[18]
The opinions of the consuls were diverse. Æmilius thought that it was best to exhaust Hannibal by delay, as he could not hold out long for want of provisions, rather than come to an engagement with a general so skilled in war and an army so accustomed to victory. But Varro, like the demagogue he was, reminded his colleague of the charge which the people had laid upon them at their departure, that they should bring matters to a speedy decision by battle. Servilius, the consul of the previous year, who was still present, alone sustained the opinion of Æmilius. All the senators and the so-called knights who held offices in the army agreed with Varro. While they were still disputing, Hannibal set upon some detachments of theirs that were collecting wood and forage, and he pretended to be defeated, and about the last watch put the bulk of his army in motion as if in retreat. Varro, seeing this, led out the army with the thought of pursuing Hannibal in his flight. Æmilius even then forbade the movement, and as Varro did not obey he consulted the omens alone, according to the Roman custom, and sent word to Varro, just as he was starting, that the day was unpropitious. The latter thereupon came back, not venturing to disregard the omen, but he tore his
hair in the sight of the whole army, and cried out that victory had been snatched from him by the envy of his colleague; and the whole crowd shared his anger.
Appian. The Foreign Wars. Horace White. New York. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 1899.
This text was converted to electronic form by optical character recognition and has been proofread to a medium level of accuracy.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.