30.23
The
envoys were then ordered to withdraw and the senators were asked for their
opinions. M. Livius advised that as the consul C. Servilius was the nearest he
should be summoned to Rome in order that he might be present during the
debate. No more important subject could be discussed than the one before
them, and it did not seem to him compatible with the dignity of the Roman
people that the discussion should take place in the absence of both the
consuls. Q. Metellus, who had been consul three years previously and had
also been Dictator, gave it as his opinion that as P. Scipio, after destroying
their armies and devastating their land, had driven the enemy to the necessity
of suing for peace, there was no one in the world who could form a truer
judgment as to their real intention in opening negotiations than the man who
was at that moment carrying the war up to the gates of Carthage. In his
opinion they ought to take Scipio's advice and no other as to whether the
offer of peace ought to be accepted or rejected. M. Valerius Laevinus, who
had filled two consulships, declared that they had come as spies and not as
envoys, and he urged that they should be ordered to leave Italy and escorted
by a guard to their ships, and that written instructions should be sent to
Scipio not to relax hostilities. Laelius and Fulvius supported this proposal
and stated that Scipio thought that the only hope of peace lay in Mago and
Hannibal not being recalled, but the Carthaginians would adopt every
subterfuge whilst waiting for their generals and their armies, and would then
continue the war, ignoring treaties however recent, and in defiance of all the
gods. These statements led the senate to adopt Laevinus' proposal. The
envoys were dismissed with no prospect of peace and the curtest of replies.