26.2
.At the
beginning of the year a despatch from L. Marcius was laid before the senate.
The senators fully appreciated the successful way in which he had conducted
his operations, but a good many of them were indignant at the honorific title
he had assumed. The superscription of the letter was "The propraetor to the
senate," though the imperium had not been conferred upon him by an order
of the people nor with the sanction of the senate. An evil precedent had been
set, they said, when a commander was chosen by his army, and the solemn
procedure at elections, after the auspices were duly taken, was transferred to
camps and provinces far away from the magistrates and the laws, and left to
the caprice of the soldiers. Some thought the senate ought to take the matter
up, but it was thought better to adjourn the consideration of it until the
horsemen who had brought the despatch had left the City. With regard to the
food and clothing of the army, they ordered a reply to be sent to the effect
that both these matters would be attended to by the senate. They refused,
however, to allow the despatch to be addressed "To the propraetor L.
Marcius," lest it should appear that the question which was to be discussed
had been prejudged. After the messengers had been dismissed the consuls
gave this question priority over everything else, and it was unanimously
agreed that the tribunes should consult the plebs as soon as possible as to
whom they wished to have sent to Spain with the imperium as
commander-in-chief to take over the army which Cn. Scipio had
commanded. The tribunes undertook to do so, and due notice of the
question was given to the Assembly. But the citizens were preoccupied with
a controversy of a very different nature. C. Sempronius Blaesus had fixed a
day for bringing Cn. Fulvius to trial for losing his army in Apulia, and made a
very bitter attack upon him beforehand in the Assembly. "Many
commanders," he said, "have through rashness and inexperience led their
armies into most dangerous positions, but Cn. Fulvius is the only one who
has demoralised his army by every form of vice before betraying them. They
may with perfect truth be said to have been destroyed before they saw the
enemy; they owed their defeat to their own commander, not to Hannibal.
"Now no man, when he is going to vote, takes sufficient trouble to
find out what sort of a man it is to whom he is entrusting the supreme
command of the army. Think of the difference between Tiberius Sempronius
and Cn. Fulvius. Tiberius Sempronius had an army of slaves given to him,
but in a short time, thanks to the discipline he maintained and the wise use he
made of his authority, there was not a man amongst them who when he was
in the field of battle gave a thought to his birth or his condition. Those men
were a protection to our allies and a terror to our enemies. They snatched, as
though from the very jaws of Hannibal, cities like Cumae and Beneventum
and restored them to Rome. Cn. Fulvius, on the other hand, had an army of
Roman citizens, born of respectable parents, brought up as free men, and he
infected them with the vices of slaves, and made them such that they were
insolent and riotous amongst our allies, weaklings and cowards in face of the
enemy; they could not stand even the war-cry of the Carthaginians, let alone
their charge. Good heavens! no wonder the soldiers gave ground, when their
commander was the first to run away; the wonder is that any stood their
ground and fell, and that all did not accompany Cn. Fulvius in his panic and
flight. C. Flaminius, L. Paulus, L. Postumius, and the two Scipios, Cnaeus
and Publius, all chose to fall in battle rather than desert their armies, when
they were hemmed in by the foe. Cn. Fulvius came back to Rome as the
all-but solitary herald of the annihilation of his army. After the army had fled
from the field of Cannae it was deported to Sicily, not to return till the
enemy had evacuated Italy, and a similar decree was recently passed in the
case of Fulvius' legions. But, shame to relate, the commander himself
remained unpunished after his flight from a battle brought on by his own
headstrong folly; he is free to pass the rest of his life where he passed it in
youth -in stews and brothels -whilst his soldiers, whose only fault is that
they copied their commander, are practically sent into exile and have to
undergo a service of disgrace. So unequal are the liberties enjoyed in Rome
by the rich and the poor, the men of rank and the men of the people."