23.10
The
following day there was a full meeting of the senate to hear Hannibal. At first
his tone was very gracious and winning; he thanked the Capuans for
preferring his friendship to alliance with Rome, and amongst other
magnificent promises he assured them that Capua would soon be the head of
all Italy and that Rome, in common with all the other nationalities, would
have to look to her for their laws. Then his tone changed. There was one
man, he thundered, who was outside the friendship of Carthage and the
treaty they had made with him, a man that was not, and ought not to be
called a Campanian -Decius Magius. He demanded his surrender and asked
that this matter should be discussed and a decision arrived at before he left
the House. They all voted for surrendering the man, though a great many
thought that he did not deserve such a cruel fate and felt that a long step had
been taken in the abridgment of their rights and liberties. On leaving the
Senate-house Hannibal took his seat on the magistrates' tribunal and ordered
Decius Magius to be arrested, brought before him, and put on his defence,
alone and unbefriended. The high spirit of the man was still unquelled, he
said that by the terms of the treaty this could not be insisted on, but he was
at once placed in irons and ordered to be conducted to the camp, followed
by a lictor. As long as his head was uncovered he was incessantly haranguing
and shouting to the crowds round him: "You have got the liberty, you
Campanians, that you asked for. In the middle of the Forum, in the broad
daylight, with you looking on, I a man second to none in Capua am being
hurried off in chains to death. Could any greater outrage have been
committed if the city had been taken? Go and meet Hannibal, decorate your
city, make the day of his arrival a public holiday that you may enjoy the
spectacle of this triumph over a fellow-citizen! As the mob appeared to be
moved by these outbursts, his head was muffled up and orders were given to
hurry him more quickly outside the city gate. In this way he was brought into
the camp and then at once put on board a ship and sent to Carthage.
Hannibal's fear was that if any disturbance broke out in Capua in
consequence of such scandalous treatment the senate might repent of having
surrendered their foremost citizen, and if they sent to ask for his restoration
he would either offend his new allies by refusing the first request they made,
or, if he granted it, would have in Capua a fomenter of disorder and sedition.
The vessel was driven by a storm to Cyrenae which was then under a
monarchy. Here Magius fled for sanctuary to the statue of King Ptolemy,
and his guards conveyed him to the King of Alexandria. After he had told
him how he had been thrown into chains by Hannibal in defiance of all treaty
rights, he was liberated from his fetters and permission accorded to him to
go to Rome or Capua, whichever he preferred. Magius said that he would
not be safe at Capua, and as there was at that time war between Rome and
Capua, he would be living in Rome more like a deserter than a guest. There
was no place where he would sooner live than under the rule of the man
whom he had known as the champion and asserter of his freedom.
