Summary of Book XXVI
Hannibal pitched his camp on the bank of the Anio at
the third milestone from the city of Rome. In person
with two thousand horsemen he rode up even to the Porta
Capena,
1 to examine the lie of the city. And when for three days the entire army on each side had gone out into
battle-line, a storm broke off the combat; for when they
had returned to camp, at once there was a clear sky.
Capua was taken by Quintus Fulvius and Appius Claudius,
the consuls. The leading men of the Capuans took their
own lives by poison. When the senators of Capua had
been bound to stakes, to be beheaded, Quintus Fulvius,
the consul, on receiving a letter from the senate in which
he was bidden to spare them, put the letter in his bosom
before reading it and ordered that the law be complied
with, and carried out the penalty. When at the comitia
in the presence of the people the question was raised, to
whom should the command of the Spanish provinces be
entrusted, and no one was willing to undertake it,
Publius Scipio, son of that Publius who had fallen in
Spain, declared that he would go; and having been sent
by vote of the people and by general agreement, he
stormed New Carthage, being twenty-four years old and
seeming to have sprung from a divine race, because he
was himself daily on the Capitol, from the time he had
assumed the toga, and because in his mother's chamber a
serpent used often to be seen. In addition this book
contains events in Sicily and the establishment of friendship with the Aetolians and the war waged against the
Acarnanians and Philip, King of Macedonia.
