Roman History, Books I III - Titus Livius
Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25
The Roman consuls also dreaded nothing else but their own strength and
their own arms. The recollection of the most mischievous precedent set
in the last war was a terrible warning to them not to let matters
go so far that they would have two armies to fear at the same time.
Accordingly, they kept within their camp, avoiding battle, owing to
the two-fold danger that threatened them, thinking that length of time
and circumstances themselves would perchance soften down resentment,
and bring them to a healthy frame of mind. The Veientine enemy and the
Etruscans proceeded with proportionately greater precipitation;
they provoked them to battle, at first by riding up to the camp and
challenging them; at length when they produced no effect, by reviling
the consuls and the army alike, they declared that the pretence of
internal dissension was assumed as a cloak for cowardice: and that the
consuls rather distrusted the courage than disbelieved the sincerity
of their soldiers: that inaction and idleness among men in arms were a
novel form of sedition. Besides this they uttered insinuations, partly
true and partly false, as to the upstart nature of their race and
origin. While they loudly proclaimed this close to the very rampart
and gates, the consuls bore it without impatience: but at one time
indignation, at another shame, agitated the breasts of the ignorant
multitude, and diverted their attention from intestine evils; they
were unwilling that the enemy should remain unpunished; they did not
wish success either to the patricians or the consuls; foreign and
domestic hatred struggled for the mastery in their minds: at length
the former prevailed, so haughty and insolent were the jeers of the
enemy; they crowded in a body to the general's tent; they desired
battle, they demanded that the signal should be given. The consuls
conferred together as if to deliberate; they continued the conference
for a long time: they were desirous of fighting, but that desire they
considered should be checked and concealed, that by opposition and
delay they might increase the ardour of the soldiery now that it was
once roused. The answer was returned that the matter in question was
premature, that it was not yet time for fighting: let them keep within
their camp. They then issued a proclamation that they should abstain
from fighting: if any one fought without orders, they would punish
him as an enemy. When they were thus dismissed, their eagerness for
fighting increased in proportion as they believed the consuls were
less disposed for it; the enemy, moreover, who now showed themselves
with greater boldness, as soon as it was known that the consuls had
determined not to fight, further kindled their ardour. For they
supposed that they could insult them with impunity; that the soldiers
were not trusted with arms; that the affair would explode in a violent
mutiny; that an end had come to the Roman Empire. Relying on these
hopes, they ran up to the gates, heaped abuse on the Romans, and with
difficulty refrained from assaulting the camp. Then indeed the Romans
could no longer endure their insults: they ran from every quarter of
the camp to the consuls: they no longer, as formerly, put forth their
demands with reserve, through the mediation of the centurions of the
first rank, but all proceeded indiscriminately with loud clamours. The
affair was now ripe; yet still they hesitated. Then Fabius, as his
colleague was now inclined to give way in consequence of his dread of
mutiny in face of the increasing uproar, having commanded silence
by sound of trumpet, said: "I know that those soldiers are able to
conquer, Gneius Manlius: by their own conduct they themselves have
prevented me from knowing that they are willing. Accordingly, I have
resolved and determined not to give the signal, unless they swear that
they will return from this battle victorious. The soldier has once
deceived the Roman consul in the field, the gods he will never
deceive." There was a centurion, Marcus Flavoleius, one of the
foremost in demanding battle: said he, "Marcus Fabius, I will return
victorious from the field." He invoked upon himself, should he deceive
them, the wrath of Father Jove, Mars Gradivus, and the other gods.
After him in succession the whole army severally took the same oath.
After they had been sworn, the signal was given: they took up arms and
marched into battle, full of rage and of hope. They bade the Etruscans
now utter their reproaches: now severally demanded that the enemy, so
ready of tongue, should face them, now that they were armed. On that
day, both commons and patricians alike showed distinguished bravery:
the Fabian family shone forth most conspicuous: they were determined
to recover in that battle the affections of the commons, estranged by
many civil contests.
The army was drawn up in order of battle; nor did the Veientine foe
and the Etruscan legions decline the contest. They entertained an
almost certain hope that the Romans would no more fight with them than
they had with the Aequans; that even some more serious attempt was not
to be despaired of, considering the sorely irritated state of their
feelings, and the critical condition of affairs. The result turned out
altogether different: for never before in any other war did the Roman
soldiers enter the field with greater fury, so exasperated were they
by the taunts of the enemy on the one hand, and the dilatoriness of
the consuls on the other. Before the Etruscans had time to form their
ranks, their javelins having been rather thrown away at random, in
the first confusion, than aimed at the enemy, the battle had become
a hand-to-hand encounter, even with swords, in which the fury of
war rages most fiercely. Among the foremost the Fabian family was
distinguished for the sight it afforded and the example it presented
to its fellow-citizens; one of these, Quintus Fabius, who had been
consul two years before, as he advanced at the head of his men against
a dense body of Veientines, and incautiously engaged amid numerous
parties of the enemy, received a sword-thrust through the breast at
the hands of a Tuscan emboldened by his bodily strength and skill in
arms: on the weapon being extracted, Fabius fell forward on the
wound. Both armies felt the fall of this one man, and the Romans in
consequence were beginning to give way, when the consul Marcus Fabius
leaped over the body of his prostrate kinsman, and, holding his
buckler in front, cried out: "Is this what you swore, soldiers, that
you would return to the camp in flight? Are you so afraid of your
most cowardly foes, rather than of Jupiter and Mars, by whom you have
sworn? Well, then, I, who have taken no oath, will either return
victorious, or will fall fighting here beside thee, Quintus Fabius."
Then Caeso Fabius, the consul of the preceding year, addressed the
consul: "Brother, is it by these words you think you will prevail on
them to fight? The gods, by whom they have sworn, will bring it about.
Let us also, as becomes men of noble birth, as is worthy of the Fabian
name, kindle the courage of the soldiers by fighting rather than by
exhortation." Thus the two Fabii rushed forward to the front with
spears presented, and carried the whole line with them.
The battle being thus restored in one quarter, Gnaeus Manlius, the
consul, with no less ardour, encouraged the fight on the other wing,
where the course of the fortune of war was almost identical. For, as
the soldiers eagerly followed Quintus Fabius on the one wing, so did
they follow the consul Manlius on this, as he was driving the enemy
before him now nearly routed. When, having received a severe wound, he
retired from the battle, they fell back, supposing that he was slain,
and would have abandoned the position had not the other consul,
galloping at full speed to that quarter with some troops of horse,
supported their drooping fortune, crying out that his colleague was
still alive, that he himself was now at hand victorious, having routed
the other wing. Manlius also showed himself in sight of all to restore
the battle. The well-known faces of the two consuls kindled the
courage of the soldiers: at the same time, too, the enemy's line was
now thinner, since, relying on their superior numbers, they had drawn
off their reserves and despatched them to storm the camp This was
assaulted without much resistance: and, while they wasted time,
bethinking themselves of plunder rather than fighting, the Roman
triarii,[56] who had not been able to sustain the first shock, having
sent a report to the consuls of the position of affairs, returned in a
compact body to the praetorium,[57] and of their own accord renewed
the battle. The consul Manlius also having returned to the camp, and
posted soldiers at all the gates, had blocked up every passage against
the enemy. This desperate situation aroused the fury rather than the
bravery of the Etruscans; for when, rushing on wherever hope held
out the prospect of escape, they had advanced with several fruitless
efforts, a body of young men attacked the consul himself, who was
conspicuous by his arms. The first missiles were intercepted by those
who stood around him; afterward their violence could not be withstood.
The consul fell, smitten with a mortal wound, and all around him were
put to flight. The courage of the Etruscans increased. Terror drove
the Romans in dismay through the entire camp; and matters would have
come to extremities had not the lieutenants,[58] hastily seizing the
body of the consul opened a passage for the enemy at one gate.[59]
Through this they rushed out; and going away in the utmost disorder,
they fell in with the other consul, who had been victorious; there
a second time they were cut down and routed in every direction. A
glorious victory was won, saddened, however, by two such illustrious
deaths. The consul, therefore, on the senate voting him a triumph,
replied, that if the army could triumph without its general, he would
readily accede to it in consideration of its distinguished service in
that war: that for his own part, as his family was plunged in grief
in consequence of the death of his brother Quintus Fabius, and the
commonwealth in some degree bereaved by the loss of one of her
consuls, he would not accept the laurel disfigured by public and
private grief. The triumph thus declined was more illustrious than
any triumph actually enjoyed; so true it is, that glory refused at
a fitting moment sometimes returns with accumulated lustre. He next
celebrated the two funerals of his colleague and brother, one after
the other, himself delivering the funeral oration over both, wherein,
by yielding up to them the praise that was his own due, he himself
obtained the greatest share of it; and, not unmindful of that which
he had determined upon at the beginning of his consulate, namely, the
regaining the affection of the people, he distributed the wounded
soldiers among the patricians to be attended to. Most of them were
given to the Fabii: nor were they treated with greater attention
anywhere else. From this time the Fabii began to be popular, and that
not by aught save such conduct as was beneficial to the state.
Accordingly, Caeso Fabius, having been elected consul with Titus
Verginius not more with the good-will of the senators than of the
commons, gave no attention either to wars, or levies, or anything else
in preference, until, the hope of concord being now in some measure
assured, the feelings of the commons should be united with those
of the senators at the earliest opportunity. Accordingly, at the
beginning of the year he proposed that before any tribune should stand
forth as a supporter of the agrarian law, the patricians themselves
should be beforehand in bestowing the gift unasked and making it their
own: that they should distribute among the commons the land taken from
the enemy in as equal a proportion as possible; that it was but just
that those should enjoy it by whose blood and labour it had been won.
The patricians rejected the proposal with scorn: some even complained
that the once vigorous spirit of Caeso was running riot, and decaying
through a surfeit of glory. There were afterward no party struggles in
the city. The Latins, however, were harassed by the incursions of
the Aequans. Caeso being sent thither with an army, crossed into the
territory of the Aequans themselves to lay it waste. The Aequans
retired into the towns, and kept themselves within the walls: on that
account no battle worth mentioning was fought.
However, a reverse was sustained at the hands of the Veientine foe
owing to the rashness of the other consul; and the army would have
been all cut off, had not Caeso Fabius come to their assistance
in time. From that time there was neither peace nor war with the
Veientines: their mode of operation had now come very near to the form
of brigandage. They retired before the Roman troops into the city;
when they perceived that the troops were drawn off, they made
incursions into the country, alternately mocking war with peace and
peace with war. Thus the matter could neither be dropped altogether,
nor brought to a conclusion. Besides, other wars were threatening
either at the moment, as from the Aequans and Volscians, who remained
inactive no longer than was necessary, to allow the recent smart of
their late disaster to pass away, or at no distant date, as it was
evident that the Sabines, ever hostile, and all Etruria would soon
begin to stir up war: but the Veientines, a constant rather than a
formidable enemy, kept their minds in a state of perpetual uneasiness
by petty annoyances more frequently than by any real danger to be
apprehended from them, because they could at no time be neglected, and
did not suffer the Romans to turn their attention elsewhere. Then the
Fabian family approached the senate: the consul spoke in the name of
the family: "Conscript fathers, the Veientine war requires, as you
know, an unremitting rather than a strong defence. Do you attend to
other wars: assign the Fabii as enemies to the Veientines. We pledge
ourselves that the majesty of the Roman name shall be safe in
that quarter. That war, as if it were a family matter, it is our
determination to conduct at our own private expense. In regard to it
let the republic be spared the expense of soldiers and money."
The warmest thanks were returned to them. The consul, leaving the
senate-house, accompanied by the Fabii in a body, who had been
standing in the porch of the senate-house, awaiting the decree of the
senate, returned home. They were ordered to attend on the following
day in arms at the consul's gate: they then retired to their homes.
The report spread through the entire city; they extolled the Fabii
to the skies: that a single family had undertaken the burden of the
state; that the Veientine war had now become a private concern, a
private quarrel. If there were two families of the same strength in
the city, let them demand, the one the Volscians for itself, the other
the Aequans; that all the neighbouring states could be subdued,
while the Roman people all the time enjoyed profound peace. The day
following, the Fabii took up arms; they assembled where they had been
ordered. The consul, coming forth in his military robe, beheld the
whole family in the porch drawn up in order of march; being received
into the centre, he ordered the standards to be advanced. Never did
an army march through the city, either smaller in number, or more
distinguished in renown and more admired by all. Three hundred and six
soldiers, all patricians, all of one family, not one of whom an honest
senate would reject as a leader under any circumstances whatever,
proceeded on their march, threatening the Veientine state with
destruction by the might of a single family. A crowd followed,
one part belonging to themselves, consisting of their kinsmen and
comrades, who contemplated no half measures, either as to their hope
or anxiety, but everything on a grand scale:[60] the other aroused by
solicitude for the public weal, unable to express their esteem and
admiration. They bade them proceed in their brave resolve, proceed
with happy omens, and render the issue proportionate to the
undertaking: thence to expect consulships and triumphs, all rewards,
all honours from them. As they passed the Capitol and the citadel, and
the other sacred edifices, they offered up prayers to all the gods
that presented themselves to their sight, or to their mind, that they
would send forward that band with prosperity and success, and soon
send them back safe into their country to their parents. In vain were
these prayers uttered. Having set out on their luckless road by the
right-hand arch of the Carmental gate,[61] they arrived at the river
Cremera:[62] this appeared a favourable situation for fortifying an
outpost.
Lucius Aemilius and Gaius Servilius were then created consuls. And as
long as there was nothing else to occupy them but mutual devastations,
the Fabii were not only able to protect their garrison, but through
the entire tract, where the Tuscan territory adjoins the Roman, they
protected all their own districts and ravaged those of the enemy,
spreading their forces along both frontiers. There was afterward a
cessation, though not for long, of these depredations: while both the
Veientines, having sent for an army from Etruria,[63] assaulted the
outpost at the Cremera, and the Roman troops, brought up by the consul
Lucius Aemilius, came to a close engagement in the field with the
Etruscans; the Veientines, however, had scarcely time to draw up their
line: for, during the first alarm, while they were entering the lines
behind their colours, and they were stationing their reserves, a
brigade of Roman cavalry, charging them suddenly in flank, deprived
them of all opportunity not only of opening the fight, but even of
standing their ground. Thus being driven back to the Red Rocks [64].
(where they had pitched their camp), as suppliants they sued for
peace; and, after it was granted, owing to the natural inconsistency
of their minds, they regretted it even before the Roman garrison was
withdrawn from the Cremera.
Again the Veientine state had to contend with the Fabii without any
additional military armament: and not merely did they make raids into
each other's territories, or sudden attacks upon those carrying on
the raids, but they fought repeatedly on level ground, and in pitched
battles: and one family of the Roman people oftentimes gained the
victory over an entire Etruscan state, and a most powerful one for
those times. This at first appeared mortifying and humiliating to the
Veientines: then they conceived the design, suggested by the state of
affairs, of surprising their daring enemy by an ambuscade; they were
even glad that the confidence of the Fabii was increasing owing to
their great success. Wherefore cattle were frequently driven in the
path of the plundering parties, as if they had fallen in their way
by accident, and tracts of land left abandoned by the flight of
the peasants: and reserve bodies of armed men, sent to prevent the
devastations, retreated more frequently in pretended than in real
alarm. By this time the Fabii had conceived such contempt for the
enemy that they believed that their arms, as yet invincible, could not
be resisted either in any place or on any occasion: this presumption
carried them so far that at the sight of some cattle at a distance
from Cremera, with an extensive plain lying between, they ran down to
them, in spite of the fact that some scattered bodies of the enemy
were visible: and when, anticipating nothing, and in disorderly haste,
they had passed the ambuscade placed on either side of the road
itself, and, dispersed in different directions, had begun to carry off
the cattle that were straying about, as is usual when frightened, the
enemy started suddenly in a body from their ambuscade, and surrounded
them both in front and on every side. At first the noise of their
shouts, spreading, terrified them; then weapons assailed them from
every side: and, as the Etruscans closed in, they also were compelled,
hemmed in as they were by an unbroken body of armed men, to form
themselves into a square of narrower compass the more the enemy
pressed on: this circumstance rendered both their own scarcity of
numbers noticeable and the superior numbers of the Etruscans, whose
ranks were crowded in a narrow space. Then, having abandoned the
plan of fighting, which they had directed with equal effort in every
quarter, they all turned their forces toward one point; straining
every effort in that direction, both with their arms and bodies, and
forming themselves into a wedge, they forced a passage. The way led to
a gradually ascending hill: here they first halted: presently, as soon
as the higher ground afforded them time to gain breath, and to recover
from so great a panic, they repulsed the foe as they ascended: and the
small band, assisted by the advantages of the ground, was gaining the
victory, had not a party of the Veientines, sent round the ridge of
the hill, made their way to the summit: thus the enemy again got
possession of the higher ground; all the Fabii were cut down to a man,
and the fort was taken by assault: it is generally agreed that three
hundred and six were slain; that one only, who had nearly attained
the age of puberty, survived, who was to be the stock for the Fabian
family, and was destined to prove the greatest support of the Roman
people in dangerous emergencies on many occasions both at home and in
war.[65]
At the time when this disaster was sustained, Gaius Horatius and Titus
Menenius were consuls. Menenius was immediately sent against
the Tuscans, now elated with victory. On that occasion also an
unsuccessful battle was fought, and the enemy took possession of the
Janiculum: and the city would have been besieged, since scarcity of
provisions distressed them in addition to the war--for the Etruscans
had passed the Tiber--had not the consul Horatius been recalled from
the Volscians; and so closely did that war approach the very walls,
that the first battle was fought near the Temple of Hope[66] with
doubtful success, and a second at the Colline gate. There, although
the Romans gained the upper hand by only a trifling advantage, yet
that contest rendered the soldiers more serviceable for future battles
by the restoration of their former courage.
Aulus Verginius and Spurius Servilius were next chosen consuls. After
the defeat sustained in the last battle, the Veientines declined an
engagement.[67] Ravages were committed, and they made repeated attacks
in every direction upon the Roman territory from the Janiculum, as if
from a fortress: nowhere were cattle or husbandmen safe. They were
afterward entrapped by the same stratagem as that by which they
had entrapped the Fabii: having pursued cattle which had been
intentionally driven on in all directions to decoy them, they fell
into an ambuscade; in proportion as they were more numerous,[68] the
slaughter was greater. The violent resentment resulting from this
disaster was the cause and beginning of one still greater: for having
crossed the Tiber by night, they attempted to assault the camp of the
consul Servilius; being repulsed from thence with great slaughter,
they with difficulty made good their retreat to the Janiculum. The
consul himself also immediately crossed the Tiber, and fortified
his camp at the foot of the Janiculum: at daybreak on the following
morning, being both somewhat elated by the success of the battle of
the day before, more, however, because the scarcity of corn forced him
to adopt measures, however dangerous, provided only they were more
expeditious, he rashly marched his army up the steep of the Janiculum
to the camp of the enemy, and, being repulsed from thence with more
disgrace than when he had repulsed them on the preceding day, he
was saved, both himself and his army, by the intervention of his
colleague. The Etruscans, hemmed in between the two armies, and
presenting their rear to the one and the other by turns, were
completely destroyed. Thus the Veientine war was crushed by a
successful piece of audacity. [69]
Together with peace, provisions came in to the city in greater
abundance, both by reason of corn having been brought in from
Campania, and, as soon as the fear of want, which every one felt was
likely to befall himself, left them, by the corn being brought out,
which had been stored. Then their minds once more became wanton from
plenty and ease, and they sought at home their former subjects of
complaint, now that there was none abroad; the tribunes began to
excite the commons by their poisonous charm, the agrarian law: they
roused them against the senators who opposed it, and not only against
them as a body, but against particular individuals. Quintus Considius
and Titus Genucius, the proposers of the agrarian law, appointed a day
of trial for Titus Menenius: the loss of the fort of Cremera, while
the consul had his standing camp at no great distance from thence,
was the cause of his unpopularity. This crushed him, though both the
senators had exerted themselves in his behalf with no less earnestness
than in behalf of Coriolanus, and the popularity of his father Agrippa
was not yet forgotten. The tribunes, however, acted leniently in
the matter of the fine: though they had arraigned him for a capital
offence, they imposed on him, when found guilty, a fine of only two
thousand asses. This proved fatal to him. They say that he could not
brook disgrace and anguish of mind: and that, in consequence, he was
carried off by disease. Another senator, Spurius Servilius was soon
after arraigned, as soon as he went out of office a day of trial
having been appointed for him by the tribunes, Lucius Caedicius and
Titus Statius, immediately at the beginning of the year, in the
consulship of Gaius Nautius and Publius Valerius: he did not, however,
like Menenius, meet the attacks of the tribunes with supplications on
the part of himself and the patricians, but with firm reliance on his
own integrity and his personal popularity. The battle with the Tuscans
at the Janiculum was also the charge brought against him: but being
a man of impetuous spirit, as he had formerly done in time of public
peril, so now in the danger which threatened himself, he dispelled
it by boldly meeting it, by confuting not only the tribunes but the
commons also, in a haughty speech, and upbraiding them with the
condemnation and death of Titus Menenius, by the good offices of whose
father the commons had formerly been re-established, and now had those
magistrates and enjoyed those laws, by virtue of which they then acted
so insolently: his colleague Verginius also, who was brought forward
as a witness, aided him by assigning to him a share of his own glory:
however--so had they changed their mind--the condemnation of Menenius
was of greater service to him.