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This unexpected event instantly struck terror into the Carthaginians, who wondering whence so many enemies could have sprung up so suddenly, as the army had been almost annihilated; what could have inspired men who had been vanquished and routed with such boldness and confidence in themselves; what general could have arisen now that the two Scipios were slain; who could command the camp, and who had given the signal for battle; in consequence of these so many and so unexpected circumstances, at first, being in a state of complete uncertainty and amazement, they gave ground; but afterwards, discomfited by the violence of the charge, they turned their backs; and either there would have been a dreadful slaughter of the flying enemy, or a rash and dangerous effort on the part of the pursuers, had not Marcius promptly given the signal for retreat, and by throwing himself in the way of the front rank, and even holding some back with his own hands, repressed the infuriated troops.
But on this theme I don't think I need much enlarge: when I remember what Lucius Brutus did, who was killed while defending his country; or the two Decii, who spurred their horses to a gallop and met a voluntary death; or M. Atilius Regulus, who left his home to confront a death of torture, rather than break the word which lie had pledged to the enemy; or the two Scipios, who determined to block the Carthaginian advance even with their own bodies; or your grandfather Lucius Paulus, who paid with his life for the rashness of his colleague in the disgrace at Cannae; or M. Marcellus, whose death not even the most bloodthirsty of enemies would allow to go without the honour of burial.
But, joking apart, my name is Publius." "The name of at least one out of every three of your countrymen." "I am of the Cornelia gens and of the family of the Scipios," continued the youth in a low voice, as though he would rather avoid boasting of his illustrious name. "Indeed, a noble gentleman, a very grand gentleman!" said the recluse, bowing deeply out of his window.
The inclination of Julian might prefer the gods of Homer, and of the Scipios, to the new faith, which his uncle had established in the Roman empire; and in which he himself had been sanctified by the sacrament of baptism.
They are the last representatives of the policy initiated by the Scipios and not the initiators of the policy that created the bureaucratic Empire of Diocletian: yet this is exactly their glory. They were right to be wrong; and they rendered to the Empire an immense service, for the very reason that the definite outcome of their efforts was diametrically opposed to the idea that animated them.
Hasdrubal had indeed in the succeeding year , after obtaining reinforcements from Africa, made an attempt in accordance with his brother's orders to conduct an army over the Pyrenees; but the Scipios opposed his passage of the Ebro, and totally defeated him, nearly at the same time that Hannibal conquered at Cannae.
The defense of Africa depended on him alone, and he was recalled. He would probably have anticipated the order. Rome breathed more freely when the “Libyan Lion” had departed. For fifteen years he had been an incubus or a terror, and the Romans, in various conflicts, had lost three hundred thousand men. Two of the Scipios, Paulus Gracchus and Marcellus, had yielded up their lives in battle.
What the age of Pericles was in the history of the Athenian democracy, what the age of the Scipios was in the history of the Roman Republic, that was the reign of Louis XIV in the history of the old monarchy of France.
A mercenary army, levied among the subjects and barbarians of the frontier, was the only order of men who preserved and abused their independence. By their tumultuary election, a Syrian, a Goth, or an Arab, was exalted to the throne of Rome, and invested with despotic power over the conquests and over the country of the Scipios.
Of the laws being thus reinforced in Rome, before its capture by the Gauls, we have notable examples in the deaths of the sons of Brutus, of the Decemvirs, and of Manlius Frumentarius; and after its capture, in the deaths of Manlius Capitolinus, and of the son of Manlius Torquatus in the prosecution of his master of the knights by Papirius Cursor, and in the impeachment of the Scipios.
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