Book 10

10. Paulus, seeing the unequal battle swell against him, like a wild beast that, when weapons ring it round, leaps of its own will onto the steel and gathers the foe through its wounds, carries his arms into the thickest crowds and flings himself on danger, and from every blade contrives his death. Terribly he cries: 'Stand fast and bravely, I beg you, take the steel in your breasts, and carry your backs unwounded down to the shades, men. If not the glory of death, nothing is left. To you, going down to the lowest seats, the same Paulus here will be your leader.' From there more swiftly than the Thracian north wind, faster than the feathered shaft that the fleeing Parthian sends back into the fight from his reed, and where Cato, forgetful of his early years, his mind brimming with the war god, stirs the foremost combat, he is borne against the enemy and from deadly arms snatches a youth whom the light-armed Vascon, whom the Cantabrian thick with javelins, was pressing. They drew back, and, turned in terrified retreat, withdrew their steps: as, glad in a distant valley, when a hunter drives a doe and presses the spent quarry in close pursuit and hopes already to touch it with his hand, if a fierce lion has thrust itself, sudden, from the cave before it and stood gnashing before his eyes: at once there desert him his colour and his blood, and his weapons, too small for the peril, and no care for the hoped-for prey remains in his breast. Now he drives his sword-point at close quarters against those who stand, now with his weapons he overtakes the trembling who have turned their backs in evil dread. To rage, and to grace his labours, and to be savage, delights him. A vast nameless throng falls to one man, and, were a second Paulus given to the Dardan arms, Cannae would lose its name.

At last, the wing broken, the front line rushed in disorder, not sparing flight. Labienus and Ocres are laid low in death, and Opiter, whom Setia sent from her vine-clad hill, and Labienus whom the lofty rocks of Cingulum sent from their high walls. The Sidonian soldier met the cruel hour of death, though not by like fortune: for Labienus dies, the cornel-spear piercing through his groin, and brothers fell, this one struck in the shoulder, that in the knee. You too fall, Maecenas, pinned above the loins by a Tyrian dart, you to whom the Maeonian land gave a name revered and once renowned among the Etruscan sceptres. Through the midst, his love of light cast off, Paulus is driven, seeking out Hannibal. One lot alone seems bitter to him: to fall while the Punic leader still lives.

Fearing that catastrophe (for surely, once the contest were joined, no storm so great, no fury, would have gone unpunished), Juno, changed into the likeness of timid Metellus, said: 'Why, sole hope of Latium, consul, do you stir empty and vain frenzies while fate refuses? If Paulus survives, the realm of Aeneas remains; but if not, you drag Ausonia down with you. To go against that swelling youth and to cut off this life amid such ruin, Paulus, do you make ready? Now Hannibal (so glad is he in war) would dare to fight the Thunderer himself. And already, with reins reversed (for I saw him wheel), Varro has escaped and keeps himself for better things. Let there be room for fate, and, while it is granted, snatch from death this soul, greater than ours: soon you will take up the war again.'

To this the leader, sighing: 'Why I should ask for death in arms—is that cause too slight, that our ears have borne with Metellus urging such monstrous counsel? Go, madman, go, take to flight. May the gods grant you do not catch the enemy's weapons in your back, I pray. Unhurt, I beg, untouched may you depart, and enter the walls of Rome together with Varro. Coward, did you think me worthy of such a life, unworthy of a noble death? No doubt the Punic allows it—he who now has strength to wage a contrary war against Jove himself. Oh degenerate from the high virtue of our fathers! When could I enter combat, or with what man would I rather match myself, than one who in defeat and in victory alike will give a name through the ages?'

With such words he upbraids him and is borne into the midst of the foe, and Acherras, bending his course back toward the thronging ranks of his own and stealing his limbs away into the dense maniples, through the crowded press of men and shields packed close, he overtakes with swifter foot and cuts down, as when a Belgic hound hunts the hidden boars, and, skilled, tracks the beast's wanderings through trackless ground, his nose buried, and pressing the trail with silent snout ranges the glens unreached by the hunters' nets, nor stops, until, following the scent he has caught, he finds the secret lair in the thick brambles.

But the consort of Jove, when driving Paulus off with words proved useless, and the consul did not cease from his wrath, changed again into the shape of Moorish Gelestes, calls the Punic, unaware, away from the savage fight: 'Here turn your weapons, here,' she says, 'bring your right hand to those who implore it, eternal glory of Carthage. Close by, the consul is mounting a grim battle along the standing pools of the riverbank, and no greater fame is won by any other foe brought down.' So she speaks and hurries the youth off to another quarter of the fight.

On the river's bank one was harrying the Libyan band— Crista was his name. Twice three sons, joined, bore arms about the old man; poor in his household (yet his house, Tuder, was not obscure, and he was known through the Umbrian peoples, a warrior) by his deeds and slaughter he taught his band of weapon-bearing sons to handle battle. That single-minded phalanx, with their harsh master leading, after it was sated with the death of men, had laid low with countless blows a wild beast bearing a tower, and, the torches following, watched gladly the burning monster's downfall, when a sudden flash of a helmet, and crests bristling from a taller cone, made them shudder. Old age was not slow (for by the gleam he knew the man): the savage parent seizes his sons from the line, of his own will, into the fray, and bids them hurl their darts on every side and not to dread the flames that streamed from the fierce mouth or those that blazed from the helmet. Even so the armour-bearer of mighty Jove, when in the anxious nest he nurtures fledglings worthy to carry the thunderbolt, watching the brood with faces turned toward Phaethon's chariot, tests his doubtful young against the lamp of Phoebus. And now, to give the proofs of battle to his own as he called them . . . and the swift spear flits past through the empty air. The point lodged, not deep, in the layered gold and, hanging slack, betrayed his age by its feeble stroke. To him the Punic: 'What madness drove a hand drained by old age to a vain blow? Scarcely did the trembling cornel of Callaican metal bite my outer covering. See, I return your weapons to you: from us that memorable youth of yours will better learn to wage war.' So with his own spear he transfixes the wretch's breast.

But in answer, dreadful to see, twice three darts fly, hurled by his right hand, and the spears rush with equal effort: just as when a hunter, a Moor, presses a lioness that has lately whelped on Libyan soil, besieged in her cave, the cubs, long since raging, rush in and make vain trials of combat with teeth not yet firm enough. With his shield the Sidonian leader spends their darts, and, gathered into his arms, withstands the pressing spears with their clattering blows, nor does he think enough has yet been done by all these wounds or all this slaughter, and he pants with rage unless he gives all the men to death and joins their bodies to the father's and uproots the wretched house with its stock.

Then he addresses Abaris (for he, the armour-bearer, with one wrath kindled his war-spirit and went as comrade in his every act): 'Supply me with weapons. That throng longs to be sent down to the pools of livid Avernus, the throng that assails my shield: now it shall have the fruit of its foolish loyalty.' So saying, with his javelin he pierces Luca, the eldest, through; the youth, sinking under the pressing point, falls back with face upturned upon his brothers' arms. Then Volso, hurrying with his hand to wrench the deadly steel, he lays low with a pilum (for chance was offering this from the heap of the slain), driving it home through the covering nostril. Then Vesulus, slipping in the warm blood of his brothers, he reaps with swift sword and (alas, barbarous valour!) the helmet of the severed head, like a missile weapon, he flings at those who had turned their backs. Telesinus, his bones crushed by a hurled stone where the spine binds the limbs, falls, and sees the sinking body of his brother Quercens, whom a sling-stone, whirled from afar through the void, had stunned, while Telesinus into the air breathes out his last light and closes his wavering eyes. But Perusinus, worn alike by grief and running and fear, yet not free of wrath, was bearing his uncertain limbs unsteadily across the plain, halting at times. Him, with a stake that the armour-bearer had torn from the back of the fallen Libyan monster and offered, fixed above his loins, the Sidonian cuts down and violently presses with the fire-hardened oak. He had tried with prayers to soften the savage fury, but the Stygian heat had filled his first gasps, and down to the lung his breath drew in the fire. At last, fallen with all his flock, a name long famous among the Umbrian folk, Crista: as when a tall ilex, or an oak known from its founders' ancestral line, smokes, struck by the lightning for Jove, and through the years the flames lay waste its sacred boughs with heavenly sulphur, until, conquered by the god, it sinks wide on the ground and, collapsing, buries all its progeny under the spreading trunk.

And while the Tyrian leader works at this beside the Aufidan pools, Paulus, having now avenged by numberless slaughter the death to come, waged war as though a victor. Among a thousand men lies huge Phorcys, from the caves of Herculean Calpe, his shield engraved with the Gorgon, from whom his stock and his grim origin † flowed from the goddess. Him, as he flung himself forward and swelled with the ancient monstrous names of stone-making Medusa's line, while leaning in more fiercely he aims at the left groin, Paulus drags down, seizing him by the crest of his lofty cone, and, pressing him to the ground where the belt at its lowest curves on the back and sits as guard to either hip, he stabs him above with thrust sword: the other vomits a warm stream of blood, pouring it through his gaping vitals, and that dweller of Atlas sinks into the Aetolian fields.

Amid this carnage, roused in a sudden terror, men attack the rear and with a reversed whirlwind mingle unlooked-for battle—men whom the Tyrian had trained, skilled to deceive, for this very stratagem of war, the commander himself, and, girded with guile, as if they were fleeing the Punic camp, had surrendered their hands. Then with all their hearts they hurl behind the line driven into slaughter, rushing upon their backs. Neither spear fails the man, nor sword: the steel is from the slaughter, the weapons wrenched from corpses. Galba, when from afar he saw the standard carried off by the foe (for adversity has no power to take away the love of valour), straining with his whole body, overtakes the victor and seizes him with a deadly stroke. And while he was tearing the captured spoil from the slain body, and his dying hand loosed its grip too slowly, he fell, run through by the sword of Amorgus rushing up, dying, not blessed in his great venture.

Meanwhile, as if Enyo had not yet glutted her savage furies, the Volturnus whirls the field lifted in dust and hurls the gleaming sands. And now, shrieking monstrously, the storm carried the struggling men far across the field to its farthest edge and, dashed against the hollow banks, plunged them into the swollen river. Here was your end, here Aufidus kept for you the bounds of life, ill-starred Curio, in a silent death. For, raging in spirit, while he holds back the panic-stricken ranks and strives to stem them with his body in their way, hurled headlong by the great mass of those who rush, he is swallowed in the troubled waters and, rolled along the bottom, lay on the Adriatic sand, his death without a name.

Unable to bear great evils or to bow his neck to Fortune, the consul charged against the conquering arms with face set forward: a warlike ardour to die, and now only the confidence of death, gave him spirit, when Viriathus, driving with his darts, the great-souled ruler of the Spanish land, near and before the face of the raging Paulus, cuts down his foe, spent with the fight. Alas, the grief, alas the tears! Servilius, best in war— after Paulus, war's best part—falls by a barbarian stroke, and dying added by one death great odium to Cannae. The consul did not endure the bitter wrath, and, though the violence of the mad winds disarms him with their opposing force and veils the light with dust, breaking grim through the heaped sand's squalor he enters the storm and assails Viriathus, who poured forth barbarous songs in the Spanish fashion, beating his shield, and pierced the vitals of his left breast. This was the last labour of his killing. No further might his hand add to the war, nor, Rome, was Paulus left to you for the battles hereafter. A huge stone, hurled with vast weight, by an unseen hand came against his face, and, driving the bronze of the shattered helmet into his bones, filled his features with blood. Then, drawing back his foot, he laid his sinking limbs on a nearby crag, and, gasping with the welling wound, sat down, terrible, over his shield, his face bloodied: as a monstrous lion, when the lighter spears are driven off, has at last taken the steel through his breast, stands, enduring the weapon, trembling in the midst of the sand, and, as blood streams from his mane and jaws and nostrils, at times rolling out faint growls, pours from his wide mouth the foaming gore. Then indeed the Libyans press on, and over them their leader himself on his galloping horse, wherever the wind's blast drives, wherever a path lies open to the sword, wherever the steed, wherever with warlike tooth the fierce beast. Here Piso, buried under weapons, when through the bodies of the slain he saw the lord of Libya, straining on his spear, pierces the belly of the war-horse with point raised, and tries, in vain, to fall upon it as it collapses, when the Punic, quickly gathering his body, though the steed had thrown him forward, headlong over the bent shoulder: 'Do the ghosts of Ausonia renew, brought back to life, their wars after death, and not even in death keep still?' So he speaks, and as the other tries to raise his weakened body, rising high above him, he buried the whole sword in him.

Behold, his foot wounded by a Cydonian arrow, Lentulus was leaving the field, his reins let loose, when he sees Paulus on the crag, bedewing the rocks with blood, sinking with grim gaze down into Tartarus. His mind reeled, and he was ashamed of flight. Then Rome seemed to the man to be burning, then at the gates bloodstained Hannibal already to stand; then for the first time before his eyes were the Aetolian fields drinking up Latium. 'What then is left, why should tomorrow's light not lead the Tyrians to the city, if you abandon the ship, Paulus, in such storms? I call the gods to witness,' he said, 'unless you steer the losses of this cruel war and live, against your will, in so great a whirlwind, more, Paulus— grief dictates these harsh words—more than Varro you do harm. Take, I beg, this horse, sole hope of our exhausted fortunes. I myself will lift your failing limbs upon my shoulders and set you safe on its back.'

Meanwhile, spitting out the blood that streamed from his torn mouth, the consul: 'Bravo, O worthy of your father's valour! Nor are our hopes truly narrow, when such hearts remain to the Romulean realm. Bear off the horse with your spurs, where the wound allows, and from here quickly let the city's gates be shut (this plague will rush against those walls); tell them, I beg: let the reins of state be handed to Fabius. My fury fought against our own counsels. What more is left for me to do with my life, but to show the blind crowd that Paulus knows how to die? Shall I be carried into the city, spent with wounds? At what price would Hannibal wish to buy it, to see us turn our backs? Such a heart is not Paulus's, nor do I enter the shades so small a phantom. That man I—but why, sick as I am, do I delay you with vain lament, Lentulus? Go, and with your spear raise the weary horse quickly.' Then Lentulus seeks the city, bearing great commands. Nor does Paulus leave unavenged what is left of his life: as a tiger, yielding at last to a deadly wound, its body cast down, wrestles with death and opens its faint jaws to vain bites, and, its blows not sufficient for its rage, licks with its last tongue the hunting-spears. And now, against Ierta, who brandished his weapon and brought his step nearer, exulting and careless of the slaughter, he had, rising, fixed his unexpected sword, and looked round for the Sidonian leader, longing to lay down his soul striving in that right hand. But weapons gathering on every side overcame the man— Numidian and Garamantian and Celt and Moor and Asturian. This was Paulus's end. There lies a lofty heart and a mighty right hand, whom, if wars were given to him alone to wage, you might perhaps have matched with Fabius. To the city his death gave noble glory and sent his name among the stars.

After the hopes and the minds of the Italians fell with the consul, the army, as a trunk without its head, is laid low by cruel arms, and victorious Africa roars across the whole field. Here the ranks of Picenum, here warlike Umbria, there the Sicanian youth sinks down, here a Hernican squadron. Everywhere lie the standards that the warlike Samnite, and those that the Sarrastian peoples and the Marsian cohorts bore. Shields pierced through, and helmets, and useless steel, and coverings of bucklers broken in the clash, and foaming bits torn from the mouths of the fierce war-horses. Bloody Aufidus casts its swollen waves upon the plains and, raging, gives back its own bodies to the banks. So a Lagean ship, like an island sighted on the vast sea, when the cloud-bringing east wind has dashed it on the rocks, scattering wreckage covers the straits: and now through the waves float thwarts and mast and broken stern-ornaments with torn sail, and the wretched sailors, vomiting up the sea.

But the Punic, having measured the day through long combats with savage slaughter, after the darkness snatched from his fury the notable light, then at last dismissed the war god and spared his own men in the killing. Yet his mind keeps watch in its cares and cannot bear the night's repose. Amid such gifts of the gods it goads him that he has not yet entered the longed-for gates of Quirinus. The next dawn pleases him. Hence he resolves to bear swords drawn at once, while the blood is hot and the cohorts steeped in slaughter, and now in his mind he seizes the barriers, now the walls with flame, and joins the burning of the Tarpeian rock to Cannae.

Troubled by this design of the man, Juno, daughter of Saturn, not ignorant of Jove's wrath and of Latium's fate, prepares to curb the youth's reckless ardour and his greedy hopes toward a futile vow. She summons then Sleep, who reigns in the quiet darkness, by whose ministry she often soothes the unwilling eyes of her conquered brother to rest, and, smiling at him: 'Not for greater deeds, god, do I call you, nor ask that on your soft wings you give me, Sleep, a conquered Jove. You need not press a thousand eyes, nor is your power scorned by a guard, the watcher of the Inachian heifer, to be overcome by long night. On the Punic leader, I pray, send strange dreams, that he may not now long to look on Rome and the forbidden walls, which the ruler of Olympus will never grant him to enter.'

Swift he carries out the command, and winged through the darkness bears the drugged poppies in his curving horn. But when, gliding through the silence, he reached the first tents of the Barcaean youth, then he shakes his slumbrous wings above the bowed head and sprinkles rest upon his eyes, touching his temples with the Lethean wand. Grim, fierce dreams torment his raging mind. And now it seemed to him that with a great host he girded the Tiber and, exulting, stood at the walls of Rome. Jupiter himself shone forth on the height of the Tarpeian crag, hurling blazing thunderbolts from his lifted right hand, and the broad fields smoked with sulphur, and blue Anio trembled in its icy waters, and before his eyes again and again the dreadful fires quivered. Then a voice poured through the air: 'Glory great enough, O youth, you have grasped at Cannae. Halt your step: for it will be no more granted you, Punic, to break into the sacred walls than to cleave our heaven.' Astonished by the visions and fearing greater wars, after Juno's commands were fulfilled Sleep leaves him, nor did the daylight purge his mind of the terrible image.

Amid these stirrings of sleep and empty tumults, Mago announces that the camp has surrendered through the night with the rest of the soldiery, and drags off plunder in a full column. To him, as he promised glad feasts on the Tarpeian summit, the leader, when the fifth night had brought the day round in its orbit, hiding the warnings of the gods and his shut-in fear, pleads his wounds and the strength drained in the savage fight, and that one should not trust too much in fortune too favourable. Then the youth, cast down from hope, as if he were bidden to turn his back from the very walls and carry back the standards: 'By so great an effort,' he said, 'not Rome, as she herself believed, but Varro was conquered. Why do you abandon such favourable gifts of war to fate, and delay our homeland? Let the cavalry exult with me: I swear by this head, receive the Trojan walls and the gates open to you without war.'

And while Mago rages at this, his words not trusted by his cautious brother, already the Latin soldier had begun to gather himself within the walls of Canusium and to ring the fugitives with a near rampart. Alas, the ugly look of things gone wrong! No eagles for the men, no standards, no lofty command of a consul, no axes upheld by the lictor. Maimed and sick with fear, as if crushed by some great fall, their bodies strive to stand on weakened limbs. Often a sudden clamour, and often silence, with eyes fixed on the ground: for many the left arm is bare, the shield worn off, swords are wanting to the warriors, every horseman is wounded: from their helmets they have stripped the proud glory of crests and condemned the honours of war. But one breastplate is pierced through with a spear, and clinging to a corslet at times hangs a Moorish reed. At times in mournful clamour they call for their comrades. Here Galba, here Piso, and Curio—not deserving an inglorious death—are wept, and there Scaevola, mighty in war. These on every side, but Paulus equally, like the dire fate of a parent, they mourn: how he never ceased to sing words foretelling disaster and to check Varro's purpose, and how he turned this day so often, in vain, from the city, and likewise how great he was in his right hand. But care for the future presses those whom it grips: some hasten to draw trenches before the walls, or strengthen the gateways' approaches, as means allow, and where the plain lies open to the foe with level entrances, they mimic stags' antlers with fire-hardened branches, and the stake is hidden, a blind weapon in the path of their steps.

Behold, beyond the disasters and the wound past cure, an impious panic and a greater Fury was tossing about the remnants of the war, the bodies undestroyed by the Punic. Across the sea they were making ready Tyrian swords and Punic arms, and to escape Hannibal under a changed sky. The leader was Metellus, not glad in exile from war, yet of a stock with no small name. He was driving his evil-minded heart and degenerate hand to base counsels, and was looking at lands set in another world, where they might hide themselves, lands to which no fame of the Punic name or of the homeland left behind might reach.

When Scipio took this in with kindled mind— he who, as great as when joining fierce battles against the Sidonian leader he stood in the fields, swiftly snatches his sword, and where the men were brewing a shameful evil and final ruin for Latium, breaking the doors, towering, he bursts in. Then shaking his drawn blade with his voice before the faces of the frightened: 'Tarpeian father, who dwell in the temple, a second seat from heaven, and you, Saturnia, not yet changed by Iliac woes, and you, harsh maiden, your breast girt with the Gorgon aegis of your furies, and you native gods, lo, by your own divine powers and by the head, no lighter to me than any god, of my great-souled father I swear: never the Lavinian realm will I leave, nor suffer it to be left, while life remains. Quickly, lo, call the gods to witness: if the walls shall blaze with Libyan torches, no step, Metellus, will you dare to bear onto foreign lands. If you do not pledge this, he whom you dread and whose sleep you break with terror, Hannibal, is here armed. You shall die, nor by any slain of the Punic shall a fairer glory be won.' By these threats the design was struck down. And now, the order given, they bind their souls to the homeland, and swear the dictated oaths to the gods, and cleanse their breasts of guilt.

And while these things, with troubled minds, are done among the Rutulians, Hannibal was ranging the fields and reckoning the grim deeds of his savage right hand, surveying the wounds with his gaze, and with a great crowd thronging about him he offered sweet spectacles to the fierce Punic men. Amid that slaughter, his breast pierced with weapons, half-dead, Cloelius was breathing his life into the air, failing now with a dying murmur, and his face, weary, he scarcely raised by effort on his faltering neck. His horse knew him, and, with ears pricked, pouring out a shrill neigh, dashes Bagesus to the ground, who then was bearing it into the ranks on its captive back. From there, gathering a swift course, over the slippery ground where thick blood stood, and the corpses heaped by slaughter, it flies and halts at the face of its fallen master. Then, bowing its neck and lowering itself on its shoulders, in its wonted way, with bent legs, it offered him to climb upon its back, and trembled with a love all its own. No soldier had vaulted more happily upon that keen horse, whether he were borne back upon its galloping back, his limbs thrown supine, or whether he stood on its bare back, while the swift steed in headlong course carried off the contests of the field.

But the Libyan, marvelling not a little at the horse that matched human feelings in its breast, who that youth might be that fought against the doom of his left side, asks his name and his renown, and at the same time grants a quick death. Here Cinna (for he had turned his arms to the Tyrians, trusting their fortunes, and then went as comrade to the triumphant) said: 'To this man, bravest leader, the lineage is not unworthy of your ears. Once, under kings, that Rome which refuses the Libyan reins, once, under kings, Rome herself was ruled. But indeed, indignant at the throne of the Proud, when she drove out the sceptres, at once great wars came from the house of Clusium. If Porsenna by report has reached your ears, if Cocles, if the Lydian camp— he, girt with Maeonian aid and the Etruscan people, strove to restore through war the kings driven out. Much indeed they dared in vain, and the tyrant pressed, leaning upon the city, the Janiculum. Soon, peace approved, they suppressed their hatreds, and the war was laid down with a treaty, and faith was bound by hostages. Hearts that knew not to grow gentle, O gods! and a race of Italians ready to bear all that is not cruel for the sake of glory: twice six years Cloelia had not yet filled of her youthful body, one of the maidens sent to the king among the Laurentine bands and the pledges of peace, among the virgin throngs. The deeds of men I pass over. She, despising king and treaty and her years and the river, swam across the wondering Thybris, undaunted, breaking the wave with girlish arms. Had nature changed her sex, perhaps you, Porsenna, might not have been allowed to return to the Tyrrhenian shores. But, not to be too long for you, from this youth comes his lineage, and a name to be remembered for a glorious maiden.'

While he unfolds such things, nearby on the left a sudden clamour bursts out. In mingled ruin, among the arms of men and the mangled corpses, they had dug out the body of Paulus from the midst of the heaped slain. Alas, who was he! How unlike him who but now threw the Punic ranks into rout with his weapons, or when he overturned the Taulantian realm, and chains were laid upon the Illyrian tyrant! His grey hair was foul with black dust and dry gore, his beard was caked, and his teeth shattered by the whirling of the wall's stone, and over all his body the wound. When he beheld these things, the Sidonian leader, his joys redoubled: 'Flee, Varro,' he said, 'flee, Varro, surviving, while Paulus lies dead. To the fathers and to Fabius sitting in office and to the people, as consul, tell over the whole tale of Cannae. I will grant you this flight again, if the desire of light is so great, I will grant it to you, Varro. But he whose brave heart, worthy of me and the foe, glowed with no small force, let him be honoured with a last funeral and the honour of a tomb. How great, Paulus, you lie! who, one man, are to me a greater cause of joy than all those thousands. When the fates shall call, such a death I pray for myself, with Carthage safe.'

So he speaks, and bids the bodies of his comrades be given to the earth when next dawn shall redden with her chamber opened, and orders the heaps of arms to rise, to be burned, war god, for you. Then the bidden duties, though weary, they hasten, and with their scattered column lay low the nearby groves: the dark wood resounds, struck by the axe on the leafy ridges. Here the ash and the white-foliaged poplar, lofty, hewn by strong arms, is split, here the holm-oak laid by in the age of forefathers. They roll down oaks and the pine that loves the shores and—funereal grace—the mournful cypress for the pyres. Then in rivalry they weave the funeral pyres, an unhappy office and a gift vain to the slain, until Phoebus plunged his panting horses into the Tartessian pools, and the Titaness, fleeing the sky, drew on the blind night with blackening gloom by her wheel's track. Afterward, when the reins of Phaethon shone with the first fires, and their colours returned to the earth, they set flame beneath, and the bodies, dripping with corruption, they burn on hostile soil. A grim dread enters the mind, the fear of doubtful fortune, and a silent terror wanders through the inmost heart: lest, should the chance of unjust war soon so bear it, they too must lie in this hostile place. But to you, Lord of War, a sacred mountain, built up in a vast heap of arms, was rising to the stars. The leader himself, lifting in his hand a tall pine crowned with flame, called Mars to his vows: 'These first-fruits of the fight and these offerings of glad war Hannibal, victor, burns from the Ausonian name, and to you, Mars our father, not deaf to my vows, the chosen arms of a throng of living men he dedicates.' Then, the torch flung in, the burning fire ravages the blazing mass, and, the gloom broken, its peak driven into the air floods the fields with bright light. From here, swift, he went to the tomb and the funeral granted to Paulus, and vaunted the honour of an enemy's death. They raised a lofty pyre on high, and of soft, green straw they laid out the couches. Gifts were placed upon them, the funeral glory: hated by those who knew it, both sword and shield, and a terror once and a proud emblem, the broken fasces, and the axes captured in war. No wife or children were there, no throng of men joined by near blood, nor, as custom asks, did the ancestral image, going before on the lofty bier, adorn the rites, stripped of all its spoils, and now Hannibal alone was praise enough for honour: with rich purple the shining coverings he casts, sighing, over him, and a cloak inwrought with gold, and addresses him with the last honour: 'Go, glory of Ausonia, where it is right for souls proud in virtue and in deeds to go. For you glory by your death, a noble one, is now won. Fortune still turns our labours about and bids us not know the chances to come.' So the Libyan, and suddenly, the flames crackling on every side, the exulting soul escaped into the airs of heaven.

Then Rumour, its sound swelling, was already reaching the stars, already the seas and lands, and had entered the city first. They despair of the walls: to the trembling people it was enough to have hoped for the citadel alone. For no youth survived, and an empty name of Ausonia stood, without a body, and that the enemy had not yet burst through the gates, they think he idles out of contempt. Already they seem to see the houses burning, the shrines plundered, and unspeakable slaughter of their children before their faces, and the seven citadels smoking. One day mourned two hundred curule chairs overthrown in carnage, and Rome's tottering walls bereft of twice thirty thousand of her youth, drained dry, and this after the Trebia, after the pools of the Tuscan deep, nor with the number of her allies slain in a lighter measure. But indeed, the loyal company of the senate that was left take up their duties by lot. Surveying all things swiftly, Fabius cries to the stunned: 'No room is left, believe me, for delay. Let us make haste, that the foe may not in vain dare to come armed against our walls. Harsh fortune is fed among the fearful by sitting still, and adversity swells through fear. Go quickly, tear down the weapons, O youth, from the temples. Strip the halls in haste and refasten for war the captured shields. We are enough for the homeland, if from our number nothing fear takes from the battle. Let that grim plague be feared on the open plains; never has the Moor, light, exulting with naked body, broken our walls.'

While Fabius sharpens with fear the minds that had failed, a wandering rumour through the walls spreads word that Varro is coming, and floods their breasts with a secret motion: just as, if by chance the master of a wrecked ship should swim alone, saved from the sea, to the empty shores, the uncertain tremble whether to stretch out or withhold their hands to the storm-tossed man, and they hate his very safety, the master surviving when the ship is lost. What ruin remains for the man, who dares to approach the gates and comes as a dire omen to the fearful!

Soothing these laments, Fabius taught that it was base to be angry at disasters, and kept the crowd from wrath. For it was not the part of men to be borne down by adversity, men who inscribe the war god on their race; they could not hide their griefs and demand consolation for sorrow from punishment. But if they would let him reproach, that day had dawned more grievously for him on which he had seen Varro go to the camp, than the one on which he sees him return without his arms. At these words the threats subsided, and suddenly turned their hearts: now they pity his fate, now they reckon the joys snatched from the Punic by two consuls slain. So all the crowd pours itself out now in a long column of welcome, and they testify that they believe it done with great spirit, that, trusting his ancestors and the proud sceptres of the Laomedontiad line, he had not despaired of the city.

No less unhappy, troubled by his guilt and great shame, the consul bore his tottering steps toward the walls, weeping: to lift his downcast face, to look upon his homeland and renew his grief, shamed him. But that, on his return, both people and fathers should offer themselves to him, not to congratulate, but to demand their sons each one, and their brothers, and the wretched parents seemed to be going to tear at the consul's face. So therefore, with his lictor silent, borne into the city, he scorned the honour condemned by the gods.

But the fathers and Fabius, their grief set far away, hasten their cares. Swiftly the chosen young of the slaves are armed, nor does shame, set below safety, shut the camp against deliverance. It is fixed to lead back the realm of Aeneas by whatever hand into the laws of the Parcae, and for the citadel and the sceptres and the honour of liberty to arm even the hands of slaves. The youthful bodies of their own they strip of the bordered robe and gird with unaccustomed arms. The boyish face is shut in a helmet, and the foe is bidden to come of age in slaughter. Likewise, to those who begged that they might ransom the captive crowd with a little gold (and not few were the thousands who prayed), they hardened themselves, to the Punic's wonder, to refuse. So far had it surpassed all crimes and every fault that armed men could be taken. Then it was laid upon them to earn their living far through the Sicilian shores, condemned for having turned their backs, until the foe should leave Latium. Such was Rome then: she for whom, if it stood in the fates to change your ways hereafter, you, Carthage, had better remained.