26.13
The
people went in a body to the senate house and insisted on Loesius
summoning the senate. They openly threatened the nobles who had so long
absented themselves from the senate, that they would go round to their
houses and drag them all by main force into the streets. These threats
resulted in a full meeting of the senate. The general opinion was in favour of
sending a deputation to the Roman commander, but Vibius Virrius, the
prime author of the revolt from Rome, when asked his opinion, told those
who were talking about a deputation and terms of peace and surrender that
they were forgetting what they would have done had they had the Romans in
their power, or what, as circumstances now were, they would have to suffer.
"Why! ," he exclaimed, "do you imagine that our surrender now will be like
the one we made in old days when, in order to get help against the Samnites,
we surrendered ourselves and all that belonged to us to Rome? Have you
already forgotten at what a critical moment for Rome we revolted from her?
How we put to death with every torture and indignity the garrison which we
could easily have sent away? What numerous and desperate sorties we have
made against our besiegers, how we have assaulted their lines and called
Hannibal in to crush them? Have you forgotten this last act of ours when we
sent him to attack Rome ?
"Now look at the other side, consider their determined hostility to
us and see if you have anything to hope for. Though there was a foreign
enemy on Italian soil, and that enemy Hannibal, though the flames of war
were being kindled in every quarter, they neglected everything, even
Hannibal himself, and sent both the consuls, each with an army, to Capua.
For two years now have they hemmed us in with their lines of
circumvallation, and are wearing us down with famine. They have endured as
much as we have in the extremity of peril, the utmost severity of toil; often
have they been slaughtered about their entrenchments, and all but driven out
of them. But I pass over these things; the labours and dangers of a siege are
an old and common experience. But to show their rage and implacable
hatred against us I will remind you of these incidents: Hannibal assaulted
their lines with an enormous force of infantry and cavalry, and partly
captured them, but they did not raise the siege; he crossed the Volturnus and
desolated the district of Calenum with fire; the sufferings of their allies failed
to call off the Romans; he ordered a general advance on Rome itself, they
disregarded the threatening storm; he crossed the Anio and encamped within
three miles of the City, and at last rode up to its walls and gates and made as
though he would take their city from them if they did not loose their hold on
Capua; they did not loose their hold. When wild beasts are mad with rage
you can still divert their blind fury by approaching their lairs and young ones
which they will hasten to defend. The Romans were not diverted from Capua
by the prospect of their city being besieged, or by the terrified cries of their
wives and children which could almost be heard here, or by the threatened
desecration of their hearths and altars, of the shrines of their gods and the
tombs of their ancestors. So eager are they to visit us with punishment, so
greedily do they thirst for our blood. And, perhaps, rightly; we should have
done the same had fortune favoured us.
"Heaven, however, has ordered otherwise, and so, though I am
bound to meet my death in any case, I can, whilst I am still free, escape the
insults and the tortures which the enemy is preparing for me, I can dispose of
myself by a death as peaceful as it is honourable. I refuse to look upon
Appius Claudius and Q. Fulvius exulting in all the insolence of victory; I
refuse to be dragged in chains through the streets of Rome to grace their
triumph, and then in the dungeon or bound to the stake, with my back torn
with the scourge, pass under the headsman's axe. I will not see my city
plundered and burnt, and the matrons and maidens and noble boys of Capua
ravished and outraged. Alba, the mother city of Rome, was rased by the
Romans to its foundations in order that no memorial of their origin and of
the stock whence they sprung might survive; much less can I believe that
they will spare Capua which they hate more bitterly than they hate Carthage.
So, for those of you who intend to meet your fate before you witness all
these horrors I have prepared a banquet today at my house. When you have
taken your fill of food and wine, the same goblet that is handed to me will be
passed round to you. That draught will free our bodies from torture, our
spirits from insult, our eyes and ears from seeing and hearing all the suffering
and outrage which await the vanquished. Men will be in readiness to place
our lifeless bodies on a vast pile which will be kindled in the court-yard of
the house. This is the only path to death which is honourable and worthy of
free men. Even the enemy will admire our courage, and Hannibal will know
that the allies whom he has abandoned and betrayed were, after all, brave
men."
