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The Italian allies, who were attached to the legion, seem to have been similarly armed and equipped, but their numerical proportion of cavalry was much larger. Such was the nature of the forces that advanced on the Roman side to the battle of the Metaurus. Nero commanded the right wing, Livius the left, and the praetor Porcius had the command of the centre.
What thou owest, O Rome, to the Neros, the river Metaurus is a witness, and the defeated Asdrubal, and that day illustrious by the dispelling of darkness from Italy, and which first smiled with benignant victory; when the terrible African rode through the Latian cities, like a fire through the pitchy pines, or the east wind through the Sicilian waves.
It is rare indeed that such strategy succeeds. When all has depended on a swift and unhesitating advance, generals renowned for their ardent courage have wavered and turned aside. Hasdrubal, divided from Hannibal by many miles and a Consular army, fell back to the Metaurus, and Rome was saved.
By the barbarous commands of Nero, Hasdrubal's head was flung into the camp of Hannibal, who had been till then in ignorance of his brother's doom. The battle of the Metaurus sealed the fate of "the lion's brood" of the great house of Hamilcar.
The result was that Nero and Livius joined their forces in Hasdrubal's front, and to the Carthaginian they offered immediate battle. Hasdrubal attempted a retreat, but was compelled to give battle on the banks of the Metaurus. Of this, one of the "decisive battles of the world," Creasy has left an authoritative and graphic account, which here follows.
When the day was hopelessly lost, Hasdrubal, who had always been in the fiercest of the struggle, cheering and rallying his men, rode straight at the enemy, and died fighting. Thus ended the battle of the Metaurus, the first pitched battle the Romans had ever gained over the Carthaginian army.
Both consuls at once marched against Hasdrubal, whom they found occupied in crossing the Metaurus.
The Roman citizens, two hundred years before Christ, met here the messengers who announced the defeat of Asdrubal on the Metaurus at the end of the second Punic war. Here the ambassadors of the Allobroges implicated in Catiline's conspiracy were arrested by order of Cicero.
One being at the river Metaurus, the other in Apulia, two hundred miles apart, each was confronted by a superior enemy, and both these Roman armies were between their separated opponents.
"I run?" cried the veteran, in hot incredulity, while with his single hand he tore from its stout leather wall-fastenings a shield that had been beaten with Punic swords at the Metaurus. "I run?" he repeated, while a mighty crash told that the front door had given way, and the attackers were pouring into the atrium.
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