40.27
As
there were no signs of assistance coming anywhere, Aemilius supposed that
his mounted messengers had been intercepted, and felt that he ought not any
longer to delay trying what Fortune had in store for him single-handed. The
enemy's attacks showed less spirit and force, and before their next assault he
drew up his army at the four gates in order that on the signal being given
they might make a simultaneous sortie on all sides. To the four praetorian
cohorts he added two others with M. Valerius, one of his staff officers, in
command, and gave them orders to sally from the praetorian gate. At the
southern gate he posted the hastati of the first legion; the principes of this
legion being in reserve. M. Servilius and L. Sulpicius, both military tribunes,
were in command of these. The third legion was similarly drawn up at the
north gate, with this difference that the principes formed the front, the hastati
the reserve. The military tribunes Sextius Julius Caesar and L. Aurelius Cotta
were in command of this legion. Q. Fulvius Flaccus, a staff officer, was
posted with the right division of allied troops at the quaestorian gate. Two
cohorts and the triarii of the two legions were ordered to remain and guard
the camp. The general visited all the gates to harangue his men and whet
their rage against the enemy by everything that could exasperate them. He
spoke bitterly of the treachery of the enemy who, after suing for peace and
being allowed a suspension of arms, had come to attack the camp while the
armistice was actually in force, in violation of all international law. He
pointed out what a disgrace it was for a Roman army to be hemmed in by
Ligurians, who could be more truly described as a horde of robbers than as a
regular enemy. "If," he continued, "you get out of this with the help of
others, and not by your own courage, with what face will any of you meet -I
do not say the soldiers who defeated Hannibal, Philip or Antiochus, the
greatest generals and monarchs of our time, but -those who have so often
pursued and cut to pieces these very Ligurians as they fled like frightened
cattle through their pathless forests? What the Spaniards, the Gauls, the
Macedonians, the Carthaginians did not dare to do, this the Ligurian is doing
today; he comes up to the Roman rampart and actually surrounds and
attacks our camp. And yet, formerly, it was hard to discover him after a
close search as he lurked in his trackless hiding-places!" His words were met
by a unanimous shout of approval from the soldiers. It was no fault of theirs,
they said; no one had given the signal for a sortie; let him give the signal
now, he would soon learn that the Romans and the Ligurians were the same
that they had always been.
