off their heads. Of the conquering army barely fifteen hundred had fallen, and these were chiefly Gauls, the troops whom Hannibal could best afford to lose.1 As if to crown the series of portents which had ushered in this disastrous battle, we are told that while the carnage was at its height an earthquake took place which was felt throughout Italy, Gaul and the adjacent islands; which laid cities level with the ground, turned rivers from their courses, and drove the sea into their vacant beds. But such was the ardour of the victorious Carthaginians, and such the bewilderment of the panicstricken Romans, that it passed unheeded by them both.2 3 The Roman army was annihilated. To make the disaster more complete, the six thousand infantry who had so gallantly fought their way out of the pass were overtaken on the following day by Maharbal and forced to surrender; while four thousand cavalry, who had been sent forward by Servilius as his forerunners to co-operate with Flaminius, fell also into Hannibal's hands.4 Flaminius himself, after in vain trying to play the general's part amidst the blind panic and confusion, had died a soldier's death, fighting bravely. A Gallic Insubrian, recognising him, cried aloud, "Yonder is the consul who has slain our legions and ravaged our territory," and, rushing at him, ran him through with his spear.5 In vain did Hannibal search for his body to give him the honourable burial which he never refused to a worthy foe. Flaminius may not have been a great general, he may have been impetuous and headstrong, and he certainly made one fatal mistake; but amidst the calumnies heaped upon him by the Senate, and the gloom which always gathers round defeat, we can safely say that he was the worthiest and least self-seeking Roman of his time." 1 Polyb. iii. 84; Livy, xxii. 4-6; Appian, Hann. 10. 2 Cicero, De Div. i. 35; Livy, xxii. 5; Zonaras, viii. 125. 3 Polyb. iii. 84, 14. 4 Polyb. iii. 86, 1-3; Livy, xxii. 8. 6 See an eloquent passage in Arnold, iii. p. 110. RECEPTION OF NEWS AT ROME. 211 CHAPTER XII. HANNIBAL OVERRUNS CENTRAL ITALY. (B.C. 217-216.) News of the Trasimene defeat reaches Rome-Measures of the Roman Senate-Hannibal marches into Picenum-Sends despatches to Carthage-Hearms his troops in the Roman fashion-Advance of the Dictator Fabius-His policy-Discontent of his troops-Hannibal ravages Samnium and Campania-Beauty and wealth of Campania-Continued inaction of Fabius--He tries to entrap Hannibal but fails-Minucius left in command-Is raised to equal rank with Fabius-Is saved from disaster by him-Services of Fabius to Rome. AT Rome no effort was made to disguise the extent of the calamity which had overtaken the State. The attempt had been made after the Trebia, and had not succeeded then; still less could it succeed now. The only man who might have had anything to gain by hiding the naked truth lay unrecognised amidst the heaps of slain in the fatal valley. It was the interest of the survivors to blacken his memory, not to strew flowers upon his grave: and they succeeded in the attempt. Roman senators, even then, consoled themselves for the defeat by the reflection that it was the presumptuous folly of their private foe which was responsible for it; and Roman orators and historians, for centuries afterwards, pointed their morals or adorned their tales by reference to the well-deserved fate of the man who had turned traitor to his order and had despised the gods. When the first vague rumour of the disaster reached the city, an anxious crowd gathered in the forum. Towards sunset the prætor mounted the rostra, and simply said, "We have been defeated in a great battle ". The scene of consternation which ensued brought home to the few survivors who had managed to reach the city, more vividly than the scene of slaughter itself, the full reality of what had happened. The Senate alone preserved its dignity and its self-restraint. Thinking not of the past, but of the present and the immediate future, they sat, day after day, from sunrise to sunset, concerting measures for the defence of the city. When, three days afterwards, indeed, the news came of the capture of the cavalry of Servilius, a loss which rendered his whole army-the only army which remained—unfit to take the field, their presence of mind did forsake them; but it was for a moment only.2 To remedy the evils of a divided command, they determined to revive the office of Dictator, an office disused for thirty-nine years past, and therefore quite unknown to that generation. Their choice fell on the most prudent and respected, if not the ablest, of the patricians, Quintus Fabius Maximus, Marcus Minucius being selected as his Master of the Horse. A slight hitch occurred, for there was no consul present who could nominate the Dictator, and such was the reverence of the Romans for the forms of their constitution, even in this time of terror, that they called Fabius Pro-Dictator only.3 The Pro-Dictator first made his peace by vows and offerings with the angry gods, and then took more practical steps for the defence. By his order the walls were repaired and manned, the bridges over the rivers were broken down, the country through which Hannibal's advance was likely to take place was turned into a desert, and everything prepared for an immediate attack. Why did not Hannibal at once advance on Rome, as the most cool-headed of his opponents expected that he would? The answer is the same that must be given on a yet more critical occasion in the following year. He knew what the Romans themselves hardly yet fully knew, that every Roman citizen could, when occasion required, become a soldier; he 2 Ibid. iii. 86, 6. 3 Livy, xxii. 8. 1 Polyb. iii. 85, 8. HANNIBAL PLUNDERS CENTRAL ITALY. 213 knew also that amidst a hostile population—for no Italian town had as yet come over to him-- his attack, however impetuous, must break upon the walls of the city. If he delayed a little longer, and allowed his victories to produce their natural result, he would be borne back, he hoped, upon a wave of Italian national enthusiasm, and, bearing the banner of Italian independence, would strike down at his leisure the common oppressor. Accordingly, when the cup which he had so eagerly desired to drain seemed to be at his lips, he wisely dashed it from him. Crossing the Tiber, with stern resolve he crossed also the Flaminian road, which must have seemed to his victorious army as if it were there for the express purpose of inviting an immediate march on the capital; and hazarding an attack upon the adjoining Latin colony of Spoletium, he proved to demonstration the soundness of the judgment he had formed as to the courage of the Italians behind stone walls, and the impossibility, with so small a force as his own, of coping adequately with it. After traversing Umbria, he crossed the Apennines a second time, and, at last, laden with the plunder of Central Italy, he entered the territory of Picenum. Here the Carthaginians in his army caught sight, for the first time since many months, of their native element, the sea; and Hannibal despatched his first messenger, with tidings of what he had done, to the Carthaginian Senate. Never, probably, before or since, did a general send despatches to his government weighted with so many and such brilliant achievements. From New Carthage to the Adriatic, what a catalogue of dangers met and overcome, and what crowning victories! The Ebro, the Rhone, and the Po; the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Apennines; the Ticinus, the Trebia, and the Trasimene ! Well can we believe, what we are expressly told, that such news disarmed all opposition to the lion's brood at Carthage, and closed the mouths even of the peace party.1 In the enthusiasm of the moment all parties determined to 1 Polyb. iii. 87, 4, 5, send reinforcements (why had they not taken steps to do so before ?), alike to Hasdrubal in Spain and to Hannibal in Italy. Meanwhile the Phoenician hero rested his troops, fatigued with all that they had undergone, in the plains of Picenum. They lived on the fat of the land, and the Numidian horses, diseased as they were from their bad or their scanty food, soon recovered their condition when they were groomed day by day with the old wine of Italian vintages.1 Here, too, Hannibal took the opportunity—a hazardous one even for him in the midst of a campaign—of arming his Libyan and perhaps some of his Spanish troops in the Roman fashion.2 The victor of the Trasimene could be in no want of Roman suits of armour. When his troops had been sufficiently recruited, and were again eager to advance, he marched at his leisure through the territories of the Marrucini and Frentani, the Marsi and Peligni, ravaging them as he went, and at length pitched his camp near Argyrippa, or Arpi, in Apulia. Every Roman citizen able to bear arms who fell into his hands during this triumphal progress, Hannibal, we are told by Polybius, ordered to be put to the sword, a stern fulfilment, if the charge be true-which it, probably, is notof his early vow. But it was part payment only; payment 3 in full was still to come. 4 Fabius, on his part, after levying four new legions--the numbers of which were, for the first time in Roman history, under the pressure of necessity, made up by drawing from the ranks of freedmen-first moved northward to join the army of Servilius, which he had summoned from Ariminum. The consul was ordered, before coming into the Dictator's presence, to dismiss his lictors, and was then sent to Ostia to protect the Italian coasts from the Carthaginian navy, which had lately intercepted a convoy of provisions in dangerous proximity to Rome. Having thus duly impressed his troops with the superior majesty of his office, the Dictator 1 Polyb. iii. 88, 1. 2 Ibid. iii. 87, 3. 3 Livy, xxii. 9. |