Summary of Book XXII
HANNIBAL, losing sleep continuously in the marshes,
went blind in one eye, and reached Etruria after marching
through the swamps for four days and three nights without repose. Gaius Flaminius the consul, a headstrong
man, set out, against the warning of the auspices, after
digging out the military standards which they had been
unable to pull up, and after the horse which he had
mounted had thrown him over its head; and, entrapped
by Hannibal in an ambush at Lake Thrasymennus, was
slain and his army cut to pieces. Six thousand men who
had broken through the enemy's lines were thrown into
chains through Hannibal's perfidy, notwithstanding the
pledge which Atherbal
1 had given them. While the Romans were mourning at the tidings which had come
of this calamity, two mothers died of joy on recovering
the sons whom they had given up for lost. Because of
this defeat a Sacred Spring was vowed, by the direction
of the Sibylline Books.
When, after that, Quintus Fabius Maximus, who had
been sent out as dictator to oppose Hannibal, was loath
to meet him in the open field, for he would not trust his
soldiers, who had been cowed by these defeats, in a
battle with an enemy emboldened by his victories;
and was satisfied merely to thwart the efforts of Hannibal, by blocking his way; Marcus Minucius, the master
of the horse, a rash and headstrong man, charging the
dictator with sluggishness and timidity persuaded the
people to decree that his own authority should be equal
to that of the dictator. But, the army being divided
between them, Minucius gave battle in an unfavourable
position, and his legions were in great peril, when Fabius
Maximus came up with his army and saved him. Won
over by this generosity, he joined his camp to that of
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Fabius, and, saluting him as his father, bade his army do
the same.
Hannibal, after laying waste Campania, was penned in
by Fabius between the town of Casilinum and Mount
Callicula. Binding twigs about the horns of oxen and
setting them on fire, he frightened off the detachment of
Romans stationed on Callicula, and so marched over the
pass. It was Hannibal, too, who spared the farm of
Quintus Fabius Maximus the dictator, when burning all
that country-side, in order to make him suspected of
being a traitor.
Aemilius Paulus and Terentius Varro then became
consuls and commanded the army which fought disastrously with Hannibal at Cannae. There were slain in that
battle forty-five thousand Romans, including the consul
Paulus, and ninety senators, and thirty others who had
been consuls or praetors or aediles. After that some
young nobles were plotting, in their despair, to abandon
Italy, when Publius Cornelius Scipio, a tribune of the
soldiers, who was later surnamed Africanus, held his drawn
sword over the heads of the conspirators and vowing that
he would treat as a public enemy whoever should not
swear at his dictation, compelled them all to bind themselves with an oath not to abandon Italy.
There were so few soldiers that they armed eight
thousand slaves. They were given an opportunity of
ransoming the prisoners, but did not ransom them.
The book also describes the panic and grief in the City,
and the operations, conducted more successfully, in Spain.
The Vestals Opimia and Florentia were convicted of
unchastity. The people went out to meet Varro, and
thanked him because he had not despaired of the
Republic.
