52.
After spending a good part of the day in gathering spoils, Hannibal proceeded to attack the smaller camp. The first thing that he did was to throw up an entrenchment which cut them off from the river.
[2]
But they were all so tired out from fighting and lack of sleep, as well as from wounds, that they surrendered even sooner than he had expected. The terms agreed upon were as follows: they were to give up their arms and horses; the ransom was fixed at three hundred chariot-pieces for every Roman, two hundred for every ally, and one hundred for every slave;
[3]
on the payment of this price they were to go free, with a single garment each.1
[4]
They then received their enemies into the camp and were all placed in custody, citizens being separated from allies. During the delay there, those in the larger camp who possessed sufficient strength and courage, amounting to four thousand foot and two hundred horse, had escaped, some in a body, others scattering —no less safely —over the country-side, and reached Canusium. The camp itself the wounded and timorous surrendered to the enemy on the same terms as the other.2
[5]
It yielded enormous spoils, and except for [p. 373]the horses and men and such silver as there was —3 which was mostly on the harness of the horses, for they then used very little plate, especially when in the field —the rest of the booty was all given up to pillage.
[6]
He then commanded the bodies of his dead to be brought into one place for burial. It is said that they numbered about eight thousand of his bravest men. Some historians state that the Roman consul, too, was sought out and given burial.4
[7]
Those who escaped to Canusium were aided by an Apulian woman of birth and fortune named Busa. The townspeople had merely afforded them the protection of the walls and shelter, but she provided them with corn, clothing, and money for the way, in return for which munificence she was afterwards, on the conclusion of the war, voted honours by the senate.5
1 The chariot-pieces were silver denarii stamped with a Jupiter in a four-horse chariot. This money was used not only by the Romans, who coined it, but by their allies, who had been denied the right to coin silver since 268 B.C. The ransom of the citizen would be roughly equivalent in weight of silver to $50 or £10.
2 Polybius (III. cxvii.) gives a very different story. According to him ten thousand Romans were left in camp when the battle was fought, with orders to attack the camp of Hannibal. Hannibal, however, had left a garrison in his own camp and they held the Romans at bay, till Hannibal, having now gained the battle, came up and rescued them, killing two thousand of the Romans and afterwards making the rest of them prisoners.
3 B.C. 216
4 For similar legends of Hannibal's generosity see XXV. xvii. 4, XXVII. xxviii. 1. and chap. vii. § 5 of this book.
5 Valerius Maximus (IV. viii. 2) says that the woman supplied about ten thousand Romans with food without wrecking her fortune. The name Busa is Oscan.
Livy. Boooks XXI-XXII With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1929: no copyright notice.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.