When Audacity is the Truest Safety
Much the same remark applies to Hannibal. For who
can refrain from regarding with respect and admiration a
general capable of doing what he did? First he attempted by
harassing the enemy with skirmishing attacks to raise the siege:
having failed in this he made direct for
Rome itself: baffled
once more by a turn of fortune entirely independent of human
calculation, he kept his pursuers in play,
1 and waited till the
moment was ripe to see whether the besiegers of
Capua
stirred: and finally, without relaxing in his determination, swept
down upon his enemies to their destruction, and all but
depopulated
Rhegium. One would be inclined however to
judge the Romans to be superior to the Lacedaemonians at this
crisis. For the Lacedaemonians rushed off en masse at the
first message and relieved
Sparta, but, as far as they were
concerned, lost
Mantinea. The Romans guarded their own
city without breaking up the siege of
Capua: on the contrary,
they remained unshaken and firm in their purpose, and in fact
from that time pressed the Capuans with renewed spirit.
I have not said this for the sake of making a panegyric on
either the Romans or Carthaginians, whose great qualities I
have already remarked upon more than once: but for the sake
of those who are in office among the one or the other people, or
who are in future times to direct the affairs of any state whatever; that by the memory, or actual contemplation, of exploits
such as these they may be inspired with emulation. For in an
adventurous and hazardous policy it often turns out that
audacity was the truest safety and the finest sagacity;
2 and
success or failure does not affect the credit and excellence of
the original design, so long as the measures taken are the result
of deliberate thought. . . .
When the Romans were besieging
Tarentum, Bomilcar the
The Carthaginian fleet invited from Sicily
to relieve Tarentum does more harm than good, and departs to the joy of the people, B. C. 211. Livy, 26, 20. |
admiral of the Carthaginian fleet came to its
relief with a very large force; and being unable
to afford efficient aid to those in the town,
owing to the strict blockade maintained by the
Romans, without meaning to do so he used up
more than he brought; and so after having
been constrained by entreaties and large
promises to come, he was afterwards forced at
the earnest supplication of the people to depart. . . .
