Book 11

11. Now come, what peoples and Sarranian camps the famous disaster on the Iapygian plain turned toward Libya, I will tell. No faith stands long anywhere for mortals when Fortune wavers. They strove openly to join their hands to the Punic, who was breaking the treaties (alas, too quick to lose faith when affairs are wounded!)— fiercer than the rest in keeping his wrath stored up and bold to renew his hatred in time, the Samnite, and soon, fickle and late to feel shame at the deed, the Bruttian, and the Apulian, false with his two-faced arms, then the Hirpinian race, empty and not to be taught repose and unworthy to have broken faith: as if dire contagions of a foul disease were spreading through all the peoples. And now Atella, now Calatia too, drove its cohorts into the Punic camp, fear overcoming right. Then the spirited fickleness of Phalantine Tarentum loosed the Ausonian yoke. Lofty Croton opened her friendly gates and to barbarous commands taught the grandsons of the Thespiads to bow their necks to the Africans. The same madness held Locri too. The shore of the shoaling strand, where Greater Greece guards her Argive walls and is washed, curving, by the Ionian deep, following Libya's glad fortunes and her luck in war, swore, trembling, its battles to the Tyrian war god. And now indeed the Celts, the proudest dwellers by the Eridanus, fell upon the woes of Italy, and old comrades in grief hastened to join themselves with all their force.

But the Celts might be excused this, and the Boian peoples their impious wars: that the frenzy which pleased the Senonian race should please Capua, and that the Dardan walls, from their first founding, should ally with a barbarian Numidian tyrant— who now, when the times have so changed, would believe it? Luxury and the sloth nurtured in mad debauches, and shame consumed by sinning, and honour, left to wealth alone, a disgrace—these tore the people gaping with idleness and the city loosed from its laws. On top of this, a savage pride drove them to ruin. Nor was there lack of strength for their vices. To no people of Ausonia was the measure of gold and silver greater (so then did Fortune favour them); their cloth was steeped in Assyrian poison for the men, and in midday the royal banquets, and feasts caught by the rising sun, and a life smeared with every stain. Then the fathers were cruel to the people, the plebs glad at the senate's hatred, and sedition, striking together the discordant hearts. But meanwhile a more polluted old age was enlarging the reckless faults of the youth. Nor were those whom a base birth and a despised origin of life disgraced, lacking in hoping for themselves and demanding first the commands and the reins of the perishing homeland. Indeed it was an old custom to enliven the banquets of men with slaughter, and to mingle with the feasts the grim spectacles of men contending with the sword, and often over the very cups of the falling, the tables sprinkled with no scant blood.

Approaching these by craft, by which to turn their sick minds more keenly toward the Tyrians, demanding what he was sure Rome would by no chance grant (for he did not wish it granted)— Pacuvius was a name not obscure for its crime— he urges them to demand a share of the highest power, and the fasces in turn, with a consul allied, and, if they should refuse to sit on the divided curule chair, the honour made equal, and to see the two sets of axes, that an avenger of the refusal should stand before their eyes and faces. So a chosen band carries the words at a hurried pace. Virrius, surpassing all in eloquence, stands foremost, but of obscure birth, and second to none in frenzy. When in the gathering of the fathers and the great senate he had poured out the impious counsels of the mad crowd, scarcely whole, and inflamed their ears with swelling words, a harsh clamour bursts from the whole assembly with the united roar of those who refuse; then each man, upbraiding, wearies him, and the temple shakes with the strife of voices.

Here Torquatus, noble for having matched his grandfather's stern brow, said: 'Alas, Capua, bearing such words, have you hardened yourselves to approach the Romulean walls, to which Carthage and Hannibal did not dare bring their arms after Cannae? Does it never pass through your ears, when on the Tarpeian seat the Latins begged for equality, how he who then brought the commands with proud mouth was thrust back—not with words, not with voice, but with a fierce right hand—driven headlong through the temple's threshold in so great a whirling of his rolled body, that, dashed on the cruel rock, with Jove looking on, he atoned for his grim words and paid for impious speech with death? Behold, I am the offspring of him who from the seat of the Thunderer drove out the suppliant and, as consul, defended the bare Capitol with his hand.' Then, seeing the man rave and threaten the eyes with the palms of his hands and prepare to repeat his ancestor's deeds, growing yet harsher in greater stir, Fabius takes him up, gnashing: 'O wholly shameful! The seat, behold, is empty, widowed by war's storm: on whom, I ask, of you do you make ready to set it, and into Paulus's place whom do you give? Or is your lot, Virrius, first and before the others, the senate yielding, and does the purple now summon you and match you with our Bruti? Go, madman, go where you are heading; let perfidious Carthage give you her own fasces.' In the midst of the speaker's heat, unable to hold his fury back longer with a groan, Marcellus cries out grimly from a lightning wrath: 'What patience, and how slow, holds your mind, O Varro, too confounded by the war god's whirlwind, that you can endure, as consul, these frenzied nightmares? Do you not long since drive them, hurled from the temple's threshold, headlong to the gates, and force these half-men to learn what the command of a consul made in our custom is? A youth never sober and soon to perish, I warn you, quickly get gone from the city. Before your walls, as is fitting, the leader, armed, will give the due answer.' Hereupon all rise alike and press the men with a great clamour.

And too the Campanian youth quickly bore their own step from the doors, and Virrius, roused by the grief of so great a rebuff, was turning Hannibal over in his mouth. Fulvius (for the presages of his mind promised him the glory to come, and the image of perishing Capua was even then before his eyes) said: 'Not even if you, victor, drive to Rome the leader of Carthage bound in chains at his neck, will it hereafter be granted to enter the consecrated seats of Quirinus. Make haste, I beg, where your sick mind calls you.' Then, hurried off, they bear back these grim answers of the fierce senate, mixed with threats.

Is it your pleasure, almighty one, that the fates lie hidden sunk in such darkness? A happier age will come one day, when loyal Rome will rejoice in a Campanian consul and, secure, will of her own will restore to her great-souled grandsons the fasces and the arms long denied through wars. Yet this punishment of their proud forefathers will endure: that Capua shall not send her men to the voting before Carthage sends hers. After he had now set forth the senate's words, now its deeds, then Virrius, mixing false with true by craft, sang to the troubled the fatal signal of bloody war. The maddened youth want arms, arms, and Hannibal. The crowd rushes from every side and calls the Punic into their homes. The mighty deeds of the Sidonian youth they celebrate: how he broke the Alps, the partner of Hercules' glory, and crossed at a run the crags that neighbour the gods, how, glutted with slaughter, he closed, victor, the fords of the Eridanus, how the same, victor, troubled the Lydian pools with Roman blood, how he gave the banks of the Trebia to the eternal name of fame, and the same man amid the battles sent both Paulus and Flaminius, the chief men of the state, down to the shades. On top of these they heap Saguntum razed in the first war, and the ridges of the Pyrenees, and the Ebro, and the rites of his father, and the war sworn by the man in his boyhood years. That one man, with so many leaders slain in slaughter, so many routed in the line, stands amid the battles touched by no weapons. When by the gift of the gods it is granted to ally one's hands with this man and be joined by treaty, should Capua, forsooth, endure the pride of a bloodless people and the empty swelling and the lordship of the city, which denies the fasces and equal rights as if to slaves? For truly Varro must be held the worthier of so great a name, since a consul more resplendent in purple flees him.

Boasting such things, they were already making ready to send the band chosen by lot, to join the youth by treaty to the Tyrians. But not the unconquered strength alone within his breast did Decius then lay aside, the glory of Capua. And he, received into the midst of the gathering (for it was not granted to delay), said: 'Citizens, do you go to violate the rights of your fathers and to join in friendship a head condemned at the altars of a profaned treaty? What so great forgetting of the right? It is great, and set among great peoples and men, to show a faith unturned! Now is the time to enter battles for the Rutulians, now to move standards and the line, while affairs are anxious and the wounds demand a cure: that is the place for duty, when good fortune fails, and when harsh Fortune calls us to give aid. For to cherish the glad is in no way the glory of a great spirit. Come here, be present. I know souls like the gods, and hearts never narrow in great misfortunes. They take, believe me, Cannae and the Trasimene shoals and Paulus's memorable death. These are they who with their hands cast out the foe fixed in your walls and snatched Capua from the proud commands of the Samnites. These are they who gave you laws, terror driven off, and held back the Sidicine wars. What allies do you flee? Or whom do you add? I am that Dardan blood, to whom my father left the sacred rites, to whom Capys, kin to great Iulus, left a name drawn down from Jove; shall I, that man, among the half-human Nasamones, and among the savage Garamantian who equals the ways of wild beasts, pitch my tent, mingled with the Marmaric fosterling, and follow a leader for whom now, in place of treaty and justice, there is the sword, and praise drawn from blood alone? Not so, not so; right and wrong are not so mingled for Decius that he could wish for this. With no such great gift has grudging Nature armed us as that the door of death lies open and the power to leave a life that is unjust.'

These vain words Decius hurled to turned-away ears. But the chosen band was making the treaty with the Punic. And now there was at hand, sent ahead to the leader amid the troubling tumult, a numerous cohort of Autololes. He himself with a great column swiftly moved his hastened standards across the plains. And Decius: 'Now is the hour, men, now the time. Be present, while a right hand worthy of Capua, with me as leader, attempts the avenging deed: let the barbarous host fall down. Each for himself, eager, seize this glory. If the foe prepares to approach, offer him gates blocked with corpses and purge the wickedness with the sword. This blood alone, in the end, shall wash the minds stained with the crime.'

And while he proclaims these things in vain, pleasing to none, the harshness of the man and his fierce undertaking being heard, bearing a heart big with much wrath, the Punic was standing at the walls and bids the chosen quickly fetch relentless Decius to the camp. His bristling valour and a breast armed with good faith and the desire of the right and a mind greater than Capua, undaunted by the great peril, stood unconquered, and with grim face assailed the leader's menacing commands with bitter words besides. Him the ruler of Libya, scorning the bearer of so many standards, so many arms, upbraiding, with a great clamour proclaims: 'After Paulus, after Flaminius, am I matched, alas, with mad Decius, who wished to contend with me for the honour and fame of death. Seize (go, hurry) the standards, leaders. Whether the Campanian city lies open to me against Decius's will, I am pleased to learn— to me, who, stirring new wars, found the Alps lying open, rocks thrusting at the sky and trodden by one god alone.' Blood had suffused his face, and from his grim eye flames rose. Then his foaming mouth and the sighs driven from his panting throat rolled a dire murmur deep within. So, borne into the city, the whole senate accompanying him and the crowd alike rushing to gaze on the leader's face, he pours out all his rage and the storms of his wrath.

And too, nearer perils had inflamed Decius's mind, and he saw the time was now at hand when, unarmed, he might surpass the praises of the unconquered leader. No flight, no shut house hid him, but free, as if no Hannibal had entered the city, he had kept his leisure with undaunted face, when, dreadful, a band roused with savage arms attacks the youth and sets him at the feet of the leader, seated on high. Then from above, assailing him with fierce words, the victor thunders: 'Do you alone make ready to prop up rushing Rome and call her back from her death, O madman? Behold, the man who would snatch from me the great gifts of the gods. For Decius, forsooth, an idle one, was I kept, to be conquered—by unwarlike Decius, to whom no woman born on the Agenorean shores of our Carthage would yield. To this man, come (for why should we, great-souled, bear unworthy things?), soldier, fasten the chains he has earned.' He had said these things, and the taunts knew no end yet: as when a lion, borne among the herds, sets himself upon the high necks, and victorious roars monstrously in his wrath, and, heavy, clings with sunk claws, hanging on the neck, gnaws the panting bullock. But Decius, while they bind the chains, says: 'Fasten quickly (for so it befits Hannibal to have entered) the chains, the price of the ill-omened treaty. So a victim fully worthy falls, Decius. For it is not right that you, glad in human blood, should have appeased it by slaying bullocks. See, your hand! See, your treaty! Not yet has the senate-house, not yet the posts of the temples been entered by you: already by a fierce command the prison is opened. Go on, and to such beginnings heap deeds to match. Fame will bear to the shades that you were crushed, fallen in the ruins of Capua.' Nor was he allowed to speak more. His head is veiled in black cloth, and, fierce, he is dragged before the faces of his own.

Then the victor, exulting, his breast calmed at last, glad to look on the city's buildings and temples, carries his serene eyes around and learns each thing: who founded the walls, and how great the youth under arms, how many talents of silver and bronze lie open for war, now what manner of mounted force, now in turn how great the foot-soldiers' force of men. They show the lofty Capitol and tell of the Stellate plains and bountiful Ceres. And now Phoebus with his wearied horses was driving the day to its goal in Olympus, and Hesperus was darkening with shadow gradually poured the chariot hastening to the shores: they set out the banquet in their custom and through the festal city celebrate feasts at tables royally heaped. He himself, deemed worthy of a god's worship and sacred honour, is received on high upon couches of choice and far-shining purple. Not one throng of servants: to some was given the care of laying out the food, to some to tend the hearths, to some to bear the cups in order; and too the larder is built up at fixed places. On the rough table gleam the weights of gold engraved from of old. The flames steal away the night, and with the din of those who move the lofty house murmurs. The Sidonian soldier, unused to the rich table, marvels, and drinks in with wondering eyes the unknown face of proud luxury. He himself eats in silence and condemns such honours to be given to feasts, and that tables should be so easily served by so great a column, until hunger was driven off and the gifts of Bacchus loosed his hard mind. Then at last the gladness was given back to his brow, and the heavier cares laid down from his breast.

Teuthras resounds with his Euboean lyre, a dweller of Cumae, and soothes with songs the ears deafened by the harsh murmur of the savage war-trumpet amid battles. For he sang of Chaos, once a blind mass without a star, no day arising, and a world without light. Then how the god had parted the pools of the liquid deep and set the globe of earth in the midst of the frame; how he had given the lofty Olympus for the gods to dwell on, and he showed the chaste ages of father Saturn. And now he sang of Jove and his glad loves through stealth, and the bridals of Electra, daughter of Atlas, whence was born Dardanus, an offspring worthy of the gods, and how he gave to the Thunderer Erichthonius, a grandson of great stock; hence Tros, hence Ilus, then in the long order of the race Assarcus, and how Capys, less than none in fame or hand, gave his name to the first walls. Together with applause the Sidonian youth alike and the Campanian bands celebrate it. Before all the leader pours libation from the goblets to the honour of the name with august rite; the rest, who follow him, in Bacchus's manner sprinkle the liquor on the tables and the throng grows hot with wine.

Meanwhile, when the Tyrian gathering had dissolved into joys (for I will not, youth not unworthy of being silenced, gladly pass over your beginnings and deny you fame, though your daring, though of great promise, was unfulfilled), one mind, untouched by wine and disarmed by no poisons of drinking from its honour, was rolling in its silent breast the mass of Sidonian battle and slaughter. And, that so sacred a longing might be the more to be marvelled at, born of Pacuvius, he had condemned his father's arts. He, following close behind his father, who, laden with various banquets, was leaving the halls with slow step, after it was given him to disclose his plans and unfold his new attempts, and a free place, the rest of the buildings left behind, lay open at their backs, said: 'Receive counsels worthy of both Capua and us': (and, his toga drawn aside, he bares his armed side) 'this war I make ready to finish with this sword and to bear off, torn, to the Thunderer the head of the Libyan ruler, victorious. This will be that sword which will now seal the treaties polluted by guile. If old age cannot bear so great a spectacle and trembles, weary with years, at deeds too great, then do you withdraw to a safe house and leave me to my own purpose. He whom you believe the highest and match with the gods, Hannibal—O how much greater in name than the Punic will your son now be to you!' From his face flashed a fierce fire, and the man's spirit was already waging the war, when the old man, scarcely now able with sick ear long since to bear the weight of so great an attempt, trembling there sinks down and, fixing frequent fearful kisses on his feet: 'By whatever of life remains, by a father's rights, and by your safety, dearer to me, son, than my own, desist from your enterprise, I beg, lest I see hospitality polluted with blood, and cups filled with bloody gore, and the tables overturned in the strife of battle. Will you—he whom not battle-lines, not walls and cities can withstand, when his nearer brow and eye flash with quivering fire—will you endure those thunderbolts that the man pours from his head, if, at the sight of the sword, he hurls the dire voice with which he turns the columns across the plains? It deceives you, that you think him unarmed among the tables. A majesty eternal, sought by the man in so many wars, won by so many slaughters, arms the leader. If you bring your face near, you will marvel that Cannae and the Trebia, before your eyes, and the Trasimene graves, and the mighty shade of Paulus stand there. What then? In so great a crisis, will the hands of his companions lying near him grow numb? Spare him, I beg, and cease to wish for one whom, victor, you could not survive. Or do the grim chains and Decius not teach you to compose your mind?'

Recounting such things, when he saw the youth blazing with love of greater fame and deaf to fear, he said: 'I ask nothing more; carry your step back to the feast; let us make haste: no longer must you pierce with your hand the breasts of the Sidonian youth that guard the king: test your right hand on this throat. For here is your steel, if you make ready to attack the Punic—through these vitals of mine the steel must be drawn. Do not scorn slow old age. I will set my limbs against you, and the sword denied you to wrench away I will snatch by my death.' Then tears poured from his face, and the Punic, by the great care of the gods, was preserved for the arms of Scipio's son, nor did the fates grant that so great a deed be wrought by a foreign hand. Most fair in his wrath, and worthy to have become master of his memorable venture, how great a praise he lost when the attempt was laid down, for whom merely to have wished so great a thing is glory. Then they hasten to give themselves back to the feast and clear the grimness from their brows, until sleep dissolved the glad banqueting of the men.

The next light was making ready to bring forth Phaethon's horses, its chariot now gleaming swift beneath the topmost waves, and the youth begotten of great Hamilcar long since plies his hard cares. Mago, fierce, is bidden to go to the citadels of Carthage and bear to the fathers news of the leader's deeds. Plunder and captive bodies are gathered, and the spoils stripped from the men in bloody war, the offerings of a war made prosperous by the gods. Another of his cares is dismissed from the Libyan shores— alas, Decius, kept for the leader's slow wrath on his return, had not Jupiter, pitying the youth's undeserved punishment, from on high turned him toward the ancient city of Battus. Here men bearing the Pellaean sceptres of Ptolemy snatched him from his threats, and the bonds were loosed from his neck. And the same earth, guardian of his life, soon afterward received his unviolated bones in a quiet tomb.

Nor meanwhile did the longed-for time escape Venus, to crush the minds of the Punic through prosperity with blind ruin, and to tame their restless hearts with luxury. She bids her sons scatter their deceiving darts on every side with their hands and send the silent flames into their breasts. Then, smiling sweetly on the boys: 'Let proud Juno go and despise us (no wonder, for what are we?), boasting of her deeds with the favourable. She is strong in her hand, strong in her arms: we, with a boyish bow, slowly pour our little darts, and there is no blood from our wound. But come, O my throng, I pray (now is the time), be present and burn up the Tyrian youth with your silent weapons. By embrace and much wine and the sleep of men must that battle-line be overthrown which the sword has not broken, nor fires, nor the war god with reins let loose. Let the leader drink in the luxury that has glided through his vitals, nor let it shame him to have lain propped on a painted couch, nor let him strive against drenching his hair with Assyrian balm. Let that boaster, who would draw out his sleep under the wintry sky, rather choose to spend his nights indoors, and let him lay aside the custom of eating while he sits often on his galloping horse beneath his helmet, and let him learn to give the unwarlike day to wine. Then, dripping after the feasts, let the lyre be welcome, and let him slothful pass the slumbrous nights, or his wakeful ones, beneath our power.' When Venus had said this, the wanton army of cupids applauds and lets itself down from high heaven on snowy wings. The Moorish youth feels the flame-bearing pinions, and alike their breasts grew warm with the scattered darts. They want the gifts of Bacchus and feasts and songs again, melted by the Pierian lyre. No keen war-horse sweats in the open field, no whirled lance through the air exercises their bared arms. Waters softened by flames warm their limbs languishing in sleep, and by wretched goods their bristling valour perishes. The leader himself too, breathed upon by deceiving Cupid, renews the tables with banquets and seeks again the hospitality of the willing, and gradually, faded, puts off his native arts, the hidden arrow corrupting his mind. Now Capua is called a second homeland and, under equal honour, a second Carthage, and the vices that allure shake the genius untouched by second fortune. Nor is there any limit to the luxury and to the life sunk in lust among the Campanians: they heap it up and through various arts of the stage strive to mark out their feasts with shows, as wanton Memphis with its Amyclaean Canopus constantly resounds the Phrygian lotus-pipe to Nilotic strains. † Above all, sweetly, while the Punic rejoices, through their ears now Teuthras pours the song with his voice, now with his plectrum. And he, when he saw the leader of Libya marvelling at the strings sounding under his thumb, beginning then gently to sing the proud praises of the Aonian lyre, moved through his songs a tongue harmonious with the cithara, such as could surpass the swans that leave their life, and chose from many these gentlest themes for the table: 'For the Argive peoples once, wondrous to tell, a lyre was heard, blest, with its tortoise-shell to draw the stone and to set the willing rocks upon the walls. This walled Thebes with Amphion's plectrum, and, the flint summoned to the ramparts climbing of itself, bade the sung towers rise into the immense. Another, ruling the troubled deep with its quill, both held the seals and drew Proteus in every shape and bore Arion on its watery back. Now the lyre, beloved of the Centaur, that on the Pelian crag shaped by song the minds of heroes and the heart of great Achilles, could check the wraths, struck on its string, of either the sea or grim Avernus. But the strings that Orpheus struck by the Riphaean Strymon, heard by the gods above, heard by the shades, shine bright among the stars in a heaven well-earned. Him too his mother, with all the throng of his sisters, the Aonides, accompanying, his mother marvelled at as he sang. Not while he sang did the Pangaean ridges or Mavortian Haemus stand, not at his music the farthest Thrace: the wild beasts came with the woods, the rivers with the mountains, and the bird, forgetful of its sweet nest and its flight laid by, unmoved, hung captive in the air. Indeed, when the Pagasaean ship, the blue waters not yet known, terrified them and forbade them to enter the deep, . . . the sea, drawn by the song, came to the stern of the sacred keel, the cithara enticing it. The pale realms the Bistonian bard and Acheron, sounding with flames, he appeased with his quill, and fixed the rolling stone. O dire Ciconian mothers and Getic frenzies and Rhodope condemned by the gods! Hebrus bore his torn-off face into the sea, both banks following it. Then too, when the swift waves bore the head cut from the neck, suddenly there flashed through the waves the sea-beasts, leaping over the whole deep at the murmur.'

So then Pierian Teuthras with his Castalian song was breaking the men's breasts, hardened by wars. Meanwhile gentle breezes had now brought Mago to the Libyan lands. Wreathed with laurel the ship was entering the longed-for harbour, and over the sea gleamed captive arms from afar, shining on the lofty prow. But rising long since from the broad water, far and wide the sailors' shout filled the resounding shores, and at once, the oars striking against the drawn-back breasts, the sea broke and foamed with a hundredfold lashing. Nor slow does the crowd run out into the midst of the waves to seize the joy, and the throng, lifted up by favour, celebrates in rivalry the new joys with vast applause. The leader is made equal to the gods: him on every side the mothers, him the lesser throng of grandsons, warned to rejoice, and the band of elders, and nearby both people and fathers, deign with the honour of the gods, with bullocks slain. So Mago entered his homeland and the gates exulting with the fame of his brother's praise. Then the senate rushes forth, and the senate-house is thronged with a great gathering of the fathers. Then, having worshipped the gods of his grandsire in the ancient custom, he says: 'I announce a glorious war and the broken resources on which the Italian land relied—I myself no small part of the toils. We fought, the gods favouring our prayers. There is a place that the glory of an Aetolian king marks out, possessed once among the ancient ages by Daunus. The Aufidus surrounds the moist fields with rapid eddy and cuts off the lands with its overflowing pools, soon strikes the Adriatic waves and with great roar drives the yielding sea back into the deep. Here Varro and Paulus, a great name among the Latin names, to whom, as leaders of the state, power was entrusted, the gloom of dark night scarce yet driven off, invade the plain, and with their arms gleaming far and wide of their own accord kindle the light of the rising East. We against them (for keen frenzy drove my brother to the longed-for fight) move the swift standards from the camp. Both the earth trembles, and stricken Olympus bellows. Here the leader hid the river and the plains with the slaughter of men, than whom never did the lands bring a greater commander to wars. I saw, when with savage whirlwind and din Ausonia, routed through the bellowing fields, gave its back to one man. I saw when Varro was carried off on his galloping horse, degenerate, his arms cast aside. Indeed I saw you too, great-souled Paulus, your body pierced with weapons, falling over the slaughter of your comrades. That day avenged Aegates and the lavish servile treaties by slaughter: it would have pleased to wish for no more than the kindly god then granted. If a second light like that should return, you would be the one chief of all peoples then, Carthage, and be worshipped through all lands. These are witnesses of the slaughter, which the proud men are wont to bear on the left as an illustrious sign.' Then is poured before the faces of those who marvel a ring far-flashing with gold, and gives faith to his words, notable for no small heap. Hence, taking up again, 'It remains now,' he says, 'that Rome, already undermined, be turned from her deepest foundations and levelled with the ground. Let us strive: restore the strength drained by so many misfortunes, and let the treasuries lie open, not sparingly, to the hands that we have bought with war. The beast already fails us, the grim terror of the Ausonians, and too the provisions wear out.'

And while he tells these things, turning his face with grim look upon Hanno, whom his swelling glory had long since goaded, crooked man, with bitter envy of the leader's zeal: 'Do we now prove our hands and our enterprises to you? Is it now right that I not serve the Dardan colonist? Or does it please you to surrender Hannibal a second time? You whose breast wells black with the poison of envy and with black gall, won over at last by so many titles, by so many trophies, unhappy man, be silent. Behold the hand, behold the right hand, which you would have given to the Aeneadae to mangle—it has filled both shores and rivers and pools and the broad plains with blood.' So Mago, and no obscure favour fed his spirits. To him, with both envy and wrath goading, Hanno: 'Such taunts of a mad youth I marvel at not at all: he swells with his nature, and you would not be slow to recognize the brotherly heart and the empty venom of his tongue. That he may not believe me changed, ceasing for empty things, I am the author that now we must beg for peace, now, the treaty broken, lay down our wicked arms and beware the deadly war. And indeed weigh for yourselves, I beg, what he brings: no other course is left for us to judge. He begs for weapons, men, gold, fleets, provisions, and a war-beast. Conquered, I would have given no more. We have glutted the Rutulian fields with Dardan blood, and Latium lies in the plains. To lay aside our cares at last therefore, good man, grant as victor, and let it be allowed to sit in our homeland, allowed not to drain our households, often emptied, with the costs of rapacious war. Now, behold, now, I say (let my presages be false, I pray, and my mind be mocked by an empty augury), the deadly day is not far off. I know his savage heart and foresee the wraths born of disasters. You, I fear you, you, Cannae. Lower your standards and even try, come now, and demand peace: it will not be given. That grief, believe me, prepares a greater ruin from his loss, and these treaties the victor will grant sooner than the conquered. And indeed, you who sound such great deeds with proud mouth and blow with a foaming whirlwind on the ears of the ignorant, tell me, lo, that brother of yours in arms, equal to the war god, whom the earth through the ages never bore a leader like for the wars, why has he not yet seen the walls of the Romulean city? Are we, forsooth, to snatch from their mothers' bosom into the foe those not yet fit to carry heavier arms, are we bidden to weave a thousand bronze-bound keels, and is a war-beast to be sought through all the lands of Libya, that Hannibal may prolong his long commands and the armed years, and drag out his rule even into the times of fate? But you (for we are not surrounded by hidden craft), do not despoil your sweet homes, and set a measure to the camps and wealth of the powerful. Peace, the best of things that it is given to man to know, peace alone better than triumphs beyond number, peace able to guard our safety and make the citizen equal—let it be called back at last to the Sidonian citadels, and let the fame, Phoenician, of your perfidy be driven from the city. If so great a lust for arms holds him and he persists in not yielding the swords to the homeland that demands them, I urge that nothing be supplied to his frenzy, and that Mago carry these words to his brother.'

As he was knitting on more (for he had not glutted his wrath by speaking), the clamour of those who willed otherwise troubles him: 'If the glory of Libya, surpassable by no man's arms, Hannibal, is your wrath, shall we abandon the victor at the very goal and not bring aids of wealth, that the envy of one man may hold back the sceptres now all but won?' Then, eager, they grant what the use of war demanded and boast their favour, the man absent, before this witness. Soon it was resolved to carry the same to the Spanish lands, while base malice disparages immortal deeds and does not let the leader's praises grow by their aid.