21.13
"If
your fellow-townsman, Alco, had shown the same courage in bringing back
to you the terms on which Hannibal will grant peace that he showed in going
to Hannibal to beg for peace, this journey of mine would have been
unnecessary. I have not come to you either as an advocate for Hannibal or as
a deserter. But as he has remained with the enemy either through your fault
or his own -his own if his fears were only feigned, yours if those who report
what is true have to answer for their lives -I have come to you out of regard
to the old ties of hospitality which have so long subsisted between us, that
you may not be left in ignorance of the fact that there do exist terms on
which you can secure peace and the safety of your lives. Now, that it is for
your sake alone and not on behalf of any one else that I say what I am saying
before you is proved by the fact that as long as you had the strength to
maintain a successful resistance, and as long as you had any hopes of help
from Rome, I never breathed a word about making peace. But now that you
have no longer anything to hope for from Rome, now that neither your arms
nor your walls suffice to protect you, I bring you a peace forced upon you by
necessity rather than recommended by the fairness of its conditions. But the
hopes, faint as they are, of peace rest upon your accepting as conquered men
the terms which Hannibal as conqueror imposes and not looking upon what
is taken from you as a positive loss, since everything is at the victor's mercy,
but regarding what is left to you as a free gift from him. The city, most of
which he has laid in ruins, the whole of which he has all but captured, he
takes from you; your fields and lands he leaves you; and he will assign you a
site where you can build a new town. He orders all the gold and silver, both
that belonging to the State and that owned by private individuals, to be
brought to him; your persons and those of your wives and children he
preserves inviolate on condition that you consent to leave Saguntum with
only two garments apiece and without arms. These are the demands of your
victorious enemy, and heavy and bitter as they are, your miserable plight
urges you to accept them. I am not without hope that when everything has
passed into his power he will relax some of these conditions, but I consider
that even as they are you ought to submit to them rather than permit
yourselves to be butchered and your wives and children seized and carried
off before your eyes."
