by Plutarch
7. Fabius discovered the trick which had been played on him before the night was over, for some of the cattle had been caught by the Romans during their stampede. But he was afraid of falling into an ambush in the dark, and so kept his men under arms but did not allow them to move. As soon as it was light, however, he pursued the enemy and harried their rearguard. There were many hand-to-hand encounters over difficult ground and much confused fighting. At last Hannibal detached from his advance guard a body of his Spanish light infantry, fast-moving troops who were agile and practised mountaineers. They fell upon the heavily armoured Roman infantry, killed many of them and forced Fabius to retreat. This episode brought down more abuse and contempt upon Fabius than anything that had happened before. He had refused the challenge of an outright trial of strength in his hope of overcoming Hannibal through superior judgement and foresight, but it was in these very qualities that the Carthaginian had manifestly out-generalled and defeated him.
Hannibal was anxious to increase the general resentment against Fabius still further. Accordingly, when he arrived at Fabius’ country estates, he gave orders that these should be spared while all the surrounding property should be ravaged and burned, and even had a guard put on them to make sure that nothing should be removed and no damage done.31 When the news reached Rome it provoked a fresh wave of indignation against Fabius. The tribunes of the people kept up a stream of denunciation against him, most of which was instigated and encouraged by Metilius.32 He did this not out of any personal animosity towards Fabius, but because he was a relative of Minucius, the master of the horse, and believed that if he could lower Fabius’ reputation, he would be raising his subordinate’s.
The senate was also displeased with the dictator, and censured him in particular for the terms he had made with Hannibal about the exchange of prisoners of war. The two commanders had agreed to exchange prisoners man for man, and if either side held more than the other, the surplus prisoners were to be redeemed at a ransom of 250 drachmas each. When the exchange had been carried out man for man, it was found that Hannibal still had 240 Romans left. The senate decided that it would not provide the ransom for these and blamed Fabius for having acted improperly and against the interests of the state in attempting to rescue men who had fallen into captivity only because of their own cowardice.33 When Fabius heard this news, he did not allow his countrymen’s anger to disturb him, but since he had no ready money of his own and could not tolerate the idea of cheating Hannibal or of abandoning the Roman prisoners to their fate, he sent his son to Rome with instructions to sell his estates34 and bring him the money immediately at the camp. The young man carried out the sale and returned without delay, whereupon Fabius dispatched the ransom to Hannibal and recovered the prisoners. Many of these men later offered to repay him, but he would accept nothing and insisted that the debt should be cancelled for every one of them.
8. After this he was recalled to Rome by the priests to be present at various sacrifices as the duties of his office demanded, and he then handed over the command to Minucius with orders not to become involved in a battle nor to engage the enemy in any way. Fabius not only issued these orders as dictator, but he repeated them to his deputy as his personal advice and request. Minucius paid little attention to any of these warnings, and immediately began to test the enemy’s strength. One day he noticed that Hannibal had dispatched the greater part of his army on a foraging expedition. He promptly attacked the remainder, driving them back into their entrenchments with heavy losses, and spread panic among the rest who were afraid that he would now lay siege to their camp; then, when Hannibal concentrated his forces again inside the camp, Minucius succeeded in withdrawing his troops without loss. This engagement vastly increased Minucius’ own arrogance and high opinion of himself and filled his soldiers with a rash confidence. An inflated report of the action quickly reached Rome, and Fabius’ comment when he heard it was that he feared the consequences of Minucius’ success much more than his failure.35 Nevertheless, the people were delighted at the news and hurried exultantly to a meeting in the forum. There the tribune Metilius mounted the rostra and delivered a rabble-rousing speech, in which he glorified Minucius and denounced his superior. He attacked Fabius not merely as an effete and spiritless leader but also as a traitor, and he included in the same accusation many of the ablest and most distinguished men in the state. First of all they had led Rome into the war, he said, to destroy the power of the people, and then they had promptly delivered the city into the hands of a single dictator who was answerable to no man, and who by his dilatory tactics would allow Hannibal ample time to establish himself and summon another army from Libya, since he could now claim that he held Italy in his power.
9. When Fabius addressed the people, he wasted no time in defending himself against the tribune’s charges. He merely said that the sacrifices and other religious rites must be carried out as quickly as possible, to enable him to return to the army and punish Minucius for having attacked the enemy against his orders. These words produced a great commotion among the people, since they now understood the danger in which Minucius stood. The dictator has the power to imprison and even to inflict capital punishment without trial, and they believed that Fabius, who was normally the mildest of men, had at last been provoked to an extent which would render him harsh and implacable. This thought alarmed them so much that nobody dared to speak except for Metilius, who could rely upon his personal immunity as a tribune of the people, for this is the only office which is not deprived of its prerogatives by the appointment of a dictator, but survives intact when all the rest have their functions suspended.36 So he now made an impassioned appeal to the people. He implored them not to abandon Minucius, nor to allow him to suffer the penalty which Manlius Torquatus had inflicted on his son,37 whom he had beheaded after he had been awarded the laurel crown for an act of the utmost gallantry, and urged instead that they should deprive Fabius of his dictatorial powers and entrust the control of affairs to one who was able and willing to save his country.
The people were moved by these words, and yet, in spite of Fabius’ unpopularity, they lacked the courage to compel him to lay down the dictatorship. Instead, they voted that Minucius should be given an equal share in the command and should carry on the war with the same powers as the dictator,38 a division of authority for which there was no precedent in Roman history. A little later, it is true, a similar situation arose after the disaster at Cannae.39 On that occasion Marcus Junius, the dictator, was in command of the army, and it became necessary that the vacant places in the senate should be filled, since so many senators had lost their lives in the battle, and so the people elected Fabius Buteo as a second dictator.40 But when he had taken up his office and discharged his task of selecting the men to fill the senate, he immediately dismissed his lictors and the rest of his retinue, slipped into the crowd and mingled with the people in the forum, where he proceeded to occupy himself with his private concerns and transact business like any ordinary citizen.
10. When the people had conferred upon Minucius the same powers as the dictator’s, they expected that Fabius would feel he had been shorn of his authority and humiliated, but here they completely misjudged their man. The truth was he did not regard their folly as being in any way a misfortune for himself. His attitude was like that of Diogenes the philosopher,41 who, when he was once told ‘the people are mocking you’, retorted ‘but I am not mocked’, meaning that the only people who really suffer ridicule are those who allow it to influence them and are put out by it. So Fabius endured these vexations calmly and without stress, in so far as they concerned him personally, thus confirming the truth of the philosophical maxim that a truly good man can neither be insulted nor disgraced.42 And yet for his country’s sake he could not but be distressed at the people’s folly, since they had placed such opportunities in the hands of a man who was ruled by an insane ambition for military success. He feared that Minucius with his infatuated craving for empty glory and prestige might
cause some irreparable disaster before he could be stopped, and Fabius therefore left the city in great secrecy.
When he arrived at the camp he found that Minucius’ behaviour had become intolerable. He was overbearing and puffed up with conceit, and at once demanded to be given supreme command of the army on alternate days. Fabius refused his request, since he preferred to command a part of the army permanently rather than the whole of it by turns.43 He therefore took charge of the first and fourth legions himself and gave the second and third to Minucius, while the allied troops44 were equally divided between them. When Minucius put on haughty airs and boasted of the fact that the most powerful office of the state had been humbled and its authority reduced on his account, Fabius quietly reminded him that his real opponent, if he stopped to consider the matter, was not Fabius but Hannibal. But, he went on, if he must persist in treating his colleague as a rival, let their rivalry concern itself with ensuring the safety of Rome. Minucius should take care that he, the man who had been honoured and proclaimed the victor by the people, should not be found to have served the Romans worse than the man who had been subdued and humiliated by them.
11. Minucius regarded this as an old man’s disingenuous talk, and when he had taken command of the troops allotted to him, he moved into a separate camp. Meanwhile Hannibal, who had kept himself informed of these events, watched his opponent’s movements closely. There was a hill between the Romans and the Carthaginians which could be occupied without difficulty, and which, once secured, offered a strong position for the camp and was well supplied in every way. The plain which surrounded it appeared to be perfectly smooth and level, when seen from a distance, but in reality the ground was broken by many small ditches and hollows. For this reason, although it would have been easy to make a surprise advance and occupy the hill, Hannibal had preferred to leave it untouched in the hope of enticing the enemy into battle. As soon as he saw Minucius detach his forces from those of Fabius, he sent out scattered bodies of troops during the night with orders to hide themselves among the ditches and depressions in the ground. Then, at first light, he dispatched a few men to occupy the hill without any attempt at concealment, a tactic designed to lure Minucius into fighting for it.
His plan worked. First of all Minucius sent forward his light-armed troops, then his cavalry, and finally, when he saw that Hannibal was coming to the rescue of his men on the hill, he drew up his whole army and marched down into the plain. His men attacked courageously, advancing in the face of a hail of missiles from the hill, coming to close quarters there and holding their ground. Then Hannibal, seeing that his enemy was well and truly in the trap and had exposed his unguarded rear to the troops who were waiting in ambush, raised the signal. Thereupon his men sprang up from their hiding-places on all sides and attacked with loud shouts, cutting down the rear ranks of the enemy. An indescribable confusion and panic spread through the Roman army. Minucius himself felt his confidence gone and began to glance anxiously at his commanders in turn. None of them had the courage to stand their ground, and before long they broke and fled; but this proved a disastrous move, for the Numidian cavalry,45 who were now the masters of the field, galloped round the plain and cut down the fugitives as they vainly attempted to scatter.
12. None of this had escaped Fabius, who by now was well aware of the terrible danger that threatened the Romans. He had foreseen the consequences of Minucius’ rashness, drawn up his own troops under arms and kept himself informed of the progress of the battle, not through the reports of scouts but from his own observations from a point of vantage in front of his camp. When he saw Minucius’ army surrounded and thrown into confusion, and when the sound of their cries told him that the Romans were no longer holding their ground but had given way to panic and were in full retreat, he struck his thigh,46 and with a deep sigh exclaimed to those around him, ‘By Hercules, Minucius has destroyed himself more quickly than I expected, and yet he was lucky that it did not happen sooner.’ He then gave orders for the standards to advance with all speed and for the rest of the army to follow, and called out in a loud voice, ‘My soldiers, every one of you must hurry forward. There is no time to lose. Think of Marcus Minucius. He is a valiant man and loves his country. And if he has made a mistake in his eagerness to drive back the enemy, we will blame him for that another time.’
As soon as he appeared on the scene, he routed and scattered the Numidian cavalry who were galloping about the plain. Then he turned against the troops who were attacking the Roman rear, and killed all whom he met. The remainder gave way, before they were cut off and surrounded as the Romans had been, and made their escape. When Hannibal saw Fabius showing a vigour far beyond his years, as he forced his way through the thick of the battle up the hill towards Minucius, he knew that the battle had turned against him. He therefore broke off the action, signalled a retreat and led the Carthaginians back to their camp, and for their part the Romans were equally grateful for a respite. It is said that as Hannibal marched back, he spoke jokingly to his friends about Fabius in some such words as these: ‘Haven’t I kept telling you that the cloud we have seen hovering over the mountain tops would one day burst into a furious storm?’47
13. When the battle was over and Fabius’ men had stripped the spoils from the enemy’s troops they had killed, the dictator retired to his camp without uttering a single overbearing or reproachful word in criticism of his colleague. Minucius, however, paraded his men and addressed them as follows: ‘Fellow-soldiers, it is beyond the powers of mortal man to be placed in command of great enterprises and never to make a mistake, but it is a mark of courage and good sense to be able to profit from one’s errors and to treat a reverse as a lesson for the future. Let me confess then that although I have some slight excuse for blaming Fortune, I have far more reason to praise her. In the short space of a single day I have been taught what it has taken me all my life to learn. I can now see that I am not capable of commanding others, but need a commander myself, and that for all these years I have been cherishing the ambition to rise above men whom I ought to have felt honoured to acknowledge as my superiors. Now, in all other matters the dictator shall be your leader, but in expressing our thanks to him I shall take the lead, and set an example by showing that I am ready to follow his advice and obey his orders.’
After these words he ordered the eagles to be raised aloft and all his men to follow them, and led the way to Fabius’ camp. As soon as he arrived he went to the general’s tent, while the whole army looked on in astonishment and wonder. When Fabius came outside, Minucius had the standards of the legions planted in front of him and addressed him in a loud voice as ‘Father’, while his soldiers greeted Fabius’ men as ‘Patrons’, which is the title that freedmen use towards those who have given them their liberty.48 When silence had been restored, Minucius said: ‘Dictator, on this day you have won two victories, one over Hannibal through your bravery, and the other over your colleague through your generalship and your generosity. With the first you saved our lives, and with the second you taught us a lesson, and just as Hannibal’s superiority disgraced us, so yours has given us back not only our safety but our honour. I call you by the name of Father, because it is the most honourable that I can use, and yet even a father’s kindness is not so great as the kindness I have received from you. My father gave me my life, but you have saved not only this life but the lives of all the men under me.’ As he ended, he embraced Fabius and kissed him, and the soldiers on both sides followed his example, so that the whole camp was filled with rejoicing and tears of happiness.
14. After this Fabius laid down his office of dictator and consuls were once more elected.49 The first to be chosen carried on the defensive tactics which Fabius had created, avoiding pitched battles but giving support to the allies and preventing them from going over to the enemy. But then came the year in which Terentius Varro was elected to the consulship.50 He was a man of humble birth, who was remarkable chiefly for his obsequious flattery of the people, combined with hi
s liking for impetuous action, and since his utter lack of experience was equalled only by his self-confidence, it soon became clear that he was prepared to risk everything on a single throw. He liked to thunder at people in the assembly that the war would make no progress so long as the Romans continued to employ men such as Fabius for their generals, but that he would defeat the enemy on the first day he set eyes on them. He did not confine himself to making these speeches, but he enlisted and assembled a larger force than Rome had ever put into the field against any enemy. He mobilized 88,000 men51 for his campaign and this caused the greatest alarm to Fabius and all the more thoughtful Romans, for they believed that if the city were to lose so many men in the prime of life, she would never recover from the blow.
Terentius’ colleague was Aemilius Paullus,52 a man who, despite his great experience of war, was unpopular with the people and was afraid of them because of a fine which they had once imposed on him. Accordingly, Fabius did his utmost to exhort and encourage him to resist his colleague’s impetuosity, explaining that, if he wished to serve his country, he would find himself contending just as much with Terentius as with Hannibal. The former, he said, was eager to fight because he did not know where his own strength lay, and Hannibal was eager because he was too well aware of his own weakness. ‘But you must believe me, Paullus,’ he went on, ‘when I say that I understand Hannibal’s situation far better than Terentius does, and I am certain that, if no battle takes place with him for a year, he will either perish in Italy, if he chooses to remain, or else be forced to depart. Remember that even now, when he is supposed to be supreme and to have gained complete control of the country, not one of his enemies has come over to his side, and he does not now possess even a third part of the army that set out from Carthage.’ To this Paullus is said to have replied: ‘If I had only myself to consider, I would rather fall by the spears of the enemy than be condemned again by the votes of my fellow-countrymen. But if our country is now in such danger, I will try to make sure that my conduct as a general satisfies Fabius rather than all the men who are pressing me to take the opposite course.’ Having taken this resolve, Paullus set out for the campaign.