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He was ostentatious, envious, and proud, and had cultivation rather than genius. The admiral Mancinus had attempted an attack on an undefended quarter, but a desperate sally of the besieged had exposed him to imminent danger, and he was only relieved by the timely arrival of Scipio.
The treaty of peace which Mancinus concluded with the Numantines in 617, was in substance the work of Gracchus; the recollection that the senate had cancelled it, that the general had been on its account surrendered to the enemy, and that Gracchus with the other superior officers had only escaped a like fate through the greater favour which he enjoyed among the burgesses, could not put the young, upright, and proud man in better humour with the ruling aristocracy.
With unimpaired courage and increased resentment the Numantines resumed the struggle; Laenas fought against them unsuccessfully, nor was his successor Gaius Hostilius Mancinus more fortunate . But the catastrophe was brought about not so much by the arms of the Numantines, as by the lax and wretched military discipline of the Roman generals and by what was its natural consequence the annually- increasing dissoluteness, insubordination, and cowardice of the Roman soldiers.
The Roman admiral Mancinus, charged by Piso with the nominal continuance of the siege of the capital, had occupied a steep cliff, far remote from the inhabited district and scarcely defended, on the almost inaccessible seaward side of the suburb of Magalia, and had united nearly his whole not very numerous force there, in the hope of being able to penetrate thence into the outer town.
The formula of surrender seems to bring the case within the noxoe deditio. /1/ Cicero narrates a similar surrender of Mancinus by the pater-patratus to the Numantines, who, however, like the Samnites in the former case, refused to receive him. /2/ It might be asked what analogy could have been found between a breach of contract and those wrongs which excite the desire for vengeance.
While the men talked together, Sergius sought the praefect of the new detachment, a Hostilian of the family of Mancinus, whom he recalled among the young hot-heads that formed the party of the master-of-the-horse, and declaimed against the policy of Fabius as cowardly and base.
It may be probable, also, that Scipio, who at that time was the greatest and most powerful man among the Romans, contributed to save him, though indeed he was also censured for not protecting Mancinus too, and that he did not exert himself to maintain the observance of the articles of peace which had been agreed upon by his kinsman and friend Tiberius.
The treaty of peace which Mancinus concluded with the Numantines in 617, was in substance the work of Gracchus; the recollection that the senate had cancelled it, that the general had been on its account surrendered to the enemy, and that Gracchus with the other superior officers had only escaped a like fate through the greater favour which he enjoyed among the burgesses, could not put the young, upright, and proud man in better humour with the ruling aristocracy.
He himself leads back his troops along the same heights, having sent Lucius Hostilius Mancinus with four hundred of the allied cavalry to reconnoitre; who being one of the crowd of youths who had often heard the master of the horse fiercely haranguing, at first advanced after the manner of a scout, in order that he might observe the enemy in security; and when he saw the Numidians scattered widely throughout the villages, having gotten an opportunity, he also slew a few of them.
How completely the idea of national and manly honour was already lost among the Romans, was shown with epigrammatic point by the statue of the stripped and bound Mancinus, which he himself, proud of his patriotic devotedness, caused to be erected in Rome. Wherever we turn our eyes, we find the internal energy as well as the external power of Rome rapidly on the decline.
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