31.48
A
considerable number of the senators supported him in view of the great
services he had rendered, and also on personal grounds. The older members
were for refusing him a triumph, partly because the army which he had
employed had been assigned to another commander, and partly because in
his eagerness to snatch the chance of a triumph he had quitted his province,
an act contrary to all precedent. The consulars, in particular, insisted that he
ought to have waited for the consul, for he could then have fixed his camp
near the city and so have afforded sufficient protection to the colony to hold
the enemy in hand without fighting until the consul came. What he failed to
do, the senate ought to do, namely, wait for the consul; after hearing what
the consul and the praetor had to say, they would form a truer judgment
about the case. Many of those present urged that the senate ought not to
consider anything beyond the praetor's success and the question whether he
had achieved it as a magistrate with full powers and under his own auspices.
"Two colonies," it was argued, "had been planted as barriers to check risings
amongst the Gauls. One had been plundered and burnt, and the conflagration
was threatening the other colony which was so near it, like a fire running
from house to house. What was the praetor to do? If no action ought to have
been taken in the consul's absence, either the senate was at fault in furnishing
the praetor with an army -for as it had decided that the campaign should be
fought by the consul's army and not by the praetor's which was far away, so
it could have passed a special resolution to the effect that it should be fought
under the consul and not under the praetor -or else the consul was in the
wrong in not joining his army at Ariminum, after he had ordered it to move
from Etruria into Gaul, so that he might take his part in the war, which you
say ought not to have been undertaken without him. The critical moments in
war do not wait upon the procrastination and delays of commanders, and
you sometimes have to fight, not because you wish to do so, but because the
enemy compels you. We ought to keep in view the battle itself and its
consequences. The enemy were routed and cut to pieces; their camp taken
and plundered; one colony relieved from siege; those of the other colony
who had been made prisoners recovered and restored to their homes and
friends; the war was finished in a single battle. Not to men only was that
victory a cause of rejoicing; thanksgivings for three days ought to be offered
to the immortal gods because L. Furius had upheld the cause of the republic
well and happily, not because he had acted ill and rashly. War with the Gauls
was the destined prerogative of the house of the Furii."
