Book 7

7. Meanwhile Fabius was the one hope in a fearful hour.

He, headlong, was arming the allies and Italy, sick with her wound, and the warrior, green still in old age for the rigours of toil, was already moving his camp against the foe; but his mind, greater than mortal, looked to no spears, no swords, no spirited horses. Against so many thousands of Carthaginians and their unconquered chief, against so many columns alone he marched, and bore in himself all the arms and men. And had not a sacred force been laid upon the old man, and the resolve to halt by delay the Fortune that fostered the enemy's cause, the last age of the Dardanian name would have passed away. He set a limit to the gods' favour toward the Punic camp, and amid Libya's prosperous wars he fixed an end to her conquering. Swollen with the disasters of Italy, he played the Carthaginian with slow and patient governance. Greatest of leaders, you who guard the again-slipping realm of Troy, the failing fortunes of Latium and the labours of our fathers, who guard the wealth of Carmentis and Evander's kingdom, rise, come, and set your hallowed head, your service done, in heaven.

But Libya's commander, after the new name held sway with a dictator chosen, weighing not in vain how swiftly the Latins had changed their command, was eager to learn what manner of man this was, what his renown, why Fabius should be the last anchor of the weary, whom Rome, after so many storms, deemed a match for Hannibal. The man's years, void of fire, and an old age closed to deceit, vexed and galled him. Quickly he summons one from the captive ranks and demands the leader's descent, his customs, and the labours of his hand. Cilnius, sprung on the Tyrrhenian shores of Arretium, bore a famous name. But an ill-omened hour had brought the youth to the banks of the Ticinus, and, thrown when his horse fell wounded beneath him, he now gave his neck to Libyan chains. He, burning to escape his ills and break off his life: 'It is no Flaminius you deal with, no rash counsels of Gracchus in his hands,' he said; 'this is the race of Tiryns; and had the fates begotten it, Hannibal, on your shores, you would see the empire of the world in Carthage's citadel. I will not lead you through each thing in a long succession. This will suffice: you shall know the Fabii from one contest. The peoples of Veii, breaking the peace, refused to accept the yoke, and war raged with Mars near at hand at our gates, and the consul was summoning men to arms. Levies were forbidden, and a private camp the household of Hercules' line filled. From one house, a marvel, a patrician army went forth in joined arms. Three hundred leaders sprang forth. Under whichever you pleased, under a single commander you could have waged war without fear. But a dread omen met them as they went out: the Accursed Gate's threshold trembled with a menacing, shrilling sound, and the great altar of Hercules' godhead bellowed. They fell upon the foe, and their fierce valour did not suffer the men to be counted, and the slain were more than the soldiery. Often massed in a dense throng, often scattered far and wide through trackless ways, they took their turns, and earning by toil matched merit, with none second to any in valour, they led three hundred triumphs to the Tarpeian shrines. Alas, deceiving hopes and forgetful hearts, and how fleeting is whatever is granted to mortals! That band of men, who, with the Fabian house unharmed, thought it shameful that the public wars be waged, fell together by the gods' envy, sudden arms closing in around them. Yet you have no cause to rejoice that they were slain. There remain as many as can suffice for you and for Libya: one alone could have matched three hundred right hands. So vigorous his limbs, his toil so provident, his cunning sheltered under wary calm. Nor indeed now, hot-blooded as you are, in the prime of life, would you have dug your heel more swiftly into the flank of a battle-horse in the fray, or champed the bit with your mouth.' The Carthaginian, seeing him after these words eager for death: 'In vain, madman,' he said, 'do you provoke our anger and seek by dying to escape your captive chains. You must live. Let his neck be kept in a close fetter.' So spoke the youth, swollen by the gods and by his bold deeds prospered.

But care for the gods was hurrying the fathers and the matrons of Latium to the altars. With eyes brimming in sorrowful faces the women's chorus moves in long array: in order they were dedicating to Juno a robe and the vows they had conceived: 'Be present here, O queen of the gods; a chaste people we pray and we bring, whatever its name be worthy, a throng of Ausonia's daughters, and a fair and venerable gift, which our own hands have woven with needle and golden thread. And while the mothers' fear lessens, this for now, goddess, shall be your veil. If you grant us to drive the Marmaric cloud from our lands, every jewel set in gold shall gleam for you upon a varied crown.' And they worship Pallas too with her own gift, and Phoebus and the armed god and Dione first of all. So great a reverence for the gods is born when affairs are fearful: but in prosperous times few altars smoke.

While Rome proclaims the ancient honours to the temples, already Fabius, advancing with a silent column and, by his art of warfare, seeming sluggish, had closed off every road to fortune and to the foe. To leave the standards was not allowed, and he taught them to obey, that highest glory by which, O Roman, you lift the head of empire to the stars. But when the first standards were well descried far off on the high mountains, and the army gleamed with new arms, the Sidonian's hopes were roused, and the youth grew hot with Fortune's favour. The only thing that seemed to delay his conquest was that the lines had not yet stood firm: 'Onward,' he cries, 'go swiftly, rush to the gates, drive back the rampart with your breasts. As much of the field as parts us from them, so much is left of the foe before the shades. Sluggards are called to war, old men ashamed to fight. Whatever you see, this is the remnant, condemned as useless in the first campaign. See, where now are the Gracchi, where now the thunderbolts of the race of the Scipios? Driven from Ausonia, they did not let their trembling flight cease before terror bore them to the world's farthest bounds and to Ocean. Now each wanders a fugitive, quaking at our name, and keeps to the banks of the Ebro. There is reason too why my glory should grow with Flaminius slain, and why I should be glad to fix upon our titles the still-raw name of a warrior's Mars. How many years my sword has power to take from this Fabius! And yet he dares. Let him dare. I shall see to it he is gazed on no longer in arms.'

Crying out such things, he sweeps the columns on at a flying pace, and, riding ahead on his horse, now with his right hand challenges the foe, now upbraids them with his voice, now, with a spear hurled from afar, he is borne exulting and plays out the semblances of the battle to come: as when the son of Thetis bore to the Phrygian plains the arms of Vulcan, embracing on his shield earth and sky and his mother's sea and the whole world in image. Sitting, a watcher of these vain rages, and lofty on the high ridge of a hill, tames his exultant heart and wearies the broken threats by deferring war, skilled in delay, Fabius; as, under black night, a shepherd in his guarded folds keeps watch over the flock shut in the pens, fearless of sleep: fierce and unfed the savage pack of wolves rages with howling and shakes with biting the barriers that hold firm.

Foiled in his undertaking, the Libyan moves off from there and with slow pace traverses the Apulian fields, and now settles in a valley hidden out of sight, in case it be granted to make his pursuer plunge headlong and to surround him by unexpected trick, now by night he prepares thefts of the road, with shadows concealing the dark way, and feigns a retreat and counterfeits false fears; then swiftly displays his camp abandoned, its booty left, and prodigally invites the foe: as the Maeander roves at large through the Maeonian land, when, doubling back upon itself with winding eddies, it strays. No undertaking is free of guile: at once he turns all things over and mixes them, sharpening his mind for varied attempts, just as the radiance of water, struck by the lamp of the sun, flickers wandering through the house, quivering in a shifting image of light, and beats the ceiling with a trembling shade. And now, raging with grief, in anger he murmurs thus to himself: 'If this man had first borne weapons to meet us, would there now be no names of Trebia and Trasimene? Would no Italians mourn? Would Phaethon's river never have troubled the sea, discoloured with a bloody wave? He has found, while he holds himself in check and we are worn by sitting still, a way of conquering. See how often, as if he came to meet me, he has unbound my wiles by reason and dissolved my snares.' This he muses to himself, when, at midnight, the trumpet was dividing the night, and now the wakeful watch, his ill-favoured lot drawn, the third sentry was going to his arms, his sleep broken off. He turned his march, and leaving the land of Daunus behind him the wasting foe returned by familiar ways to the Campanian shores. But here, when he entered the fields of rich Falernum (a wealthy land, and one that never lied to the farmer), he adds destroying fires to the fruit-bearing boughs.

It is not right, Bacchus, to pass over your honours in silence, though great enterprises call. You shall be remembered, bestower of the sacred juice, whose vines, heavy with nectar, let no presses set a name before the Falernian. In a better age old Falernus furrowed the Massic ridges with a plough, the sword unknown to him. The vine-shoot did not yet weave its shade with green grape on the bare field, nor did they know to sweeten the cups with the juice of Lyaeus, wont to ward off thirst with a spring and pure water. A lucky step and a happy hour brought Lyaeus, journeying to the shores of Calpe and his day's end, to his lodging, nor did it shame the heaven-dweller to enter the small household gods and the humble threshold of the roof. The smoky doorposts received him willing, and after the fashion of a poor age the tables set before the hearth, and the glad host had not perceived that a god had come. But after the manner of his fathers he bustled with grateful zeal and pressed his old age to serve, until—a festal store—now he arranged fruit in clean baskets, now swiftly brought from his well-watered gardens the dewy fare dripping with moisture; then with milk and honeycomb he set off the sweet feast, and with a table polluted by no blood, pure, he brought the gifts of Ceres, and first wiped away every honour of Vesta on every side and cast the offerings into the midst of the flame. That your own juices should be lacking, captivated by this old man's diligence, Iacchus, you forbid. Suddenly, a marvel to tell, the beechwood cups foamed with the juice of the vine, the reward of his poor hospitality, and into the cheap milk-pail flowed reddening wine, and in the cratér hollowed from oak a sweet liquor sweated from fragrant grapes. 'See, take it,' says Bacchus, 'a gift not yet known to you, but one that shall someday spread abroad the name of Falernus the vine-grower,' and no longer did the god lie hidden. Then clusters wreathed his brow, shining with a purple light, and his hair flowed over his neck, and from his right hand hung a goblet, and a vine, slipping down from the green thyrsus, crowned the festal tables with the shoots of Nysa. Nor was it easy, Falernus, to contend with the glad savour, once the cups were repeated for you; now with your foot you stir laughter, now with stammering tongue, and shaken in your temples by your country's Lyaeus, you try to render thanks and worthy reward with words scarcely understood, until Sleep composed your struggling eyes, Sleep, Bacchus, given to you as companion. Hence, when the hoof of dawn first scattered the dews at Phoebus' rising, the Massic flowered far and wide with vine-bearing fields, wondering at its groves and clusters bright in the sun. Beauty came to the hill, and from that time forth wealthy Tmolus and Ariusia with its cups of ambrosial juices and fierce Methymna with its presses yielded to the Falernian.

Such waste did Hannibal then deal, and ranged hostile over the land, and the swords, dry of blood, goaded him on, while Fabius made sport of the leader. And now unholy prayers and a crooked lust for fighting were swelling in the Ausonian camp: bent forward, they were making ready to run down the slope. Grant to fame, grant, Muse, the man to whom it was given to conquer two camps and to master twin frenzies. 'If the fathers had thought our hearts were hot, our temper rash,' he said, 'and that an easy mind is thrown into confusion by shouting, they would not have entrusted the reins of the last extremity and of a Mars given up for lost. The resolve of war, long weighed, stands fixed: I shall conquer by keeping safe those unwilling and pressed by the last fates. Through Fabius it shall be allowed to none of you to fall. If you are weary of the light and have a longing to be the last of the Ausonian name, and it irks you, at such a time, to have made no place famous by fresh disaster and the crash of a glorious ruin, then Flaminius must be called back to you from his dark abode. He long ago, in his haste to rush on, would have given the signal and the omen. Or do you not yet see the headlong, the near-at-hand fates? One victory is enough for the Carthaginian to end the war. Stand fast, men, and feel your leader. When the longed-for moment demands your right hands, then let those fierce words be matched by deeds. It is not, believe me, it is not a hard labour to be borne into battle: one hour, the gates flung open, will have poured all of us out onto the plain. That great thing, granted to those alone whom kindly Jupiter has looked on as they go, that great thing is to return from the foe. The Libyan leans on Fortune, and with a fair wind trusts to drive his ship. Until the breeze drop and the wind, its blast withdrawn, fail the swollen sails, to wait will have served the cause. No Fortune fosters with a lasting embrace. Already how much narrower his force, and in no battle how much of his fame has been worn away! Indeed, among the rest of our deeds it would not lack praise that he, who but now—but to spare my words were better. Already do you demand battle-lines and combats and the foe? O may such confidence, you gods, abide! Meanwhile, the lot of the greater peril shut out, oppose me alone, I beg, me to the whole war.' At these words the fury was broken and the mad arms grew quiet: as, when over the troubled waves Neptune has lifted his calm head and sees the whole sea and is seen by all, ruler of the deep, the savage winds release their fierce murmurs and move no pinions on their brows, then little by little, peace poured over the tranquil waters, the languid waves shine on the silent shore.

The shrewd care of the Carthaginian perceived this, and with the venom of deceit he assails their minds. These few small acres of his ancestral fields Fabius tilled with no many ploughs: the Massic added a name to his vine-bearing clods. From this it pleased him to contrive a plague and to scatter ambiguous occasions of strife in the camp. He spared them with sword and fire, and granted a suspect peace to the place by malign craft, as if the war were being drawn out by a secret compact. This was understood by Fabius, and the dictator saw the Tyrian's wiles raging. But there is no leisure †with grief to fear envy amid swords and trumpets, and to ward off the bites of slander by a doubtful battle, until, as the Carthaginian crept along and, often in vain dragging his camp here and there, scoured for combats, where wooded ridges and crags rise on the rocky summit of the hills, he closed him in with a squadron spread at the partings of the way. On this side the Laestrygonian cliffs pressed from behind with their stony mountain, on that, foul with its watery soil, the marsh of Liternum; nor did the region call for the use of sword or soldier, but, hedged in by the trickery of the place, a sharp hunger pressed them, ready to exact the penalty for wretched Saguntum, and the end of Carthage's arms was near.

Over all the lands and the pools of the wide deep sleep had buried everything, and, the day's toil laid aside, the world was keeping the peace given to mortals by night. But the Sidonian leader's heart, ablaze with cares, and his wakeful fears did not let him drink the gifts of sleep-bringing night. For he raises his limbs from the couch and wraps himself in the tawny lion's hide, on which, flung down upon the grass of the field, he had pressed his bed before. Then to his brother's tent he bears his quick steps near at hand. Nor was that brother degenerate from the warrior's custom: he lay with his limbs propped on a bull's hide and soothing his cares with sleep. Not far off the man's spear was fixed in the ground close by, and a dread helmet hung from the topmost point; but his shield around it, and breastplate and sword and bow and the Balearic javelin together rest upon the earth. Beside him a chosen band, young men tried in war, and his charger cropped the grass with saddled back. When the steps of the one entering had driven off light sleep, 'Hello!' he said (and at once he was reaching his hand for his weapons), 'what wakeful care wearies you, brother, in your fatigue?' And now he had risen, and his comrades stretched out on the turf he recalls, his heel striking, to the duties of the camp, when Libya's leader: 'Fabius drives me through anxious nights, Fabius rouses me into cares, that old age, which alone, alas, blocks my running fates! You see how you are encircled by an armed ring, and the gathered soldier walls you, shut in, in a circle. But come now, since our affairs are straitened, learn further what I have devised. Through the broad fields the seized herds follow, after war's accustomed manner. I shall order dry branches to be bound to their horns and bundles of light brushwood tied to their brows; when the fire, set to them, has spread its heat abroad, that they may leap up everywhere, the goads of pain driving them, and toss the wandering blazes over the hills with their necks. Then, in panic at the strange terror, the trembling guard will slacken his unequal watch and fear greater things by night. If the plan pleases you (the extreme case forbids delay), let us gird ourselves,' he said. With double step they then sought the tents. Huge, his neck laid back upon his shield, amid horses and men and spoils taken by hand and dripping with slaughter, lay Maraxes, and a dreadful cry, as if in sleep he were taking up war, he chanced then to utter, frenzied, and with trembling hand sought, hot, his arms upon the bed and his familiar sword. To him Mago, when with reversed spear, shaking him, he had driven off the warring sleep: 'Bravest of leaders, in the darkness curb your wrath and put off battle till the light. For deceit and secret flight and safe retreats now must the night be used. To bind dry leaves to the horns and to send the herds, set ablaze, into the broad woods, that the opposing companies may open the barriers, my brother makes ready, and to tear away the besieged camp. Let us break out, and let this stratagem persuade Fabius not to vie in guiles.' At this, while the keen youth, glad of the enterprise, made no delay, they hasten to Acherras' tent, whose rest was sparing and his sleep the least, nor was it his way to make his nights equal to his sleep: ever wakeful he tended his fierce horse, and eased it in its weariness by handling it, and soothed its mouth, fretted by the bit. Meanwhile his comrades renew their weapons and the dried gore they wipe from the steel and give edge and anger to the points. What the fortune of the place demands, what the time, and what they themselves intend, they unfold, and they urge him, no sluggish minister of the enterprise, to go. The watchword runs through the camp, and, intent, they show what must be hastened, and each warns his own men: busy fear, urging on those who hurry, presses the alarmed to depart, while the silence is blind and the shadows are at their deepest. Now, the plague set beneath, the brushwood and the fires rise from the high horns. Here indeed, as the mischief swells and the herds toss their sick heads, the flames, helped on, began to grow rich, and the conquering crest of fire to burst through the smoke; over the hills and the thickets (the black destruction drives them) and over the high crags of the rocky mountain are borne, maddened, the panting bodies of the cattle, and, their nostrils beset with fire, the raging steers struggle in vain to bellow. Over the ridges, over the valleys wanders Vulcan's plague, the mischief nowhere standing still, and the nearby shores gleam: as many as the stars a sailor, cleaver of the deep, sees fixed in heaven on a clear night from the midst of the waves, as many as he sees, when with black heat they burn the Calabrian glades for the rich pastures, a shepherd seated on Garganus' peak sees the fires. But at the sudden sight of the flames flitting over the high mountains, those on whom the watch had then fallen by lot shuddered and believed that the very fires roamed with none scattering them, and that untamed blazes fed beneath the hills. Whether they had fallen from heaven, and the Almighty had hurled great thunderbolts with his mighty hand, or whether the luckless earth, bursting from blind caverns, had poured forth its plenty in flames with kindled sulphur, they ask amid their dread. And now they go off, and swiftly with his arms the Carthaginian seizes the throat of the road, and exulting darts out into the open fields. Yet so far had the dictator, vigilant in his art of command, advanced—after the Trebia and the pools of the Tuscan deep— that it might be enough for Hannibal to have escaped Fabius and the Roman weapons. Nay, he would have pressed the routed man's tracks and steps with his camp, had not the sacred rites, to be revered, called him to his country's gods. Then, turned toward the city, he addresses the youth to whom it was his custom to hand over the standards and the chief command and the foremost reins of war, and with these words he forms and shapes him by counsel: 'If Fortune has not yet by deeds, Minucius, taught you to approve my cautious courses, my words will have no power to lead you to true glory or to keep you from evil ways. You saw Hannibal shut in. The soldier and the squadrons availed nothing, nor the legion massed in dense companies. I call you to witness: alone I shut him in, nor shall I delay further. Let me make libation to the gods of the feast and bear the solemn rites: this man, again and again bound, by high mountains or by rushing rivers (only abstain from battle), I shall deliver. Meanwhile (trust one who has tried it, I do not deceive) in a sick state of affairs to have stirred nothing is salvation. Let it be glory to many and let it please them—indeed it is splendid—to lay the foe low with the sword; but let it be your triumph to have kept you safe for Fabius. The camp is given to you full and the soldier untouched by wound: restore these to us (this shall be your glory). Soon you shall see the Libyan lion leaping at this rampart, soon offering you spoils, soon turning his back, looking back the while and brewing his wrath with guile. Close, I pray, your camp, and snatch away all hope of battle. This warning is enough. But if it is not given me to curb your heart for all my pleading, with great right and pious authority, as dictator, I forbid you to take up arms.' So, leaving the camp, he had walled it with his counsels, and was returning to the city.

But lo, with a favouring breeze the Phoenician fleet was cleaving with its beaks the shores of Caieta and the Laestrygonian retreats, and had entered the open harbours, and the whole sea was foaming with many an oar, when, alarmed at the din, from their glassy seats in the cave the sisters of the sea rose together from the deep and see their shores held by hostile prows. Then, struck with great fear, the Nereid throng, amazed, flow swiftly back to their familiar thresholds, where in mid-deep the realms of the Teleboae rise and the pumice seats afar. Huge in a sheer cave Proteus is hidden, and the prophet far and wide flings back the foaming blue against the opposing rocks. After he (well skilled enough in things and fears) had played through various shapes and terrified them with the scales of a black serpent and twisted dreadful hissings, or roared, his limbs changed into a grim lion: 'Tell me,' he says, 'what is the cause of your coming? Whose face has paleness suddenly overrun? Why this desire to know the future?' To this Cymodoce, eldest of the nymphs of Italy: 'You know our fears, O prophet. What do the Tyrian fleets and our shores wrenched from us portend? Are the Rhoetean realms being moved by the gods to Libya? Or shall the Sarranian sailor hold these harbours now? Driven from our native seat, shall we dwell at Atlas and Calpe in the farthest caves?' Then thus, unrolling the recovered beginnings backward, the ambiguous prophet begins and unseals the future: 'When Laomedon's shepherd sat upon Phrygian Ida and, calling back his straying bulls through the bramble-grown wastes with a shrill reed to the dewy pastures, heard, at his leisure, the contest of sacred beauty, then Cupid was driving his mother's chariot of snow-white swans, anxious to guard the season of the strife. A tiny quiver hung from his shoulder, and his golden bow gleamed, and, forbidding his mother with a nod to fear, he showed that he bore a quiver heavy with darts. But another smoothed the locks on his snowy brow, another bound the purple folds of her robe. When thus, sighing, Venus with her rosy lips addresses her comely sons: ''See, the surest witness of your love is at hand this day. Who could believe it, with you safe? Of beauty and of face (what more remains of all things now?) Venus contends. If on you, my little ones, I gave all my darts, charmed with their seductive venom, if your grandsire, who seals the covenants of heaven and earth, stands a suppliant when you wish: let our victory bring back to Cyprus the Idumaean palms from Pallas, let a hundred altars smoke for me at Paphos for the prize from Juno.'' And while Cytherea presses thus upon her winged sons, the whole grove rang as the goddess walked. Now the warlike maiden, the aegis laid aside, and where she wraps her hair in her wonted helmet, yet uncombed, and learning peace in her serene eyes, was going, and to the foretold grove bore the hurried steps of her sacred foot. Elsewhere Saturn's daughter, at the bidding, was entering the woods, about to bear, after her brother's bed, the Phrygian's judgement, the shepherd's scorn, and Ida. Last of all, with shining face, smiling Venus shone forth: all around, both the groves and, deep within, the caves in their leafy crags drew a fragrance, the goddess breathing it from her sacred head. Nor was the judge able to keep his seat, and his eyes fell, overcome by the light of her splendour, and he feared to seem to have hesitated. But the fierce wars of the conquered goddesses bore him across the sea, and Troy was cut down together with its own judge. Then dutiful Aeneas, tossed over lands and waves, set the Dardanian household gods on Italian soil. While the sea-beasts swim in the deep, while the stars shine in heaven, while the sun lifts himself from the Indian shore, here shall be a realm, and to that realm no bounds through the ages. But you, O daughters, while the unmoving thread runs on, flee the ill-omened sands of Adriatic Sason. The Aufidus, swollen, shall be mingled with the sea in bloody waves and drive red billows into the deep, and on a plain once condemned by the songs of the gods you shall fight again, Aetolian shades, against the Trojans. Soon Punic javelins shall shake the walls of Romulus, and the Metaurus shall gleam with the great slaughter of Hasdrubal. Hence that one, born in secret, shall avenge both his uncle and his father's death; then he shall fill the shore of Elissa with flames and tear the Carthaginian away as he scorches the Italian vitals, and shall conquer him on his own shores. To him Carthage shall yield in arms, to him Africa in name, he shall give from himself one to wear out a third war and bring the ashes of Libya, victorious, to the Capitol.'

While in the cave the prophet unfolds these secrets of the gods, already the master of the war and of the horse had stripped from his mind the counsels and Fabius, and was pressing headlong upon the foe. Nor did the Carthaginian fail to feed and nurse the crooked frenzy, and, that with small loss he might lure him to greater battles, he kept giving feigning backs at times: not otherwise than one who, with bait, calls the fish out from the liquid recesses of the deep through the scattered pools, and, when he has seen the light prey now swimming near the surface, draws his captive to the shore with a curving line. Rumour rages that the foe is routed, and that the Carthaginian has found his safety in flight: that, if he might conquer, an end of the disasters was promised, but that valour lacked all sway, and that punishments were stored up for the victors. That the leader would now close the camp and again command the swords to be carried back to their sheaths, that an account in arms might be rendered, and the soldier clear himself why he conquered the foe. So the crowd. And Saturn's daughter too pricked the minds of the fathers with the goad of envy and the favour of the people. Then they decree things unworthy of trust and to be desired by the Carthaginian, which soon, condemned, they would atone at no small peril. The soldiery is divided, and to Fabius and the master of the horse the commands are wholly made equal. The old man saw it, and, free of anger, feared lest his country, ill-advised, should pay great penalties for so deep an error. And then, pondering much within himself, when he returned from the city, having shared out the allied forces, he sets his standards on the neighbouring ridges close at hand, and from a high lookout aloft watches the Roman camp no less than the Punic. Nor was there delay. The madness of Minucius, the rampart broken through, burned with the love at once of destroying and of perishing. When the Libyan on this side, Fabius on that, saw him advance swiftly from the camp, at once the shrewd man's cares were kindled into sudden action: in haste he bids the companies take up arms and keeps his squadrons within the defence of the rampart, the Ausonian; but the leader of the Carthaginians hurls all his forces into battle and drives his columns on with his voice: 'While the dictator is away, soldier, seize the moment of battle. See, a god offers, on the level plain, the contests long unhoped for. Since the chance is given, with the sword wipe off the long rust, and with much blood, men, sate your blades, full of corrosion.' And these things the Delayer weighed from the mound of the rampart, surveying the fields with his eyes, and at so great a peril it grieved you, Rome, to learn who Fabius was. To him his son, bearing arms at his side: 'The wretch will pay the penalties he deserves,' he says, 'who through blind votes seized our fasces for these crises. Behold the mad tribes. Alas, the slippery rostra and the forums glad of empty men! Now let the deeds of Mars match the office, and let the unwarlike decree that the sun must yield to night. At a great price they shall atone for the madness of their error and for having outraged our father.' Then the old man, shaking his spear, his tears welling up: 'With the blood of the Carthaginians, young man, such bitter words must be wiped out by you. Shall I let a citizen be destroyed before my eyes and hands, or, with me looking on, allow the Carthaginian to conquer? Shall I not be acquitted of the fault of not having matched my inferior, if such is my heart? And now, that you may not doubt, son, take this from your aged father and keep it fixed forever beneath your breast: to be angry with one's country is a sin, and no fouler fault is borne by mortals down to the lowest shades. So the elders taught. How great and of what kind you were, Camillus, when, driven from your home and an exile, in your chariot you would have entered the Capitol an outcast—how many bodies of yours, slain, condemned by your right hand, there are! They would have been at peace had not the man's resolve and a mind impenetrable to wrath stood firm, and the realms of Aeneas would have changed their soil with the sceptre, and now you would stand on no summit of the world, Rome. Lay aside my anger, O son. Let us bear allied arms and hasten aid.' And now the trumpets sounded mingled, and the keen onset had dashed the men together.

First the dictator with his hand cast down the barrier of the gate and the high posts, and broke his course into battle. With no heavier mass do Odrysian Boreas and the African wind, mighty to lift the Syrtis, raise their contests of the winds, when, straining against each other, they whirl their raging wars: they pull the strait apart and roll the sea to opposite shores, each his own; the snatched sea follows, with the shrieking squall, now here, now there, and thunders amid the waves. By no means would any honour, the land of the Phoenicians subdued and Carthage falling, have brought as much as the wrong arisen from envy of glory brought. For all things hard at once were conquered by the man: fear, Hannibal, anger, envy, and at one stroke fame and the fortune of the subdued. When the Carthaginian saw them run swiftly down from the high rampart, his rage trembled, and suddenly there fell, with a groan, the hope, presumed for certain, of a ruin past doubt. For he had walled the army round in a dense ring, meaning to drain them, shut in, with weapons hurled from every side. And here the Dardanian leader in his ill-starred contest had already in mind entered the Styx and the eternal darkness (for he was ashamed to hope for Fabius and the man's aid), when the old man, embracing the battle with his twin wings, binds the backs of the Carthaginians with an outer crown, and now, girding the outermost, himself holds in those who were shutting in the line. Greater rising into arms and greater to behold did Tirynthius show himself. His high crests sparkled and, a marvel, a vast vigour came suddenly into his swift limbs: he heaps on his spears and presses the turned foe with clouds of weapons: such as, after his youth, with old age not yet coming on, the Pylian was a ruler in wars in his second age.

Then rushing on, Thurin and Butes and Naris and Arses he gives to death, and Mahalces, who trusted to join hands with him, to whom there was rare distinction and a name won by the spear. Then he lays low Garadus and Adherbes, lavish of hair, and Thulis, surpassing two ranks with his height, who was grasping the topmost battlements on the high mound, these from afar; with the sword Sapharus and with the sword Monaesus and Morinus, rousing the fight with the bronze's shriek, when the death-bringing blow settled on his right cheek, and, running through the trumpet, the blood, driven out by the wound of the pierced jaw, flowed forth with a last murmur. Next to him fell Nasamonian Idmon by the javelin. For as he was slipping over the warm blood and, sick, striving in vain on the slippery ground to escape with his foot, Hannibal lays him low with his charger hurled against him, and as he raised his stricken limbs in alarm from the ground, with the spear pressed more violently he entangled him in the earth and left the weapon in the wound. The cornel-spear sticks in the ground, trembling at the movement of him who lies there, and, fixed, keeps on the field the corpse entrusted to it.

The youth too, made furious by the example of glory— Sulla and Crassus together, and Furnius joined to Metellus, and Torquatus, the better of right hand—were entering the battles, and of one mind wished even by death to have bought the being gazed on by Fabius. Here, wretched, while he snatches his steps back and, his body drawn aside, avoids the mass of the hurled rock, Bibulus is carried backward and, having slipped over a heap of his comrades, where the clasp, its bite loosened by a frequent blow, had undone the breastplate, received in his side and drove deep into his vitals the iron that chanced to stand out from a fixed corpse. Alas, the manner of his death! He escaped the Garamantian weapons and the band of the Marmaridae, only to fall, laid low by an idle point, by a weapon not aimed at his own wounds. He rolls lifeless, and a new pallor mars the comely face of his youth. From his slackened limbs the arms fall loose, and black sleep wanders over his eyes.

There had come to the war from Tyrian Sidon, summoned by the prayer of his descendants, and was bearing allied arms in aid, proud with an Eastern wing of quivered soldiery, the race of Cadmus, Cleadas; tawny gems gleamed in many a place on his helmet and golden necklace, as when Lucifer, renewed by Ocean's wave, is praised by Venus and vies with the greater stars. He himself in purple and his charger in purple, and through all the column the purple, steeped in Agenorean cauldrons, glittered. He, with the horse, now mocking on the left in a circle, now on the right with light wheelings, through trackless ways, Brutus, eager for battle and longing that so famous a name should fall, behind his back pours the swift arrow, declining the fight in the Achaemenian fashion. Nor was the hand condemned, but, sad to tell, in the middle of the chin of the squire Casca the piercing reed stuck fast, and, cutting an oblique wound with its upright point, brought the iron, warmed, to the moist palate. But Brutus, distraught at the dire fate of his friend, the man who had dared much and was scattering into wounds his cruel shafts by the trick of flight, presses no longer with any racing to catch the swift-footed steed, but all the wrath of his breast he commits, grim, to the spear, and the flying weapon from the thong he hurls, and, where the loose necklace had often bared the top of the breast in its swing, he transfixes it with the point. He falls, pierced through, his bow still drawn, and at once his left hand, as he sinks, dropped the bow, his right the arrow.

But Carmelus, the glory of Phoebean Soracte, waged the battle in no such grim Mars allotted to him. For with his own blood Bagrada had now stained the sword, leader and ruler of the Nubian people; now laid low likewise was Zeuxis, the unsubdued stock of Amyclaean Phalantus, whom a Phoenician mother had borne to a famous Laconian. While he fears such things, trusting neither to fight a foe so swift nor then to flight, with fear persuading him, through the thickets, wretched, into the near tops of an oak had crept and was hiding himself in the high shade, Hampsicus, standing on the boughs that trembled beneath his weight. Him, as he long pleaded much and changed the high boughs with leaps, Carmelus pierces through with his spear, as one who lays waste the limed groves with his reed, while he silently strives, the meta built beneath, to reach by degrees the lofty tops of the high grove, and follows the bird aloft with his lengthening reed. He poured out his life, and, with the gore streaming high, his bloodless limbs hung from the bent bough.

And now the fierce Italians were fighting against the scattered and the backs turned, when suddenly with a fearful mass the Moor Tunger bursts forth in terrifying arms. Black were the man's limbs, and dusky steeds drew his lofty chariot, and, all of one colour, with the art of a new dread he matched the leaden backs of the horses: nor had he ceased to set, like raised crests, plumes upon them, and a black mantle covered them: as once the ruler of eternal night, when he fled to his lowest chamber with the maid of Henna seized, drove his chariot black with Stygian gloom. But Cato, his cheeks then sprinkled with the first down, the glory that the Tusculan walls bore on their Circean ridge, once ruled by Laertes' grandson, though he sees the Latins, troubled in face, draw back their slowed step, undaunted himself, lavish with iron heel and loosed rein, kept driving his lingering horse. It refuses to go against the foe, and the steed, scared, trembles, frightened by an empty shadow. Then swift to the fight, borne down from the high back, he presses the wing-footed chariot with his foot and, as it flies, springs upon it from behind. The reins fell suddenly and the goads, and the iron, quivering above his neck, the luckless Moor turned pale, his blood drawn back. He snatches the head with his sword and carries it on the fixed point.

But with savage Mars fierce the dictator breaks through the panting, blood-stained throng. A pitiable sight, he sees the leader, worn with wounds and with much streaming blood, begging his last and shameful prayers. Tears flowed down his cheeks, and he protects the frightened man with his shield, and, spurring his son: 'Bravest of men, let us drive off this disgrace,' he says, 'and for the Carthaginian's mild deeds— that he scattered no fires over our fields— let us pay a worthy price.' Then, rejoicing in his father's art and his goading, the youth with his sword drives off the columns that had encircled the Carthaginian and frees the field, until the Sidonian leader withdrew from the plain: as, with hunger goading, when the warlike wolf has snatched a lamb, the shepherd turned away, and holds the trembling young in its tight jaws, then, if the shepherd, hearing the bleating, should hasten his steps to meet it on the way, now fearing for itself, it casts back the prey still breathing from its deepest teeth and flees, sick, with empty maw. †Then at last the Stygian shadows, which the black tempest had poured around the Tyrians, fled at length. Their right hands were numb, and they denied that they had earned to be saved, and their sick minds swam amid sudden blessings: as those who, pressed by a collapsed ruin, have lain prostrate, when suddenly their limbs are dug out and black night withdraws, close their eyes and fear to recognize the sun by sight.

The old man, glad at these deeds, his soldiers numbered, was seeking again the camp on the hill, on the safe mound. But lo, the youth, reborn now from the midst of death, raising a shout to the stars and in a long array went exulting, and Fabius their glory, Fabius their salvation, they called, vying, and with a great voice named him father. Then he who before had sat apart with the divided companies: 'Holy one, O father,' he said, 'if it is right, recalled to the honour of the light, to make true complaint, why was it allowed us to divide the camp and the men? Why, patient one, did you give the arms which you alone have the power to wield? By this gift, fallen, we saw the eternal shades with much blood. Swiftly bring back here the eagles and the standards you saved. Here is our country, and the walls of the city stand in one breast. And you, Carthaginian, put off at last your known wiles and tricks: with Fabius alone now must you wage your wars.' When he had spoken these words, a thousand altars—a sight to revere— rise hence from the green turf for the hastening men. Nor was it right for any to touch the feast or the welcome gifts of Lyaeus before, having prayed much, he poured upon the table to Fabius the sacred honour.