gold for the purpose of hiring auxiliaries. Afterwards, Sextus Antistius and Marcus Raecius, who were sent from Rome, together with these persons, as ambassadors, to look into the affair, had brought word back that they had sent persons with Massilian guides, who, through the medium of Gallic chieftains connected with them by hospitality, might bring back all ascertained particulars; that they found that Hasdrubal, who had already collected an immense army, would cross the Alps the ensuing spring; and that the only cause which delayed him there was, that the passage of the Alps was closed by winter. Publius Aelius Paetus was created and inaugurated in the office of augur in the room of Marcus Marcellus and Cneius Cornelius Dolabella was inaugurated king of the sacred rites in the room of Marcus Marcius, who had died two years before. This same year, for the first time since Hannibal came into Italy, the lustrum was closed by the censors Publius Sempronius Tuditanus and Marcus Cornelius Cethegus. The citizens numbered in the census were one hundred and thirty-seven thousand one hundred and eight, a number considerably smaller than before the war. This year it is recorded that the Comitium was covered, and that the Roman games were repeated once by the curule aediles, Quintus Metellus and Caius Servilius; and that the plebeian games were repeated twice by Quintus Mamilius and Marcus Caecilius Metellus, plebeian aediles. The same persons also gave three statues for the temple of Ceres, and there was a feast in honour of Jupiter on occasion of the games. After this Caius Claudius Nero and Marcus Livius a second time entered upon their consulate; and as they had already, while consuls elect, drawn lots for their provinces, they ordered the praetors to draw lots for theirs. Caius Hostilius had the city jurisdiction, to which the foreign was added, in order that three praetors might go out to the provinces. Aulus Hostilius had Sardinia, Caius Mamilius, Sicily, Lucius Porcius, Gaul. The total amount of legions employed in the provinces was twenty-three, which were so distributed that the consuls might have two each; Spain, four; the three praetors in Sicily, Sardinia, and Gaul, two each; Caius Terentius, two in Etruria; Quintus Fulvius, two in Bruttium; Quintus Claudius two in the neighbourhood of Tarentum and the territory of Sallentum; Caius Hostilius Tubulus, one at Capua; and two were ordered to be enlisted for the city. For the first four legions the people elected tribunes, the consuls sent those for the rest.
37
Before the consuls set out, the nine days' sacred rite was performed, as a shower of stones had fallen from the sky at Veii. After the mention of one prodigy, others also were reported, as usual. At Minturnae, that the temple of Jupiter and the grove of Marica, and at Atella also that a wall and gate, had been struck by lightning. The people of Minturnae added what was more alarming, that a stream of blood had flowed at their gate. At Capua, a wolf, which had entered at the gate by night, had torn a watchman. These prodigies were expiated with victims of the larger kind, and a supplication for one day was made, according to a decree of the pontiffs. The nine days' sacred rite was then performed again, because a shower of stones had been seen to fall in the armilustrum. After the people's minds had been freed from superstitious fears, they were again disturbed by intelligence that an infant had been born at Frusino as large as a child of four years old, and not so much an object of wonder from its size, as that it was born without any certain mark of distinction whether it was male or female, which was the case two years before at Sinuessa. Aruspices, called in from Etruria, declared this to be indeed a foul and ill-omened prodigy, which ought to be removed out of the Roman territory, and, being kept far from coming in contact with the earth, to be plunged into the deep. They shut it up alive in a chest, and carrying it away, threw it into the sea. The pontiffs also decreed, that thrice nine virgins should go through the city singing a hymn. While in the temple of Jupiter Stator they were learning this hymn, which was composed by the poet Livius, the temple of Juno Regina, on the Aventine, was struck by lightning; and the aruspices, on being consulted, having replied that that prodigy appertained to the matrons, and that the goddess must be appeased by a present, such of the matrons as dwelt within the city and within the tenth milestone from it, were summoned to the Capitol by an edict of the curule aediles; when they themselves chose twenty-five out of their own body, to whom they paid a contribution out of their dowries, from which a golden basin was made, as a present, and carried to the Aventine, where a sacrifice was performed by the matrons in a pure and chaste manner. Immediately a day was given out by the decemviri for another sacrifice to the same goddess, which was performed in the following order: two white heifers were led from the temple of Apollo into the city through the Carmental gate; after these, two cypress images of Juno Regina were carried; after these went seven and twenty virgins, arrayed in white vestments, and singing in honour of Juno Regina a hymn, which to the uncultivated minds of that time might appear to have merit, but if repeated now would seem inelegant and uncouth. The train of virgins was followed by the decemvirs, crowned with laurel, and in purple-bordered robes. From the gate they proceeded by the Jugarian street into the forum: in the forum the procession stopped, and the virgins, linked together by a cord passed through their hands, moved on, beating time with their feet to the music of their voices. They then proceeded by the Tuscan street and the Velabrum, through the cattle market, up the Publician hill, and to the temple of Juno Regina; where two victims were immolated by the decemviri, and the cypress images carried into the temple.
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After the deities were appeased in due form, the consuls made the levy with greater diligence and strictness than any one remembered it to have been made in former years; for the war was now doubly formidable, in consequence of the advance of a new enemy into Italy, while the number of the youth from which they could enlist soldiers was diminished. They therefore resolved to compel the settlers upon the sea-coast, who were said to possess an exemption from service solemnly granted, to furnish soldiers; and on their refusing to do so, appointed that they should severally lay before the senate, on a certain day, the grounds on which they claimed exemption. On the appointed day the following people came to the senate: the people of Ostia, Alsia, Antium, Anxur, Minturnae, and Sinuessa, and, on the upper sea, Sena. After each people had stated their grounds of exemption, the exemption of none was allowed, as the enemy was in Italy, except those of Antium and Ostia, and of these colonies the young men were bound by oath that they would not lodge without the walls of their colony, while the enemy was in Italy, more than thirty days. Although it was the opinion of all that the consuls ought to proceed to the war as soon as possible, (for Hasdrubal ought to be met on his descent from the Alps, lest he might seduce the Cisalpine Gauls and Etruria, which was anxiously looking forward to a revolution; while it was necessary to occupy Hannibal with a war in his own quarters, lest he should emerge from Bruttium, and advance to meet his brother;) yet Livius delayed, not having sufficient confidence in the armies destined for his provinces. He said his colleague had his option to take which he pleased out of two excellent consular armies, and a third which Quintus Claudius commanded at Tarentum. He also made mention of recalling the volunteer slaves to their standards. The senate gave the consuls unrestricted liberty of filling up their numbers from what source they pleased, of selecting out of all the armies such as they liked, and of exchanging and removing from one province to another, as they thought conducive to the good of the state. In all these affairs the consuls acted with the most perfect harmony. The volunteer slaves were enlisted into the nineteenth and twentieth legions. Some authors state that very efficient auxiliaries were sent out of Spain also to Marcus Livius by Publius Scipio; namely, eight thousand Spaniards and Gauls, two thousand legionary soldiers, a thousand horse of Numidians and Spaniards together. That Marcus Lucretius brought these forces in ships, and that Caius Mamilius sent as many as four thousand bowmen and slingers out of Sicily.
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A letter which was brought out of Gaul from Lucius Porcius, the praetor, increased the alarm at Rome. It stated that Hasdrubal had quitted his winter quarters, and was now crossing the Alps; that eight thousand Ligurians had been enlisted and armed, which would join him when he had crossed over into Italy, unless some general were sent into Liguria to engage them with a war. That he would himself advance as far as he thought it safe with his small forces. This letter obliged the consuls hastily to conclude the levy, and go earlier than they had determined into their provinces, with the intention that each should keep his enemy in his own province, and not allow them to form a junction or concentrate their forces. This object was much aided by an opinion possessed by Hannibal; for although he felt assured that his brother would cross over into Italy that summer, yet when he recollected what difficulties he had himself experienced through a period of five months, first in crossing the Rhone, then the Alps, contending against men, and the nature of the ground, he was far from expecting that his transit would be so easy and expeditious, and this was the cause of his moving more slowly from his winter quarters. But all things were done by Hasdrubal with less delay and trouble than he himself or any others expected. For the Arverni, and after them the other Gallic and Alpine nations in succession, not only gave him a friendly reception, but followed him to the war; and not only had roads been formed during the passage of his brother in most of the countries through which he marched, and which were before impassable, but also as the Alps had been passable for a period of twelve years, he marched through tribes of less ferocious dispositions. For before that time, being never visited by foreigners, nor accustomed, themselves, to see a stranger in their country, they were unsociable to the whole human race. And at first, not knowing whither the Carthaginian was going, they had imagined that their own rocks and forts, and the plunder of their cattle and people, were his objects; but afterwards, the report of the Punic war with which Italy was being desolated for now ten years, had convinced them that the Alps were only a passage, and that two very powerful nations, separated from each other by a vast tract of sea and land, were contending for empire and power. These were the causes which opened the Alps to Hasdrubal. But the advantage which he gained by the celerity of his march he lost by his delay at Placentia, while he carried on a fruitless siege, rather than an assault. He had supposed that it would be easy to take by storm a town situated on a plain; and the celebrity of the colony induced him to believe that by destroying it he should strike great terror into the rest. This siege not only impeded his own progress, but had the effect of restraining Hannibal, who was just on the point of quitting his winter quarters, after hearing of his passage, which was so much quicker than he expected; for he not only revolved in his mind how tedious was the siege of towns, but also how ineffectual was his attempt upon that same colony, when returning victorious from the Trebia.
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The consuls, on departing from the city in different directions, had drawn the attention of the public, as it were, to two wars at once, while they called to mind the disasters which Hannibal's first coming had brought upon Italy, and at the same time, tortured with anxiety, asked themselves what deities would be so propitious to the city and empire as that the commonwealth should be victorious in both quarters at once. Hitherto they had been enabled to hold out to the present time by compensating for their misfortunes by their successes. When the Roman power was laid prostrate at the Trasimenus and at Cannae in Italy, their successes in Spain had raised it up from its fallen condition. Afterwards, when in Spain one disaster after another had in a great measure destroyed two armies, with the loss of two distinguished generals, the many successes in Italy and Sicily had, as it were, afforded a haven for the shattered state; and the mere interval of space, as one war was going on in the remotest quarter of the world, gave them time to recover their breath. Whereas now two wars were received into Italy; two generals of the highest renown were besetting the Roman city; while the whole weight of the danger and the entire burden pressed upon one point. Whichever of these generals should be first victorious, he would in a few days unite his camp with the other. The preceding year also, saddened by the deaths of two consuls, filled them with alarm. Such were the anxious feelings with which the people escorted the consuls on their departure to their provinces. It is recorded that Marcus Livius, still teeming with resentment against his countrymen, when setting out to the war, replied to Fabius, who warned him not rashly to come to an action till he had made himself acquainted with the character of his enemy, that as soon as ever he had got sight of the troops of the enemy he would engage them. When asked what was his reason for such haste, he said, "I shall either obtain the highest glory from conquering the enemy, or the greatest joy from the defeat of my countrymen, a joy which they have deserved, though it would not become me." Before the consul Claudius arrived in his province, Caius Hostilius Tubulus, attacking Hannibal with his light cohorts while marching his army through the extreme borders of the territory of Larinum into that of Sallentum, caused terrible confusion in his unmarshalled troops; he killed as many as four thousand, and captured nine military standards. Quintus Claudius, who had his camps distributed through the towns of the Sallentine territory, had quitted his winter quarters on hearing of the enemy; and Hannibal, fearing on that account lest he should have to engage with two armies at once, decamped by night, and retired from the Tarentine to the Bruttian territory. Claudius turned his army to the Sallentine territory. Hostilius, on his way to Capua, met the consul Claudius at Venusia. Here forty thousand infantry and two thousand five hundred horse were selected from both armies, with which the consul might carry on the war against Hannibal. The rest of the troops Hostilius was directed to march to Capua to deliver them over to Quintus Fulvius, proconsul.
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