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  Hannibal, watchful and shrewd, was aware of this, and tried to poison men’s minds by a trick. Fabius owned a small estate inherited from his ancestors, which needed but few ploughs to till it; but the fields grew vines that Mount Massicus made famous. Hence Hannibal resolved to stir up mischief and sow disaffection in the camp: with wicked cunning he refrained from fire and sword and left that land in peace; thus men might suspect that the war was prolonged by a secret understanding.

  The dictator saw through the trick of the Carthaginian and perceived its danger. But he was too busy, amid the clashing of swords and the sound of bugles, to fear morbid jealousy, and to parry the tooth of calumny by fighting a hazardous battle. At last, as Hannibal crept about, shifting his camp without result and spying out any chance of battle, Fabius posted cavalry where cross-roads met, and shut him in, where there were wooded heights and steep rising cliffs. The high rocks of Laestrygonia hemmed in his rear; in front were the marshes of Liternum, a dismal stretch of flooded fields. The ground made the soldier’s sword useless; they were trapped by the treacherous position; Famine, soon to claim the penalty for the tragedy of Saguntum, held them in her grip; and the army of Carthage came near to destruction.

  Sleep had lulled all things to rest over the earth and the calm wide sea; the labour of the day was done, and the world enjoyed the peace that night brings to all mankind. But restless anxiety and watchful fear prevented Hannibal from tasting the bounty of drowsy night. Rising from his bed, he put on the tawny lion-skin which had served him as bedding when he lay stretched upon the grassy sward. Then he went in haste to his brother’s tent which was pitched near his own. Mago too was no effeminate soldier: his limbs rested on an ox-hide, as he lay there soothing trouble with sleep. His spear was planted in the ground beside him, and from the spear-

  Formiae, a town of Latium on the borders of Campania: the latter place is meant here. point his dreadful helmet hung down; and his shield and breastplate, his sword and bow and Balearic sling lay on the ground beside him. A chosen band of veteran soldiers attended him; and his war-horse wore the saddle as it grazed. When his light slumber was broken by the sound of entering footsteps, “Ha, brother!” he cried, and at the same time reached out for his weapons; “what sleepless anxiety forbids you to rest your weary limbs?” Already he stood erect, and a stamp of his foot summoned to attention his men who lay stretched upon the sward, when Hannibal thus began: “It is Fabius who breaks my rest, Fabius who excites my fears; that old man, alas, alone withstands the tide of my fortunes. You see how you are surrounded by a ring of warriors, trapped and encircled by the army he has placed there. But, come, since we arc in this strait, hear further a plan I have devised. The cattle we have seized up and down the land are with us now, after the custom of war. I shall order dry branches to be tied to their horns, and bundles of light faggots to be fixed to their foreheads; then, when fire is applied and spreads its heat, the beasts, driven mad by pain, will run wild and spread a blaze over the hills with tossing heads. Then our jailers, surprised and alarmed, will relax their strict guard, and will fear worse dangers in the darkness. If my plan pleases you, let us set to work — the crisis forbids delay.” Together they went at once to the camp. There lay huge Maraxes, his head pillowed on his shield; around him were horses and men and blooddripping spoils that he had taken in battle; and, as if fighting in dreams, he uttered just then a frantic cry, while his shaking hand felt eagerly for his good sword and the weapons on his bed. With a blow from the butt of his spear Mago awoke him from his unpeaeeful slumber. “Control your ardour in the hours of darkness, brave captain,” he said, “and postpone your fighting till day comes. We must make use of to-night for a stratagem, for a secret flight and safe retreat. My brother intends to fix dry branches to the horns of the cattle and to turn them loose when lighted all through the woods, that the foe may relax his grasp; and he hopes thus to wrench the beleaguered army from their clutches. Let us make our way out, and teach Fabius that he is no match for us in cunning.” Rejoicing in this bold stroke, the warrior tarried not. The pair next hastened to the quarters of Acherras, a man content with brief slumbers who never slept the whole night through. He was awake now and attending to a mettlesome steed, rubbing him down after exercise and bathing the mouth which the bit had chafed. His men were furbishing their weapons, washing the dry blood from the steel and sharpening their swords. The pair explained their business and the requirements of the place and time, and bade Acherras go with speed and further the plan. The word was passed round through the camp; the captains zealously instructed their men and explained the work to be done; fear beset them and quickened their pace, urging them to depart in the silence and darkness, before the shadow of night grew lighter. The brushwood was quickly kindled, and fire rose high from the horns of the cattle. But when the mischief spread and the beasts tossed their tortured heads, the flames, so helped, grew thicker, and their crest burst upwards through the smoke and conquered it. All over the hills and thickets, over the high cliffs of the rocky mountain, the maddened cattle rushed on panting, driven by that dreadful scourge; and the steers, their nostrils stopped by the fire, tried in vain to bellow. Nothing can check the destroying fire: it runs from place to place over hill and valley; and the sea, not far away, reflects it. It was like the multitude of stars which the seaman beholds from his ship as he ploughs the deep on a clear night, with his gaze fixed upon the sky; or like the multitude of fires that the shepherd sees from his seat on Mount Garganus, when the uplands of Calabria are burnt and blackened, to improve the pasture.

  But the Roman sentries whose turn it was to be on guard were horror-struck by the sudden sight of flames moving about on the mountain-tops: they believed that no hand of man had sent forth fire, but that it spread of itself and flourished unrestrained beneath the hills. “Did it fall from heaven?” they asked in their fear; “had the Almighty launched thunderbolts with his strong arm? or had the vexed earth burst asunder and sent forth flames, vomited from hidden hollows with burning sulphur?” Quickly they fled; and the Carthaginian army made haste to seize the narrow pass and dashed forth triumphant into the open country. Yet by his skilful management the watchful Dictator had succeeded so far, that Hannibal, even after the Trebia and the Tuscan lake, was content now to have escaped Fabius and the Roman attack. Indeed Fabius would have followed with his army the retreating foe, had he not been summoned to pay worship to the gods of his family. As he turned his face to Rome, he addressed the younger man, who took over, as custom required, the colours and the supreme command, and spoke thus, instructing him beforehand and schooling him with warning: “Minucius, if you have not yet learned from my actions to approve caution, then words also will be too weak to attract you to true glory and to guard you from mistakes. You have seen Hannibal entrapped: his footmen and his horsemen and his army with its serried ranks were all useless. I alone entrapped him, I call you to witness. Nor shall I be slow to do it again. Suffer me to make a feast for the gods and offer the customary sacrifices. Again and again — do you but refrain from battle — I shall show you Hannibal penned in by lofty mountains or rapid rivers. For the present (take the word of experience, I speak the truth) inaction is safety in peril. Let many generals feel joy and pride when they have laid low the enemy in battle — and it is indeed a glorious thing; but let Fabius regard this as his height of glory, that he has saved the lives of you all. I hand over to you an undepleted force and unwounded men; give them back to me unharmed, and that shall be your boast. Soon you will see the Libyan lion charging our ramparts; at one time he will offer you spoil, and at another he will retreat, looking ever backwards and nursing wrath in his guileful heart. Shut the gates of the camp, I entreat you, and rob him of all hope of fighting. This is sufficient warning; but, if my entreaties cannot restrain your ardour, then by my high office of dictator and by my duty I forbid you to take up arms.” Thus he defended the camp by his warnings ere he left it and returned to Rome.

  But now, before a favouring
wind, Carthaginian ships were seen ploughing with their beaks the sea by the shore of Caieta and the bay of the Laestry gonians. They had entered the undefended harbour, and the number of their oarsmen churned all the sea to foam. The noise startled the Sea Sisters, and they rose up together from the crystal seats of their grotto, and saw the shore occupied by hostile vessels. Then in great fear and consternation the train of Nereids swam off quickly to a familiar haunt, where the realm of the Teleboans rises far off in mid-sea, and there are rocky caves. Proteus, the monstrous seer, hides here in his cavern among the rocks, and keeps the foaming deep at a distance by a barrier of cliffs. He knew well the cause of their alarm; but first he eluded them by taking various shapes: he frightened them in the likeness of a black and scaly snake, and hissed horribly; again he changed into a fierce lion and roared. At last he spoke: “Tell me the cause of your coming, and why have your faces suddenly turned pale? Why seek ye to know the future?”

  Cymodoce replied, the eldest of the Italian nymphs: “Prophet,” she said, “you know why we are afraid What mean these ships of Carthage that have robbed us of our shore? Are the gods removing the empire of Rome to Libya? Or shall the seamen of Tyre possess these harbours in future? Must we leave our native seat and dwell in the caves of uttermost Atlas and Calpe?”

  Then the prophet, the deity of many forms, thus began to reveal the future, beginning his tale far back in the distant past. “When the shepherd son of Laomedon sat on Phrygian Ida, and his sweet piping recalled to the dewy pastures his bulls that strayed through pathless thickets, he was chosen to witness the contest of the goddesses for the prize of beauty. Then a Cupid drove the snow-white swans harnessed to his mother’s car, and feared to be too late for the contest. A tiny quiver and a golden bow glittered at his shoulder, and he signed to his mother to have no fear, and showed her the quiver that he carried loaded with arrows. Another Cupid combed the tresses on her snow-white brow, and a third put the girdle round the folds of her purple robe. Then Venus sighed, and her rosy lips thus addressed her pretty children: ‘See, the day has come that will prove beyond all doubt your love for your mother. Who would dare to believe, that while you still live, the claim of Venus to the prize for beauty is contested? What worse remains behind? If I gave to my children all my arrows steeped in delicious poison — if your grandsire, the Lawgiver of heaven and earth, stands a suppliant before you when so you please, then let my triumph bear back to Cyprus the palm of Edom won from Pallas, and let the hundred altars of Paphos smoke for my conquest of Juno.’ And, while Cytherea thus charged her winged children, all the grove re-echoed the footsteps of a goddess. For now came the Warrior Maid. She had laid aside her aegis; the hair which the helmet was wont to hide was braided now, and her clear eyes wore a studied look of peace; and her sacred feet bore her quickly to the appointed grove. From another quarter obedient to the call came the daughter of Saturn; though wedded to her brother, Jupiter, she must endure to be judged and rejected by the Trojan shepherd on Mount Ida. Last came Venus with smiling face, glorious in her beauty. All the surrounding groves and all the hollows of the leaf-elad heights drank in deeply the fragrance that breathed from that divine head. The judge could not sit still; his eyes, dazzled by the brilliance of her beauty, sank to the ground; and he feared lest he might seem ever to have been in doubt. But the defeated goddesses brought a fierce army across the sea, and Troy was demolished together with the Trojan who had judged them. Then good Aeneas, after much suffering on land and sea, established the gods of Troy on the soil of Italy. So long as sea-monsters shall swim the deep and stars shine in the sky and the sun rise on the Indian shore, Rome shall rule, and there shall be no end to her rule throughout the ages. But you, my daughters, while the thread of Fate that none may change still runs on, avoid the ill-omened sands of Saso in the Adriatic sea. For Aufidus will fall into that sea, his stream swollen with gore, and will pour incarnadined waters into the main; and on a field condemned long ago by the oracles of Heaven, the ghosts of Aetolia shall fight the Trojans once more. Later the missiles of Carthage shall batter the walls of Romulus, and the Metaurus shall be famous for the utter defeat of Hasdrubal. Next the offspring of stolen love shall duly avenge his father and his uncle as well; then he shall spread fire over the coast of Dido, and tear Hannibal away from the vitals of Italy on which he is preying, and defeat him in his own country. To him Carthage shall surrender her arms, and Africa her name. And his son’s son shall finish a third war with victory and bring back the ashes of Libya to the Capitol.”

  While the prophet in his grotto revealed these secret things of the gods, the Master of the Knights and commander of the army had put from his mind the warnings of Fabius, and was pressing forward against the enemy. And Hannibal was not slow to feed and encourage this folly: he feigned at times to retreat, that by a trifling loss he might tempt Minucius to a pitched battle. So the fisherman tempts a fish forth from the watery depths by scattering bait in the pools, and then, when he sees his nimble prey swimming close to the surface, draws it captive to the shore in his bellying net.

  Wild rumours ran — that the enemy was routed, and Hannibal had saved himself by flight; an end of defeats was certain, if the Romans were allowed to conquer; but the brave had no authority, and punishment was in store for the victorious. Soon would Fabius keep the army in camp and order the sword to be sheathed once more, that the warrior might be called to account and clear himself of the crime of conquering. Thus the people murmured; and even the hearts of the Senators were stirred up by the daughter of Saturn with the sting of jealousy and with the desire for popular favour. Then they passed a decree unworthy of belief, a decree that Hannibal might have prayed for; they were soon to repent it and to pay for it with great disaster.

  The army was divided, and the Master of the Knights was given equal powers with the Dictator. The older man looked on without resentment; but he feared that the ill-advised government might pay a heavy penalty for their grievous error. And then, revolving many things in his breast, he returned from Rome and, after dividing the forces with Minucius, encamped on a neighbouring height, where from his lofty watch-tower he kept an eye on the Roman army as much as on the army of Hannibal. Minucius in his folly at once dismantled the rampart of his camp; he was burning with eagerness to destroy and, at the same time, to be destroyed.

  When Hannibal from one point and Fabius from another saw him hurrying forth from his camp, each instantly conceived wise plans to meet the emergency. The Roman general ordered his foot-soldiers to arm with speed, and kept his cavalry behind the protection of the ramparts, while Hannibal threw every man into the fighting-line, and called on them thus to go forward: “Soldiers, seize the opportunity for battle, while Fabius is absent. See! Heaven offers us the chance so long denied of fighting on the open plain. Since the opportunity is given, cleanse the steel from the mould of long disuse, my men, and glut your rusty swords with much bloodshed.”

  The Delayer surveyed the country from the high rampart, and weighed these things in his heart. He was grieved that Rome should learn the value of a Fabius at so great a cost. His son who served at his side said: “That rash man will suffer as he deserves — the man who by the votes of the blind populace usurped our authority and has brought things to this pass. Look on now, ye senseless Tribes! Shame on the rhetoric that leads to ruin, and on the marketplace that approves worthless men! Let them now, in their ignorance of war, divide the command over the army and vote that light shall give place to darkness! Dearly shall they pay for their mad mistake, and for their insult to my father.” As the old man answered him, he shook his spear, and the tears rose to his eyes: “My son, you must wash away that harsh speech in Punic blood. Shall I suffer my countryman to be slain before my eyes, and not move a hand, or allow Hannibal to conquer while I look on? If such were my feeling, will not those who set me on a level with my subordinate be acquitted of all blame? And now, my son, take this for certain from your aged father, and keep it ever engraved upon your heart: to har
bour wrath against your country is a sin; and no more heinous crime can mortal man carry down to the shades below. Such was the doctrine of our fathers. How great and noble was Camillus, when, exiled from home and country, he returned from banishment to drive his triumphal car to the Capitol! How many enemies were slain by that right hand which Romans had condemned! But for the placid wisdom of Camillus and his refusal to harbour wrath, the realm of Aeneas would have changed its seat of empire, and Rome would not stand now at the summit of the world. Be not angry for your father’s sake, my son; but let us fight side by side and make haste to help.” Already the trumpets were sounding together with the trumpets of the foe; and men had charged forward, to clash in conflict.

  The Dictator was the foremost man to knock down the bars and tall gate-posts of the camp, and to rush into the fray. No mightier are the winds when they war against one another, Boreas from Thrace and Africus that has power to lift the Syrtis; when they rage in stubborn conflict, they divide the sea and each rolls his own part to an opposite shore; as the tempest howls, the tide is swept after it hither and thither, and the waves thunder. No possible achievement — not the conquest of Africa and the fall of Carthage — could confer on Fabius such glory as he reaped from the wrong done him by envy; for he conquered at the same time every obstacle — danger and Hannibal, resentment and jealousy — and he trod underfoot calumny and Fortune together.

  When Hannibal saw the Romans rushing down from their high rampart, his ardour was shaken: he groaned, and his sanguine hopes of a crushing victory sank in a moment. For he had surrounded the army of Minucius with a serried ring of soldiers and hoped to destroy them by a shower of missiles from every side. And now the Roman general in that ill-judged battle had already in thought crossed the Styx to the place of eternal darkness — for he was ashamed to look to Fabius for help — when the Dictator, surrounding the battle-field with his two flanks, hemmed in the Carthaginian rear with an outer circle, and now, from his outside position, blockaded those who had lately been blockaders. By grace of Hercules he seemed to rise higher as he fought and to grow in stature. The plume of his helmet flashed on high; and his frame was suddenly endued with marvellous strength and activity; he hurled spear after spear and assailed the enemy in their rear with clouds of darts. Thus the King of Pylus fought in his Second stage of life, when youth was gone and old age not yet come.