22.60
No
sooner had he finished than a tearful cry arose from the crowd in the
comitium; they stretched their hands towards the Senate-house and implored
the senators to give them back their children, their brothers, and their
relations. Fear and affection had brought even women amongst the crowd of
men who thronged the Forum. After the strangers had withdrawn the debate
commenced in the senate. There was great difference of opinion; some said
that they ought to be ransomed at the expense of the State, others were of
opinion that no public expense ought to be incurred, but they ought not to be
prevented from defraying the cost from private sources, and in cases where
ready money was not available it should be advanced from the treasury on
personal security and mortgages. When it came to the turn of T. Manlius
Torquatus, a man of old-fashioned and, some thought, excessive strictness,
to give his opinion, he is said to have spoken in these terms: "If the delegates
had confined themselves to asking that those who are in the hands of the
enemy might be ransomed, I should have stated my opinion in few words
without casting reflections on any of them, for all that would have been
necessary would be to remind you that you should maintain the custom and
usage handed down from our forefathers by setting an example necessary for
military discipline. But as it is, since they have almost treated their surrender
to the enemy as a thing to be proud of, and think it right that they should
receive more consideration than the prisoners taken in the field or those who
reached Venusia and Canusium, or even the consul himself, I will not allow
you to remain in ignorance of what actually happened. I only wish that the
facts which I am about to allege could be brought before the army at
Canusium, which is best able to testify to each man's courage or cowardice,
or at least that we had before us P. Sempronius Tuditanus, for if these men
had followed him they would at this moment be in the Roman camp, not
prisoners in the hands of the foe.
"The enemy had nearly all returned to their camp, tired out with
fighting, to make merry over their victory, and these men had the night clear
for a sortie. Seven thousand men could easily have made a sortie, even
through dense masses of the enemy, but they did not make any attempt to do
so on their own initiative, nor would they follow any one else. Nearly the
whole night through P. Sempronius Tuditanus was continually warning them
and urging them to follow him, whilst only a few of the enemy were
watching their camp, whilst all was quiet and silent, whilst the night could
still conceal their movements; before it was light they could reach safety and
be protected by the cities of our allies. If he had spoken as that military
tribune P. Decius spoke in the days of our fathers, or as Calpurnius Flamma,
in the first Punic war, when we were young men, spoke to his three hundred
volunteers whom he was leading to the capture of a height situated in the
very centre of the enemy's position: 'Let us,' he exclaimed, 'die, my men, and
by our death rescue our blockaded legions from their peril' -if, I say, P.
Sempronius had spoken thus, I should not regard you as men, much less as
Romans, if none had come forward as the comrade of so brave a man. But
the way he pointed out to you led to safety quite as much as to glory, he
would have brought you back to your country, your parents, your wives, and
your children. You have not courage enough to save yourselves; what would
you do if you had to die for your country? All round you on that day were
lying fifty thousand dead, Romans and allies. If so many examples of courage
did not inspire you, nothing ever will. If such an awful disaster did not make
you hold your lives cheap, none will ever do so. It is whilst you are free men,
with all your rights as citizens, that you must show your love for your
country, or rather, while it is your country and you are its citizens. Now you
are showing that love too late, your rights forfeited, your citizenship
renounced, you have become the slaves of the Carthaginians. Is money going
to restore you to the position which you have lost through cowardice and
crime? You would not listen to your own countryman Sempronius when he
bade you seize your arms and follow him, you did listen shortly afterwards to
Hannibal when he bade you give up your arms and betray your camp. But
why do I only charge these men with cowardice when I can prove them
guilty of actual crime? For not only did they refuse to follow him when he
gave them good advice, but they tried to stop him and keep him back, until a
body of truly brave men drew their swords and drove back the cowards. P.
Sempronius had actually to force his way through his own countrymen
before he could do so through the enemy! Would our country care to have
such as these for her citizens when, had all those who fought at Cannae been
like them, she would not have had amongst them a single citizen worth the
name! Out of seven thousand men in arms there were six hundred who had
the courage to force their way, and returned to their country free men with
arms in their hands. The enemy did not stop these six hundred, how safe the
way would have been, do you not think? for a force of almost two legions.
You would have to-day, senators, at Canusium 20,000 brave loyal soldiers;
but as for these men, how can they possibly be good and loyal citizens? And
as to their being 'brave,' they do not even themselves assert that -unless,
indeed, some one chooses to imagine that whilst they were trying to stop the
others from making the sortie, they were really encouraging them, or that,
fully aware that their own timidity and cowardice was the cause of their
becoming slaves, they feel no grudge towards the others for having won
both safety and glory through their courage. Though they might have got
away in the dead of the night, they preferred to skulk in their tents and wait
for the daylight and with it the enemy. But you will say, if they lacked
courage to leave the camp they had courage enough to defend it bravely;
blockaded for several days and nights, they protected the rampart with their
arms, and themselves with the rampart; at last, after going to the utmost
lengths of endurance and daring, when every support of life failed, and they
were so weakened by starvation that they had not strength to bear the weight
of their arms, they were in the end conquered by the necessities of nature
more than by the force of arms. What are the facts? At daybreak the enemy
approached the rampart; within two hours, without trying their fortune in
any conflict, they gave up their arms and themselves. This, you see, was their
two days' soldiership. When duty called them to keep their line and fight they
fled to their camp, when they ought to have fought at the rampart they
surrendered their camp; they are useless alike in the field and in the camp.
Am I to ransom you? When you ought to have made your way out of the
camp you hesitated and remained there, when it was obligatory for you to
remain there and defend the camp with your arms you gave up camp, arms,
and yourselves to the enemy. No, senators, I do not think that those men
ought to be ransomed any more than I should think it right to surrender to
Hannibal the men who forced their way out of the camp through the midst of
the enemy and by that supreme act of courage restored themselves to their
fatherland."
