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Updated: June 3, 2025
Before their plans were sufficiently determined another unexpected defeat is reported: four thousand horse, sent under the conduct of C. Centenius, propraetor, by Servilius to his colleague, were cut off by Hannibal in Umbria, to which place, on hearing of the battle at Trasimenus, they had turned their course. The report of this event variously affected the people.
The conclusion of this book and its predecessor, The Odd Women, marks the conclusion of these elaborated problem studies. The inferno of London poverty, social analysis and autobiographical reminiscence, had now alike been pretty extensively drawn upon by Gissing. With different degrees of success he had succeeded in providing every one of his theses with something in the nature of a jack-in-the-box plot which the public loved and he despised. There remained to him three alternatives: to experiment beyond the limits of the novel; to essay a lighter vein of fiction; or thirdly, to repeat himself and refashion old material within its limits. Necessity left him very little option. He adopted all three alternatives. His best success in the third department was achieved in Eve's Ransom . Burrowing back into a projection of himself in relation with a not impossible she, Gissing here creates a false, fair, and fleeting beauty of a very palpable charm. A growing sense of her power to fascinate steadily raises Eve's standard of the minimum of luxury to which she is entitled. And in the course of this evolution, in the vain attempt to win beauty by gratitude and humility, the timid Hilliard, who seeks to propitiate his charmer by ransoming her from a base liaison and supporting her in luxury for a season in Paris, is thrown off like an old glove when a richer parti declares himself. The subtlety of the portraiture and the economy of the author's sympathy for his hero impart a subacid flavour of peculiar delicacy to the book, which would occupy a high place in the repertoire of any lesser artist. It well exhibits the conflict between an exaggerated contempt for, and an extreme susceptibility to, the charm of women which has cried havoc and let loose the dogs of strife upon so many able men. In The Whirlpool of 1897, in which he shows us a number of human floats spinning round the vortex of social London, Gissing brings a melodramatic plot of a kind disused since the days of Demos to bear upon the exhausting lives and illusive pleasures of the rich and cultured middle class. There is some admirable writing in the book, and symptoms of a change of tone (the old inclination to whine, for instance, is scarcely perceptible) suggestive of a new era in the work of the novelist relatively mature in many respects as he now manifestly was. Further progress in one of two directions seemed indicated: the first leading towards the career of a successful society novelist 'of circulating fame, spirally crescent, the second towards the frame of mind that created Ryecroft. The second fortunately prevailed. In the meantime, in accordance with a supreme law of his being, his spirit craved that refreshment which Gissing found in revisiting Italy. 'I want, he cried, 'to see the ruins of Rome: I want to see the Tiber, the Clitumnus, the Aufidus, the Alban Hills, Lake Trasimenus! It is strange how these old times have taken hold of me. The mere names in Roman history make my blood warm. Of him the saying of Michelet was perpetually true: 'J'ai passé
It was a question as to whether he had lost a single man, since there had been no combat. In the battle of Lake Trasimenus, the Carthaginians lost fifteen hundred men, nearly all Gauls; the Romans fifteen thousand and fifteen thousand prisoners. The battle raged for three hours. At Zama, Hannibal had twenty thousand killed, twenty thousand prisoners; the Romans two thousand killed.
"We shall be with them soon, my Marcus," cried Sergius, gayly, and then, noting the furrowed face of his first decurion: "Surely, Trasimenus has not cooled your heart. Take courage. There is no water here to chill you." Decius flushed through the deep bronze of his skin. "It is true that there is no water here, and blows might warm my blood. It was the command of the dictator that I thought of."
"That is he, most beautiful lady; the one with the long, white tunic, at the right of my masters. Is he not poorly dressed for so great a man? Who would imagine him of any consequence at all?" While the girl spoke, Marcia was regarding earnestly, and for the first time, the chief of Carthage, the conqueror of Trebia and Trasimenus and Cannae of Sempronius and Flaminius and Varro.
"No battle and yet no army," repeated Decius, in a murmurous monotone, when, for a moment, there were silence and space around him. "We marched by the Lake Trasimenus, and the fog lay thick upon us.
For Hannibal, after so great a victory at Cannae, being occupied with the cares of a conqueror, rather than one who had a war to prosecute, the captives having been brought forward and separated, addressed the allies in terms of kindness, as he had done before at the Trebia and the lake Trasimenus, and dismissed them without a ransom; then he addressed the Romans too, who were called to him, in very gentle terms: "That he was not carrying on a war of extermination with the Romans, but was contending for honour and empire.
I will begin with the Punic wars. How many fleets, generals, and armies were lost in the former war? Why should I mention what has occurred in this present war? I have either been myself present at all the defeats sustained, or have felt more than any other those from which I was absent. What else are the Trebia, the Trasimenus, and Cannae, but monuments of Roman armies and consuls slain?
Hitherto they had been enabled to hold out to the present time by compensating for their misfortunes by their successes. When the Roman power was laid prostrate at the Trasimenus and at Cannae in Italy, their successes in Spain had raised it up from its fallen condition.
But success depended not on the winning of victories by an isolated force, but on the disruption of Italy. His superiority in the field was again demonstrated at Trasimenus, but no Italian allies came in. He outwitted Fabius, and then utterly shattered at Cannæ a Roman force of double his own numbers.
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