Africa and the Making of Classical Literature Term 1 Week 7 Lecture 7 Sallust’s Jugurtha and Livy’s Hannibal
1. Gaius Sallustius Crispus – Life and Works
86 BCE Sallust is born in Amiternum (50 miles northeast of Rome) from a plebeian family linked to the municipal nobilitas. 52 He is tribune of the plebs (must have been quaestor beforehand, probably in 55 under Pompey and Crassus). This is the year of the murder of P. Clodius, murdered on 18 January 52 by the gang of T. Annius Milo (supported by the conservative Optimates). In this period, Sallust appears allied with T. Munatius Plancus Bursa and Q. Pompeius Rufus, who incited the people to hostility against Milo and Cicero; but while Plancus and Pompeius Rufus were brought to trial in 51, Sallust escaped unscathed. 51 Sallust is senator. 50 Sallust is expelled from the senate by the censor Appius Claudius (mihi multa aduorsa fuere, BC 3.3), of Pompeian cause. Allegedly he was expelled for ‘moral turpitude’ (one story records an affair with Milo’s wife Fausta), but more plausibly for political reasons. 49 Sallust joins Caesar and commands one of his legions in Illyricum. He is outmaneuvered by Pompey’s generals and fails to relieve C. Antonius, Caesar’s legate, trapped on the island of Curicta. 47 Sallust is praetor-elect. He is sent to quell a mutiny that broke out in Caesar’s legions in Campania but he barely escapes from the soldiers and Caesar is forced to intervene. 46 Sallust is praetor. He secures supplies to Caesar’s troops from the island of Cercina. He is at the battle of Thapsus and is rewarded by being made governor of the new province of Africa Nova, created by Caesar out of part of the former Numidian kingdom of Juba. In the 18 months of his mandate, according to Dio, Sallust plunders the province. 45 On his return to Rome, Sallust is accused of extortion (de repetundis). 44 After the Ides of March, Sallust probably spent a life of leisure between his villa in Tivoli and the horti Sallustiani - he can dedicate himself to historical writings: - Bellum Catilinae - Bellum Jugurthinum - Historiae (in 5 books, from 78 to 67, plausibly left unfinished) - We also have four speeches and two letters - The two Epistulae ad Caesarem appear to be the product of the imperial schools of rhetoric 35-34 Death of Sallust.
2. Bellum Jugurthinum
Sallust BJ 5 When Hannibal… had dealt Italy’s power the greatest blow since the name of Rome acquired greatness, Masinissa, king of Numidia, after being recognized a friend of Publius Scipio (later named Africanus), performed many illustrious deeds of war. After the defeat of the Carthaginians and the capture of Syphax [Numidian chieftain who revolted from the Carthaginians and struck an alliance with the Scipios in Spain but then changed sides and was defeated and captured by the Romans with the aid of Masinissa], whose dominion in Africa was great and extensive, the Romans made Masinissa a gift of whatever cities and territories had been taken in the conflict…. [Masinissa died at the age of ninety or more in 148 BCE.] His son Micipsa then held his kingdom all by himself, his brothers Mastanabal and Gulussa having died. Micipsa sired Adherbal and Hiempsal, and brought up in the palace, in the same manner as his own children, a son of his brother Mastanabal called Jugurtha, whom Masinissa in his will had allowed to remain a commoner because https://0-www-loebclassics-com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/view/sallust-war_jugurtha/2013/pb_LCL1 he was the child of a concubine. 08/1 1/2018
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Bellum Jugurthinum
1-4 Introduction 5-16 Events leading up to the war • (134 BCE) Jugurtha distinguishes himself in the Numantine War (north-east Spain, ended in 133 BCE after an 8-month siege conducted by the younger Scipio) and Scipio recommends him to Micipsa; • Micipsa adopts Jugurtha and names him joint heir with his two sons, Adherbal and Hiempsal; Micipsa dies in 118 BCE. • Hiempsal offends Jugurtha, and Jugurtha has him killed. • Adherbal dispatches envoys to Rome but Jugurtha has bribed many senators, and the senate decides not to punish the murder, but to divide the kingdom between Jugurtha and Adherbal; Jugurtha received the region bordering on Mauritania, richer in territory and population, Adherbal takes possession on the eastern region, with more harbours and more buildings.
17-19 Excursus on Numidia (in the seminar in Week 8)
20-27 from the division of Numidia (116 BCE) to the massacre at Cirta (112 BCE) • Jugurtha invades Adherbal’s territory, puts Cirta under siege; Adherbal surrenders; Jugurtha first tortures Adherbal to death and then makes an indiscriminate massacre of all adult Numidians [but did this really happen?]
28-39 Phase I of the War (Lucius Calpurnius Bestia and Spurius Albinus) • 111 BCE the consul Lucius Calpurnius Bestia is allotted the province of Numidia but Jugurtha bribes him and his men. • The tribune Gaius Memmius at Rome urges the people against the corrupted nobility; he asks to have Jugurtha brought to Rome and have him testify against the corruption of the nobles. • Jugurtha in Rome, but he bribes a tribune, who orders him to remain silent. • Massiva, son of Gulussa, exile in Rome asks for the throne of Numidia but Jugurtha has him killed by his attendant Bomilcar; Jugurtha goes back to Africa. • 110 BCE The consul Spurius Albinus conducts unsuccessful war in Numidia but he has to return to Rome and leaves the war in the hands of his brother Aulus. • Aulus marches to Suthul and besieges it but Jugurtha through bribes induces him and his men to leave Numidia.
40-41-42 Digression on factionalism at Rome (read chapter 41)
43-78 Phase II of the War, 109-107 BCE (Q. Caecilius Metellus as consul, Gaius Marius as deputy commander)
• Metellus restores discipline in the army and campaigns against Jugurtha; • Read chapter 44 on the debauchery of the Roman army. • Read chapter 46 on Metellus’ Jugurthine tactics. • Metellus stations a garrison at Vaga. • Battle at the river Muthul, the Romans win. • Metellus’ abortive siege of Zama. • Metellus bribes Bomilcar, who steers Jugurtha to surrender. Jugurtha surrenders but then resumes war. • Gaius Marius asks Metellus for a discharge in order to seek office but Metellus disencourages him; rift between them. Marius approaches Gauda, son of Mastanabal (made king of Numidia in 105 BCE after Jugurtha’s capture) and asks him to help him take revenge on Metellus but spreading bad rumours in Rome. • Jugurtha reconquers Vaga but then loses it again. • Bomilcar’s plot against Jugurtha is discovered. Bomilcar and others are put to death but Jugurtha now lives in perpetual paranoia; he stations at Thala. • Metellus captures Thala; envoys come from Leptis Magna to ask Metellus for help.
78-79 excursus on Leptis Magna and the Philaeni Brothers (seminar in Week 8)
80 Jugurtha goes to the Gaetulians and to King Bocchus of Mauritania (description of the Gaetulians and Mauri) 81 Jugurtha’s speech to Bocchus on the Romans.
82-87 Jugurtha and Bocchus draw near to Cirta; Metellus tries to negotiate with Bocchus; meantime, Marius is elected consul for 107 BCE.
87-114 Phase III of the War (Gaius Marius) • First campaign of the War (107 BCE); Jugurtha and Bocchus both withdraw to different places of difficult access. • Marius wants to capture Capsa like Metellus captured Thala.
• 89-91 Capture and destruction of Capsa • Second campaign of Marius (106 BCE); arrival of Lucius Sulla. • Battles with Jugurtha and Bocchus • 101 Description of Jugurtha in battle. • Negotiations start between Sulla and Bocchus • 108 Sallust comments on Bocchus’ ‘Punic faith’ • Bocchus is finally persuaded to betray Jugurtha • 113-114 Jugurtha is captured (105 BCE); shortly earlier, Quintus Caepio and Gnaeus Mallius had fought an unsuccessful engagement against the Gauls in the battle of Arausio. ‘As a result, all Italy trembled in dread’. Marius is assigned to Gaul and celebrates the triumph against Jugurtha. Et in ea tempestate spes atque opes ciuitatis in illo sitae.
3. What is the BJ about, really?
BJ 5 Bellum scripturus sum quod populus Romanus cum Iugurtha rege Numidarum gessit, primum quia magnum et atrox variaque victoria fuit, dehinc quia tunc primum superbiae nobilitatis obviam itum est. Quae contentio divina et humana cuncta permiscuit eoque vecordiae processit ut studiis civilibus bellum atque vastitas Italiae finem faceret.
I am going to write an account of the war which the Roman people waged with Jugurtha, king of the Numidians: first of all, because it was a great and terrible conflict of varying fortune; secondly, because then for the first time opposition was offered to the insolence of the nobles. That struggle threw everything, human and divine, into confusion, and progressed to such a pitch of frenzy that finally war and the desolation of Italy put an end to civil contentions.
BJ 8 Ea tempestate in exercitu nostro fuere complures novi atque nobiles quibus divitiae bono honestoque potiores erant, factiosi domi, potentes apud socios, clari magis quam honesti, qui Iugurthae non mediocrem animum pollicitando adcendebant, si Micipsa rex occidisset, fore uti solus imperi Numidiae potiretur: in ipso maxumam virtutem, Romae omnia venalia esse.
At that time there were a great many in our army, both “new men” and nobles, who cared more for riches than for virtue and integrity; they were intriguers at home, influential with our allies, notorious rather than respected. These men fired Jugurtha’s not humble spirit by promising that if King Micipsa died, he would gain the sole power in Numidia, thinking that he possessed the greatest prowess, while at Rome everything was for sale.
• BJ 20 He felt convinced of the truth of what he had heard from his friends at Numantia, that at Rome everything was for sale (omnia Romae uenalia esse) • BJ 32 Some were induced by bribes to return to Jugurtha his elephants; others sold him deserters; others took plunder from pacified districts: greed of such intensity had attacked their minds like a disease (tanta uis auaritiae in animos eorum ueluti tabes inuaserat). • BJ 35 After he had gone forth from Rome, it is said that he often looked back at it in silence and finally said: ‘A city for sale and soon to perish, if it finds a buyer!’ (urbem uenalem et mature perituram, si emptorem inuenerit!) • BJ 44 When Metellus reached Africa, the proconsul Spurius Albinus handed over to him an army that was idle, unfit for war, and incapable of facing either danger or hardship, readier of tongue than of hand, a plunderer of our allies and itself a prey to the enemy, maintained without discipline and restraint’ (exercitus... iners, inbellis, neque periculi neque laboris patiens, lingua quam manu promptior, praedator ex sociis et ipse praeda hostium, sine imperio et modestia habitus)
4. Rome’s need of Jugurtha: Metus Hostilis
BJ 41 Nam ante Carthaginem deletam populus et senatus Romanus placide modesteque inter se rem publicam tractabant, neque gloriae neque dominationis certamen inter ciuis erat; metus hostilis in bonis artibus ciuitatem retinebat. Sed ubi illa formido mentibus decessit, scilicet ea quae res secundae amant, lasciuia atque superbia incessere. Ita quod in aduorsis rebus optauerant otium postquam adepti sunt, asperius acerbiusque fuit. Namque coepere nobilitas dignitatem, populus libertatem in lubidinem uortere, sibi quisque ducere, trahere, rapere. Ita omnia in duas partis abstracta sunt, res publica, quae media fuerat, dilacerata.
“For before the destruction of Carthage the people and senate of Rome together governed the republic peacefully and with moderation. There was no strife among the citizens either for glory or for power; fear of the enemy preserved the good morals of the state. But when the minds of the people were relieved of that dread, wantonness and arrogance naturally arose, vices which are fostered by prosperity. Thus the peace for which they had longed in time of adversity, after they had gained it proved to be more cruel and bitter than adversity itself. For the nobles began to abuse their position and the people their liberty, and every man for himself robbed, pillaged, and plundered. Thus the community was split in two parties, and between these the state was torn to pieces.”
à ‘Sallust’s Theorem’, ‘Negative Association’:
• Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right 324, addendum “Perpetual peace is often demanded as an ideal to which mankind should approximate. Thus, Kant proposed a league of sovereigns to settle disputes between states, and the Holy Alliance was meant to be an institution more or less of this kind. But the state is an individual, and negation is an essential component of individuality. Thus, even if a number of states join together as a family, this league, in its individuality, must generate opposition and create an enemy. Not only do peoples emerge from wars with added strength, but nations troubled by civil dissension gain internal peace as a result of wars with their external enemies.” • Carl Schmitt The Concept of the Political 1996: 28 “The enemy is not merely any competitor or just any partner of a conflict in general. He is also not the private adversary whom one hates. An enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such a relationship. The enemy is hostis, not inimicus in the broader sense; polemios, not echthros.” • Hannibal to his men, Livy 30.44.8 ‘No great state can long be in peace. If it lacks an enemy abroad it finds one at home, just as powerful bodies seem protected against infection from without, but are of themselves weighed down by their very strength’ (nulla magna ciuitas diu quiescere potest. si foris hostem non habet, domi inuenit, ut praeualida corpora ab externis causis tuta uidentur sed suis ipsa uiribus onerantur.)
5. Sallust’s Numidians – a foil for the Romans? (to be continued in Seminar 8)
Punica Fides… but for everyone • BJ 11 Although Jugurtha knew that the king [Micipsa] had spoken insincerely, and though he himself had far different designs in his heart (tametsi regem ficta locutum intellegebat et ipse longe aliter animo agitabat), yet he returned a gracious answer. • BJ 46 [Jugurtha wants to surrender and sends envoys to Metellus asking him to spare his life and that of his children’s] But Metellus had already learned from experience that the Numidians were a treacherous race, of fickle disposition, and eager to revolt (genus Numidarum infidum, ingenio mobili, nouarum rerum auidum)…. [so he tries to convince the envoys to turn against Jugurtha] still, publicly he ordered a reply to be made to the king that be to his liking. [A few days later he enters Numidia with the army]… but in place of an overt appearance of war he finds native huts full of men, cattle and farmers in the fields... yet he believed that those indications of submissions were a pretence and that a
favourable place for an ambush was investigated… in Jugurtha there was such craftiness (tantus dolus), such knowledge of the locale and of soldiering, that it was not certain whether he was more destructive when absent or when present, when offering peace or war (ut absens an praesens, pacem an bellum gerens perniciosior esset, in incerto haberetur). • BJ 48 When Jugurtha compared Metellus’ words with his actions and realised that he was being assailed by his own tactics (Iugurtha ubi Metelli dicta cum factis conposuit ac se suis artibus temptari animadvortit)… • BJ 52 Thus did two commanders, two great men, struggle with each other, equals as individuals but with unequal resources. (eo modo inter se duo imperatores, summi uiri, certabant, ipsi pares, ceterum opibus disparibus) NB these are Jugurtha and Metellus, but there are a number of similarities also between Jugurtha and Marius • BJ 81 [Jugurtha to Bocchus] the Romans, he said, were unjust, of boundless greed, and the common foes of all mankind (Romanos iniustos, profunda auaritia, communis omnium hostis esse); they, to whom all monarchies are adversaries, had the same motive for war with Bocchus as with himself and other nations, namely, the lust for dominion (lubidinem imperitandi). • BJ 108 I find that it was more with Punic faith (Punica fide) than for the reasons he made public that Bocchus kept both the Roman and the Numidian on tenterhooks with the hope of peace, and that he was in the habit of pondering deeply whether to betray Jugurtha to the Romans or Sulla to Jugurtha.
6. Titus Livius – Life and Works
?59BCE Born in Patavium (modern Padova, Padua) On good terms with Augustus despite Augustus calling him Pompeianus; he is said to have encouraged the future emperor Claudius to study history. Writes a 142-volume history of Rome from its foundation (Ab Urbe Condita) to his own time; the surviving books are 1-10 (the First Decade), 21-45 (the whole of the third decade and most of the fourth; sections of books 41, 43, 44 and 45 are lost). We have brief summaries, Periochae, of the lost books. The whole of the Third decade narrates the Second Punic War. ?17CE Died.
7. Livy 21.1-38 The siege of Saguntum and the Crossing of the Alps
1 Introduction to the topic (cf. Jugurtha) ‘… the war which I am going to describe was the most memorable of all wars ever waged… so variable were the fortunes of the war and so uncertain was its outcome that those who ultimately conquered had been nearer ruin. The animosity, too, with which they fought was almost greater than their strength: the Romans were enraged that the conquered should be actually drawing sword upon their conquerors; the Phoenicians, because they believed that the conquered had been treated with domineering arrogance and greed. (Poenis quod superbe auareque crederent imperitatum uictis esse)
Hannibal’s oath as a boy ‘it is said that… when Hannibal, then about nine years old, was childishly teasing his father Hamilcar to take him with him into Spain, his father, who had finished the African war and was sacrificing, before crossing over with his army, led the boy up to the altar and made him touch the offerings and bind himself with an oath that so soon as he should be able he would be the declared enemy of the Roman People (altaribus admotum tactis sacris iure iurando adactum se cum primum posset hostem fore populo Romano.). The loss of Sicily and Sardinia was a continual torture to the proud spirit of Hamilcar. For he maintained that they had surrendered Sicily1 in premature despair, and that the Romans had wrongfully appropriated Sardinia—and even imposed an indemnity on them besides—in the midst of their African disturbances.
2-4 Hannibal’s rise to power (read for Seminar in Week 8)
5-6 Hannibal decides to wage war on Saguntum (in Spain), with the intention to wage war against Rome (but the whole story seems to have been a Roman fabrication, since Saguntum was on the Carthaginian side of the Ebro; Livy also appears to twist the chronology from 219 BCE to 218 BCE in order to make it appear as if the Romans didn’t have time to help the Saguntines; see Giusti 2018 Carthage in Virgil’s Aeneid Ch. 3)
7-15 The siege of Saguntum
16-20 Rome prepares for war; they send ambassadors to Carthage and war is decreed; they then go to Spain and Gaul, trying to persuade the people to stop Hannibal’s march. 21-22 Hannibal sets the winter quarters in Carthago Nova; he consults the oracle of Heracles in Gades and has a dream: ‘he saw in his sleep a youth of godlike aspect, who declared that he was sent by Jupiter to lead him into Italy: let him follow, therefore, nor anywhere turn his eyes away from his guide. At first he was afraid and followed, neither looking to the right nor to the left, nor yet behind him; but presently wondering, with that curiosity to which all of us are prone, what it could be that he had been forbidden to look back upon, he was unable to command his eyes; then he saw behind him a serpent of monstrous size, that moved along with vast destruction of trees and underbrush, and a storm-cloud coming after, with loud claps of thunder; and, on his asking what this prodigious portent was, he was told that it was the devastation of Italy: he was therefore to go on, nor enquire further, but suffer destiny to be wrapped in darkness.’
23 Hannibal crosses the Ebro
24 Hannibal crosses the Pyrenees
25 the Gauls revolt against the Romans
26 Hannibal prepares to cross the Rhone
27 Crossing of the Rhone
28 Carthaginians scatter the Gauls; speculations on how the elephants crossed the Rhone
29 Skirmish with the Romans
30 Hannibal exhorts his soldiers:
‘He marvelled, he said, what sudden terror had inaded breasts that had ever been dauntless. For these many years they had been victorious in war, nor had they quitted Spain until all the tribes and territories which lay between two distant seas were in the power of the Carthaginians. Then, indignant that the Roman People should demand that whoever had laid siege to Saguntum be surrendered up to them, as though to expiate a felony, they had crossed the Ebro, in order to wipe out the Roman name and liberate the world (ad delendum nomen Romanorum liberandumque orbem terrarum). The march had not then seemed long to any of them, though they meant to advance from the setting to the rising sun; but now, when they could see that they had measured off the greater part of it; when they had made their way, through the fiercest tribes, over the Pyrenees; when they had crossed the Rhone—that mighty river—in the teeth of so many thousand Gauls, overcoming, too, the violence of the stream itself; when the Alps, the other side of which was in Italy, were in full sight;—were they halting now, as though exhausted, at the very gates of their enemies? (in ipsis portis hostium fatigatos subsistere) What else did they think that the Alps were but high mountains? (quid Alpes aliud esse credentes quam montium altitudine?) They might fancy them higher than the ranges of the Pyrenees; but surely no lands touched the skies or were impassable to man. The Alps indeed were inhabited, were tilled, produced and supported living beings; their defiles were practicable for armies. Those very ambassadors whom they beheld had not crossed the Alps in the air on wings. Even the ancestors of these men had not been natives of Italy, but had lived there as foreign settlers, and had often crossed these very Alps in great companies, with their children and their wives, in the manner of emigrants For armed soldiers, taking nothing with them but the instruments of war, what could be impassable or insurmountable? To capture Saguntum, what dangers or what hardships had they not endured for eight long months? Now that Rome, the capital of the world (caput orbis terrarum), was their objective, could anything seem so painful or so difficult as to delay their enterprise? Had Gauls once captured that which the Phoenician despaired of approaching? Then let them yield in spirit and manhood to a race which they had so often vanquished in the course of the last few days, or look to end their march in the field that lay between the Tiber and the walls of Rome.
31 Hannibal’s army comes to the river Druentia
32 Fear of the Alps: ‘Then, though report, which is wont to exaggerate uncertain dangers, had already taught them what to expect, still, the near view of the lofty mountains, with their snows almost merging in the sky; the shapeless hovels perched on crags; the frost-bitten flocks and beasts of burden; the shaggy, unkempt men; animals and inanimate objects alike stiff with cold, and all more dreadful to look upon than words can tell, renewed their consternation.’ (tecta informia imposita rupibus, pecora iumentaque torrida frigore, homines intonsi et inculti, animalia inanimaque omnia rigentia gelu, cetera visu quam dictu foediora, terrorem renovarunt.)
33 skirmish with the natives
34 ‘Punica fides’ in the natives: ‘They came next to another canton, thickly settled for a mountain district. There, not by open fighting, but by his own devices, trickery and deception, Hannibal was all but circumvented.’ [NB in these chapters the natives are always called barbari, as is a non Carthaginian who kills Hasdrubal in chapter 2; the Carthaginians are never called ‘barbarians’ by Livy]
35 Hannibal arrives at the summit of the Alps: ‘then Hannibal, who had gone on before the standards, made the army halt on a certain promontory which commanded an extensive prospect, and pointing out Italy to them, and just under the Alps the plains about the Po, he told them that they were now scaling the ramparts not only of Italy, but of Rome itself; the rest of the way would be level or downhill (cetera plana, procliuia fore); and after one, or, at the most, two battles, they would have in their hands and in their power the citadel and capital of Italy.’
36-38 Hannibal crosses the Alps
8. 21.39-44 Hannibal and Scipio (father of Africanus) before the battle of Ticinus
à Just like Jugurtha and Metellus, and Jugurtha and Marius, Hannibal and both Scipios are also presented as mirroring images. Read this section with characterisation in mind, then compare, for next week’s seminar, Hannibal’s final confrontation with Scipio’s son in Book 30.
39 The armies were now almost within sight of each other, and the opposing generals, though as yet they did not know one another well, had yet each been imbued with a kind of admiration for his antagonist. For Hannibal’s name had been very renowned amongst the Romans, even before the destruction of Saguntum, and Scipio was a man of mark in the eyes of Hannibal, from the mere fact of his having been selected, in preference to any other, to command against himself. Each had increased the other’s good opinion—Scipio, because, though left behind in Gaul, he had confronted Hannibal at his crossing over into Italy; Hannibal by the audacity with which he had conceived and executed his passage of the Alps.
40-41 Scipio’s speech to his men
‘…you are to fight, my men, with those whom you defeated in the former war, on land and sea; with those from whom you exacted tribute for twenty years; with those from whom you wrested Sicily and Sardinia, which you now hold as the spoils of war. You and they will therefore enter the present struggle with such spirits as usually attend the victors and the vanquished. Nor are they now going to fight because they dare, but because they must; unless you think that those who avoided battle when their strength was unimpaired would, now that they have lost two-thirds of their infantry and cavalry in the passage of the Alps, have become more hopeful! But, you will say, their numbers indeed are small, but their courage and vigour are so great that scarce any force could withstand their might and power. Nay, not so! They are but the semblance, the shadows of men (effigies immo, umbrae hominum), wasted away with hunger and cold, with filth and squalor; bruised and crippled amongst the rocks and cliffs; moreover, their limbs are frost-bitten, their muscles stiffened by the snow, their bodies numb with cold, their arms shattered and broken, their horses lame and feeble. That is the cavalry, that the infantry with which you are to fight; you have no enemy—only the last relics of an enemy! (reliquias extremas hostis, non hostem habetis) And I fear nothing more than this, that when you have fought, it may seem to have been the Alps that conquered Hannibal (Alpes uicisse Hannibalem uideantur). But perhaps it was right that the gods themselves, without any human aid, should begin and decide a war with a general and a people who break their treaties (foederum ruptore ducem ac populo); and that we, whose injury was second to that of the gods, should add the finishing stroke to a war already so begun and so decided… I would willingly make trial whether the earth has suddenly produced in the last twenty years1 another breed of Carthaginians, or whether they are the same who fought at the Aegatian islands… And so I could wish you, soldiers, to fight not only with that courage with which you are wont to fight against other enemies, but with a kind of resentful rage, as if you saw your slaves all at once take up arms against you…. (uelut si seruos uideatis uestros arma repente contra uos ferentes)…’
43-44 Hannibal’s speech to his men
‘Or am I, who if not actually born in the headquarters of my father—most illustrious of commanders—was at least brought up there, am I, the subjugator of Spain and Gaul and conqueror not only of the Alpine tribes, but— what is much more—of the Alps themselves, am I, I ask you, to compare myself to this six-months general, who has deserted his own army? Why, if one were to show him to-day the Phoenicians and Romans without their standards, I am certain he would not know which army he was consul of (ui si quis demptis signis Poenos Romanosque hodie ostendat, ignora-turum certum habeo utrius exercitus sit consul.)… They called for the punishment of myself first, as your leader, then of all of you who had borne a part in the assault upon Saguntum; had we been given up, they meant to have inflicted upon us the worst of tortures. Most inhuman and most arrogant of nations, they reckon the world as theirs and subject to their pleasure. (Crudelissima ac superbissima gens sua omnia suique arbitrii facit.)…
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