of which could alone justify his marching upon Rome; for, notwithstanding the boast of Maharbal, his cavalry unsupported could do nothing against the city.

It is not possible that an assault on a city so strong in its walls and in the spirit of its defenders should have succeeded. For a regular siege Hannibal's force was insufficient, and he had no artillery; he was, besides, not partial to sieges, the circumstances of which, to a great extent, neutralised the superiority of his genius. He must have carried with him the supplies he had accumulated for the subsistence of his force, and when they should be consumed he would be destitute. Fresh Roman levies would gather on his rear, and before long his own army would become the besieged. In such an undertaking he would have wasted time, and, above all, that prestige which he had acquired by his late astonishing victory.

The fact that Hannibal did not think himself strong enough to make an attempt on Canusium, defended by only 10,000 dispirited fugitives from Cannæ, is a sufficient answer to those who say he should have besieged Rome. For it was certainly a great mistake, if he could have prevented it, to allow this nucleus for a new army to escape him.

107

CHAP. IV.

FOURTH AND FIFTH CAMPAIGNS.

GREAT was the mourning in Rome when it was known that another great battle had been lost, another consul slain, and another Roman army destroyed. "Our colder temperaments scarcely enable us to conceive the effect of such tidings on the lively feelings of the people of the South, or to image to ourselves the cries, the tears, the hands uplifted in prayer or clenched in rage, the confused sounds of ten thousand voices giving utterance with breathless rapidity to their feelings of eager interest, of terror, of grief, or of fury."

The senate, of its own authority, immediately named a dictator, M. Junius, to provide for the safety of the State, who chose Tib. Sempronius Gracchus for his master of the horse. These two officers enrolled all the male population above seventeen years of age for the defence of the city, and by this means obtained two legions and 1000 cavalry in addition to the two city legions which formed the regular garrison. They likewise enlisted 8000 slaves and 4000 debtors or criminals, on promise of freedom and pardon for past offences.

* Arnold.

At length despatches arrived from Varro, which informed the senate that he had rallied the wreck of the army at Canusium, and that Hannibal was not marching upon Rome.

Nearly at the same time, news arrived from Sicily that one Carthaginian fleet was ravaging the coasts of Hiero king of Syracuse, the Roman ally, while another threatened a descent on Lilybæum and the Roman portion of the island, for the purpose of preventing the Roman fleet there stationed from going to the assistance of Hiero. Titus Otacilius, who commanded that fleet, represented to the senate that an additional naval force must be sent, if the possessions of the republic in Sicily were to be retained.

The peril at home was too great to comply with this requisition. Marcellus, who lay at Ostia, with a fleet destined for the above service, was detained. He was ordered to send 1500 of his naval conscripts to reinforce the garrison of Rome, while he himself repaired with his one legion to Canusium, to take over the command. of the troops at that place from Varro who was summoned to Rome, and to organise a new army to oppose Hannibal.* The diminished fleet then sailed from Ostia to reinforce Otacilius, under one of the prætors, Marcus Furius.

Meanwhile, such had been the panic among the fugitives from Cannæ, that many young nobles, despairing of the salvation of their country, planned an escape beyond sea with the design of entering some foreign service. The wise and firm intervention of Varro, how

See Observation 1.

ever, prevented the execution of a plan which would have been the signal of a general panic; for what Roman colony or what ally could be expected to make sacrifices in the cause of a city which its noblest citizens themselves deserted as hopeless ?-and that consul, after having done this great service, handed over his command to Marcellus, and repaired to Rome in obedience to the orders of the senate."

Varro had little mercy to hope for at the hands of his countrymen, never indulgent to a defeated general; for if the memory of Flaminius was persecuted, notwithstanding his glorious death, what could he expect, a fugitive general from that field whose disasters were principally owing to his rashness, and where his colleague and nearly all his soldiers had perished? Demosthenes dared not trust himself to the Athenian people after his defeat in Ætolia; but Varro, with a manlier spirit, returned to bear the punishment and disgrace which the general feeling, sharpened by political hatred, was so likely to inflict.

The senate was composed of his bitter political enemies; but that body nobly responded to the confidence he manifested in it. Party feeling was suspended; the political adversary, the defeated general, were alike forgotten; it was only remembered that Varro had resisted the after-panic among his troops, and had submitted himself to the judgment of his countrymen ; and the senate thanked him publicly "because he had not despaired of the commonwealth."

In pursuance of his policy to detach the states of

* See Observation 2.

Italy from Rome, Hannibal, after Cannæ, dismissed all his prisoners of the Italian allies without ransom. He was now in want of money, and having informed his Roman prisoners that he would admit them to ransom at so much a head, he allowed a deputation from their body to accompany his ambassador to Rome, in order to treat with their families for the price of their liberation.

The senate however not only refused to discuss any terms of peace with his envoy, as Hannibal had hoped, but absolutely forbade the ransom of any of the prisoners, thinking it neither politic to enrich their adversary with so large a sum as he would obtain thereby, nor to show indulgence to soldiers who had surrendered to the enemy.

Pliny relates that Hannibal, exasperated by this refusal, practised inhuman cruelties towards his captives. But, besides the fact that this is the testimony of an enemy, wanton cruelty formed no part of Hannibal's character, and neither Livy nor Polybius mentions these stories. Such cruelty moreover would have been impolitic in the highest degree, as tending to prevent any Roman soldier for the future from ever surrendering himself alive; and politic sagacity is the quality above all others for which the great Carthaginian is most renowned.

The battle of Cannæ, and Hannibal's behaviour after it, were too much for the fidelity of some of the Roman allies. Apulia declared for the conqueror immediately, and the towns of Arpi and Salapia opened their gates to him. Bruttium, Lucania, and Samnium were ready to