out the proper auspices, he had disobeyed both gods and men recalling him from the very field of battle; and now, through consciousness of their having been dishonored, he had shunned the Capitol and the customary offering of vows, that he might not on the day of entering his office approach the Temple of Jupiter, the best and greatest of gods; that he might not see and consult the Senate, himself hated by it, as it was hateful to him alone; that he might not proclaim the Latin festival, or perform on the Alban mount the customary rights to Jupiter Latiaris; that he might not, under the direction of the auspices, go. up to the Capitol to offer his vows, and thence, attended by the lictors, proceed to his province in the garb of a general; but that he had set off, like some camp-boy, without his insignia, without the lictors, with secrecy and stealth, just as if he had been quitting his country to go into banishment: as if, forsooth, he would enter on his office more consistently with the dignity of the consulate at Ariminum than Rome, and assume the robe of office in a public inn better than before his own household gods." They unanimously resolved that he should be recalled and brought back, and be constrained to perform in person every duty to gods and men before he went to the army and the province. Quintus Terentius and Marcus Antistius having set out on this embassy (for it was decreed that ambassadors should be sent), prevailed with him in no degree more than the letter sent by the Senate in his former consulship. A few days after he entered on his office, and as he was sacrificing, a calf, after being struck, having broken away from the hands of the ministers, sprinkled several of the by-standers with its blood. Flight and disorder ensued, to a still greater degree at a distance among those who were ignorant what was the cause of the alarm. This circumstance was regarded by most persons as an omen of great terror. Having then received two legions from Sempronius, the consul of the former year, and two from Caius Atilius, the prætor, the army began to be led into Etruria, through the passes of the Apennines. BOOK XXII. Hannibal, after an uninterrupted march of four days and three nights, arrives in Etruria, through the marshes, in which he lost an eye. Caius Flaminius, the consul, an inconsiderate man, having gone forth in opposition to the omens, dug up the standards which could not otherwise be raised, and being thrown from his horse immediately after he had mounted, is ensnared by Hannibal, and cut off by his army near the Thrasimene lake. Three thousand who had escaped are placed in chains by Hannibal, in violation of pledges given. Distress occasioned in Rome by the intelligence. The Sibylline books consulted, and a sacred spring decreed. Fabius Maximus sent as dictator against Hannibal, whom he frustrates by caution and delay. Marcus Minucius, the master of the horse, a rash and impetuous man, inveighs against the caution of Fabius, and obtains an equality of command with him. The army is divided between them, and Minucius engaging Hannibal in an unfavorable position is reduced to the extremity of danger, and is rescued by the dictator, and places himself under his authority. Hannibal, after ravaging Campania, is shut up by Fabius in a valley near the town of Casilinum, but escapes by night, putting to flight the Romans on guard by oxen with lighted fagots attached to their horns. Hannibal attempts to excite a suspicion of the fidelity of Fabius by sparing his farm while ravaging with fire the whole country around it. Æmilius Paulus and Terentius Varro are routed at Cannæ, and forty thousand men slain, among whom were Paulus the consul, eighty Senators, and thirty who had served the office of consul, prætor, or edile. A design projected by some noble youths of quitting Italy in despair after this calamity, is intrepidly quashed by Publius Cornelius Scipio, a military tribune, afterwards surnamed Africanus. Successes in Spain; eight thousand slaves are enlisted by the Romans; they refuse to ran som the captives; they go out in a body to meet Varro, and thank him for not having despaired of the commonwealth. 1. SPRING was now at hand, when Hannibal quitted his winter-quarters, having both attempted in vain to cross the Apennines, from the intolerable cold, and having remained with great danger and alarm. The Gauls, whom the hope of plunder and spoil had collected, when, instead of being themselves engaged in carrying and driving away booty from the fields of others, they saw their own lands made the seat of war, and burdened by the wintering of the armies of both parties, turned their hatred back again from the Romans upon Hannibal; and though plots were frequently concerted against him by their chieftains, he was preserved by the treachery they manifested towards each other; disclosing their conspiracy with the same inconstancy with which they had conspired, and by changing sometimes his dress, at other times the fashion of his hair, he protected himself from treachery by deception. However, this fear was the cause of his more speedily quitting his winter-quarters. Meanwhile Cneius Servilius, the consul, entered upon his office at Rome on the ides of March. There, when he had consulted the Senate on the state of the republic in general, the indignation against Flaminius was rekindled. They said "that they had created indeed two consuls, that they had but one; for what regular authority had the other, or what auspices? That their magistrates took these with them from home, from the tutelar deities of themselves and the state, after the celebration of the Latin holidays, the sacrifice upon the mountain being completed, and the vows duly offered up in the Capitol : that neither could an unofficial individual take the auspices, nor could one who had gone from home without them take them new, and for the first time, in a foreign soil." Prod-igies announced from many places at the same time augmented the terror: in Sicily, that several darts belonging to the soldiers had taken fire; and in Sardinia, that the staff of a horseman, who was going his rounds upon a wall, took fire as he held it in his hand; that the shores had blazed with frequent fires; that two shields had sweated blood at Præneste; that red-hot stones had fallen from the heavens at Arpi; that shields were seen in the heavens, and the sun fighting with the moon, at Capena; that two moons rose in the day-time; that the waters of Cære had flowed mixed with blood; and that even the fountain of Hercules had flowed sprinkled with spots of blood. In the territory of Antium, that bloody ears of corn had fallen into the basket as they were reaping. At Falerii, that the heavens appeared cleft as if with a great chasm; and that where it had opened a vast light had shone forth; that the prophetic tablets had spontaneously become less; and that one had fallen out thus inscribed," Mars shakes his spear. During the same time, that the statue of Mars at Rome, on the Appian Way, had sweated at the sight of images of wolves. At Capua, that there had been the appearance of the heavens being on fire, and of the moon as falling amidst rain. After these, credit was given to prod igies of less magnitude: that the goats of certain persons had borne wool; that a hen had changed herself into a cock, and a cock into a hen: these things having been laid before the Senate as reported, the authors being conducted into the Senate-house, the consul took the sense of the fathers on religious affairs. It was decreed that those prodigies should be expiated, partly with full-grown, partly with sucking victims, and that a supplication should be made at every shrine for the space of three days; that the other things should be done accordingly as the gods should declare in their oracles to be agreeable to their will, when the decemviri had examined the books. By the advice of the decemviri, it was decreed, first, that a golden thunderbolt of fifty pounds' weight should be made as an offering to Jupiter; that offerings of silver should be presented to Juno and Minerva; that sacrifices of full-grown victims should be offered to Juno Regina on the Aventine, and to Juno Sospita at Lanuvium; that the matrons, contributing as much money as might be convenient to each, should carry it to the Aventine, as a present to Juno Regina; and that a lectisternium should be celebrated. Moreover, that the very freed women should, according to their means, contribute money from which a present might be made to Feronia. When these things were done, the decemviri sacrificed with the larger victims in the Forum at Ardea. Lastly, it being now the month of December, a sacrifice was made at the Temple of Saturn at Rome, and a lectisternium ordered, in which Senators prepared the couch and a public banquet. Proclamation was made through the city that the Saturnalia should be kept for a day and a night; and the people were commanded to account that day as a holiday, and observe it forever. 2. While the consul employs himself at Rome in ap peasing the gods and holding the levy, Hannibal, setting out from his winter-quarters, because it was reported that the consul Flaminius had now arrived at Arretium, al though a longer but more commodious route was pointed out to him, takes the nearer road through a marsh where the Arno had, more than usual, overflowed its banks. He ordered the Spaniards and Africans (in these lay the strength of his veteran army) to lead, their own baggage being intermixed with them, lest, being compelled to halt anywhere, they should want what might be necessary for their use the Gauls he ordered to go next, that they might form the middle of the marching body, the cavalry to march in the rear; next, Mago, with the light-armed Numidians, to keep the army together, particularly coercing the Gauls, if, fatigued with exertion and the length of the march, as that nation is wanting in vigor for such exertions, they should fall away or halt. The van still followed the standards wherever the guides did but lead them, through the exceedingly deep and almost fathomless eddies of the river, nearly swallowed up in mud, and plunging themselves in. The Gauls could neither support themselves when fallen, nor raise themselves from the eddies. Nor did they sustain their bodies with spirit nor their minds with hope, some scarce dragging on their wearied limbs; others dying where they had once fallen, their spirits being subdued with fatigue, among the beasts which themselves also lay prostrate in every place. But chiefly watching wore them out, endured now for four days and three nights. When, the water covering every place, not a dry spot could be found where they might stretch their weary bodies, they laid themselves down upon their baggage, thrown in heaps into the waters. Piles of beasts, which lay everywhere through the whole route, afforded a necessary bed for temporary repose to those seeking any place which was not under water. Hannibal himself, riding on the only remaining elephant, to be the higher from the water, contracted a disorder in his eyes, at first from the unwholesomeness of the vernal air, which is attended with transitions from heat to cold; and at length, from watching, nocturnal damps, the marshy atmosphere disordering his head, and because he had neither opportunity nor leisure for remedies, loses one of them. 3. Many men and cattle having been lost thus wretch |
