United States or New Zealand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
On the following day, the minds of all were possessed with an ardent desire to commence the assault, especially after a golden mural crown had been promised, and the general himself had reproached the conquerors of Saguntum with the slowness of their siege of a little fort situated on level ground; reminding them, each and all, of Cannae, Trasimenus, and Trebia.
This was Lucius Aemilius Paullus, son of the consul of the same name that fell at Cannae; a man of the old nobility but of humble means, and therefore not so successful in the comitia as on the battle-field, where he had remarkably distinguished himself in Spain and still more so in Liguria.
Hannibal, says Juvenal, did not perish by the javelin or the sword, the slaughters of Cannae were revenged by a ring. The death of Pope was imputed by some of his friends to a silver saucepan, in which it was his delight to eat potted lampreys.
If this view of the low character of the work of the artisan and retailer should be thought too obviously a Greek one, let the reader turn to the description by Livy a true gentleman of the low origin of Terentius Varro, the consul who was in command at Cannae; he uses the same language as Cicero.
That the Carthaginian was sitting still at Cannae, bargaining about the price of the captives and the other booty, neither with the spirit of a conqueror nor in the style of a great general."
The severe punishment the people of Rome inflicted upon those who fled from the battle of Cannae, and those who ran away with Aeneius Fulvius at his defeat, did not extend to death. And yet, methinks, 'tis to be feared, lest disgrace should make such delinquents desperate, and not only faint friends, but enemies.
How fearfully the senate in particular was thinned, is shown by the filling up of its complement after the battle of Cannae, when it had been reduced to 123 persons, and was with difficulty restored to its normal state by an extraordinary nomination of 177 senators.
Machiavel says, that it is now and then necessary to recall the constituting essential principles to the memory of nations. And who is charged by Providence with this task? Misfortune! It was the battles of Cannaê and of Thrasymene which recalled the Romans to the love of their fatherland; nations had till now, about such things, no other teacher than misfortune.
They were the glittering points of Roman pila descending upon the foe pila driven by the hands that mouldered amid the red mire of Cannae. Surely those men approved of what she was about to do! Was not Sergius among them, and would he not will her to make good, by her beauty, what the sacrifice of his own strength had failed to accomplish?
What would have been thought if, after the battle of Cannae, a Senator there had risen in his place and denounced every levy of the Roman People, every expenditure of its treasure, and every appeal to the old recollections and the old glories?" The speaker paused. The sudden and intent silence was broken by another voice: "He would have been hurled from the Tarpeian rock."
Word Of The Day