The Rise of Rome (Penguin Classics)

by Plutarch

  By this time the Romans had lost the greater number of their generals and prominent men in battle, while Fabius Maximus,52 who had earned the highest reputation for his reliability and shrewdness of judgement, was blamed for his excessive caution, and his anxiety to avoid losses at any cost was attacked as mere cowardly passivity. The people regarded him as a general who was perfectly qualified to carry on a defensive campaign, but who could never move over to the offensive. They therefore turned to Marcellus, and, in the hope of combining his boldness and energy with Fabius’ caution and foresight, they sometimes elected both as consuls together53 and sometimes sent out one as consul and the other as proconsul. Poseidonius says that Fabius was called the shield and Marcellus the sword of Rome. And indeed, Hannibal himself declared that he feared Fabius as a pedagogue54 and Marcellus as an opponent. The first prevented him from inflicting losses on the Romans; the second inflicted them on him.55

  10. One of the first consequences of Hannibal’s victory at Cannae was that his troops became over-confident and careless of their discipline. Scattered groups of men would leave their camp and roam the countryside in search of plunder, whereupon Marcellus would swoop down and cut off these stragglers, and in this way he gradually weakened the Carthaginian army. Secondly, he did much to relieve the situation of Neapolis and of Nola.56 In Neapolis he strengthened the resolution of the citizens, who were already staunch allies of Rome by their own choice. Nola, on the other hand, he found in a far more unsettled state, since the senate57 was unable either to control or to win over the people, who wished to ally themselves with Hannibal.

  One of Nola’s leading citizens, who was prominent not only for his aristocratic birth but also for his bravery in the field, was a man named Bandius.58 He had shown the greatest courage in fighting for the Romans at Cannae, where he had killed many Carthaginians, and when he was at last found among the heaps of the dead with his body riddled with barbs, Hannibal felt so much admiration for his gallantry that he not only released him without a ransom, but presented him with gifts of his own accord and entertained him as a personal friend. In return for this generous treatment, Bandius became one of Hannibal’s more ardent supporters, and proceeded to use all his influence to make the people revolt against Rome.

  Marcellus felt that it would be a crime to put to death a man of such brilliant achievements, who had fought side by side with the Romans in their greatest battles; and in addition to his natural kindliness of manner he possessed the knack of winning the confidence of men who are dedicated to the pursuit of honour. So, one day when Bandius greeted him, he asked him who he was. Of course Marcellus knew this perfectly well, but he wanted an excuse to strike up a conversation with him. Then, when the man answered ‘Lucius Bandius’, Marcellus, pretending to be surprised and delighted, exclaimed: ‘What, are you the same Lucius Bandius who is more talked of in Rome than any other man who fought at Cannae – the only soldier, so they say, who did not abandon Aemilius Paullus,59 the consul, but received in your own body most of the spears and arrows that were aimed at him?’ When Bandius answered that he was the man and showed Marcellus some of his scars, the general went on: ‘Well then, since you carry with you all these marks of your devotion to Rome, why did you not come to us at once? Do you think that we are slow to reward such courage in our friends, when even our enemies go out of their way to honour it?’ After paying Bandius these compliments he embraced him, and soon afterwards presented him with a war horse and 500 silver drachmas.

  11. After this Bandius became a staunch supporter and ally of Marcellus, and played an important part in tracking down and denouncing the activities of Hannibal’s partisans. These were very numerous, and they organized a plot to seize the Roman baggage-train as soon as the army marched out against the enemy. Marcellus therefore marshalled his troops inside the city, had the baggage placed near the various gates and then issued a proclamation forbidding the citizens of Nola to approach the walls. In this way he made sure that there were no armed men to be seen, and Hannibal was tricked into leading his troops up to the walls without first putting them into battle order, as he supposed that fighting was going on inside the city.

  At this moment Marcellus ordered the gate behind which he was waiting to be thrown open. He had his best cavalry formations with him, and immediately launched them against the enemy. Soon after, his infantry sallied forth from another gate, and with loud shouts bore down upon the Carthaginians at the run. Finally, while Hannibal was regrouping his forces to meet these attacks, a third gate was flung open, and through this the remainder of the Roman army poured out and attacked the enemy on all sides. This unexpected onslaught threw the Carthaginians into confusion, and they put up only a weak resistance against the first attack, because of the troops they could see in the distance bearing down upon them. Hannibal’s troops were driven back to their camp with heavy losses both in killed and wounded, the first occasion on which they had ever been put to flight by the Romans. It is said that more than 5,000 of them lost their lives against a bare 500 on the Roman side; Livy, however, does not consider that the Carthaginians suffered a major defeat in this battle, nor does he say that they lost so many men, but he confirms that the victory brought great prestige to Marcellus, and had a wonderful effect in raising the spirits of the Romans after the disasters they had suffered.60 They could now feel that they were faced not by an invincible and irresistible enemy, but by one who was just as liable to suffer a defeat as themselves.

  12. It was for this reason that when one of the consuls was killed,61 the people called upon Marcellus to take his place. They did this even though he was absent from Rome at the time, and, in spite of the wishes of the magistrates, they postponed the election until he could return from the army. When he arrived, he was elected consul by a unanimous vote. But it so happened that a peal of thunder was heard at that moment, and the augurs regarded this as an inauspicious omen. However, their fear of the people was such that they did not dare to oppose his election openly, and so Marcellus himself voluntarily resigned his office.62 But this did not mean that he laid down his military command; instead, he was created proconsul, returned to Nola and began to take action there against the party which had sided with the Carthaginians.

  When Hannibal hurried to Nola to rescue his supporters and tried to bring about a pitched battle, Marcellus refused to be drawn; but as soon as Hannibal had allowed the greater part of his force to disperse on various plundering raids, and was no longer expecting a battle, the Romans made a sortie and attacked him. Marcellus had armed his infantry with the long spears which are used in naval fighting, and had taught them to watch for their opportunity and hurl their weapons at the enemy from long range, as the Carthaginians were not trained in throwing the javelin and carried only short spears for hand-to-hand fighting. These tactics seem to have produced remarkable results. All the Carthaginians who were engaged in this battle with the Romans turned tail and fled at once. They lost 5,000 dead and 6,000 prisoners, while four of their elephants were killed and two captured alive. But the most significant event of all was that on the third day after the battle more than 300 Spanish and Numidian horsemen deserted to the Romans. This was the first time that Hannibal had ever experienced such a disaster, for although he commanded a barbarian army composed of many separate and diverse nationalities, he had succeeded year after year in preserving a spirit which united all the troops serving under him. Nevertheless, the men who deserted to the Romans remained completely loyal for the rest of the war both to Marcellus and to the generals who succeeded him.

  13. In the following year,63 after Marcellus had been elected consul for the third time, he sailed to Sicily. Hannibal’s successes in Italy had encouraged the Carthaginians to make another attempt to recover the island, especially as the affairs of Syracuse had been thrown into confusion after the death of the tyrant Hieronymus.64 Indeed, the situation there had already compelled the Romans to dispatch an army under the praetor Appius Claudius.65

  As soo
n as Marcellus had taken over the command of this force, great numbers of Romans, whose predicament I shall now describe, presented themselves at his camp to petition him. Of the Roman army which had faced Hannibal at Cannae, some had fled from the battlefield, while so many had been taken prisoner that it was believed that the Romans did not have enough men left to defend the walls of the capital. Yet in spite of this, the citizens’ resolve remained so firm and their spirit so unconquerable that although Hannibal offered to release his prisoners of war for a small ransom, the people voted against their return. Instead, they allowed some to be put to death and others to be sold into slavery outside Italy. As for the large numbers of survivors who had saved themselves by running away, they sent them to Sicily and forbade them to set foot again in Italy so long as the war against Hannibal lasted. These were the men who crowded around Marcellus as soon as he arrived, threw themselves at his feet and implored him with tears and lamentations to admit them once more to honourable military service: they swore they would prove by their actions that the defeat they had suffered had been caused by misfortune not by cowardice. Marcellus took pity on them and wrote to the senate asking for permission to enlist these men so as to make up the losses in his own army as they occurred. A lengthy debate followed, at the end of which the senate’s verdict was that the Romans did not need the services of cowards, but that if Marcellus nevertheless wished to employ them, they must not be awarded any of the usual honours or prizes for valour. This decree angered Marcellus, and when he returned to Rome after the end of the war in Sicily, he reproached the senate because they had not allowed him in consideration of his many great services to rescue this large body of citizens from their wretched situation.

  14. But to return to the campaign in Sicily. Marcellus was first of all confronted with an outrage committed by Hippocrates, a general of the Syracusans.66 This man, in order to secure the support of the Carthaginians and make himself tyrant, slaughtered many of the Romans living in Leontini, whereupon Marcellus stormed and captured the city.67 He did no harm to the native inhabitants, but ordered all the deserters whom he captured to be flogged and put to death.68 At this Hippocrates first sent a report to Syracuse that Marcellus was massacring all the men of Leontini, and when this rumour had created a panic in the city, he suddenly attacked and captured it. Marcellus responded by moving his whole army up to Syracuse. He encamped close by and sent envoys into the city to give the people the true account of what had happened at Leontini, but this manoeuvre proved ineffective and the Syracusans refused to listen, because Hippocrates and his supporters were now in control.

  Marcellus’ next action was to attack the city by land and sea simultaneously, the land forces being commanded by Appius, while Marcellus directed a fleet of sixty quinquiremes, which were equipped with many different kinds of weapons and missiles. In addition, he had built a siege-engine, which was mounted on a huge platform supported by eight galleys lashed together,69 and with this he sailed up to the city walls, confident that the size and the imposing spectacle of his armament, together with his personal prestige, would combine to overawe the Syracusans.

  But he had reckoned without Archimedes, and the Roman machines turned out to be insignificant not only in the philosopher’s estimation, but also by comparison with those which he had constructed himself. Archimedes did not regard his military inventions as an achievement of any importance, but merely as a by-product – which he occasionally pursued for his own amusement – of his serious work, namely, the study of geometry. He had done this in the past because Hiero, the former ruler of Syracuse, had often pressed and finally persuaded him to divert his studies from the pursuit of abstract principles to the solution of practical problems, and to make his theories more intelligible to the majority of mankind by applying them through the medium of the senses to the needs of everyday life.

  It was Eudoxus and Archytas70 who were the originators of the now celebrated and highly prized art of mechanics. They used it with great ingenuity to illustrate geometrical theorems, and to support propositions too intricate for proof by word or diagram by means of mechanical demonstrations easily grasped by the senses. For example, to solve the problem of finding two mean proportional lines, which are necessary for the construction of many other geometrical figures,71 both mathematicians resorted to mechanical means,72 and adapted to their purposes certain instruments that are essentially rulers that slide and bend and are thus able to construct conic sections. Plato was indignant at these developments, and attacked both men for having corrupted and destroyed the ideal purity of geometry.73 He complained that they had caused her to forsake the realm of disembodied and abstract thought for that of material objects, and to employ instruments which required much base and manual labour. For this reason mechanics came to be separated from geometry, and as the subject was for a long time disregarded by philosophers, it took its place among the military arts.

  However this may be, Archimedes in writing to Hiero, who was both a relative74 and a friend of his, asserted that with any given force it was possible to move any given weight, and then, carried away with enthusiasm at the power of his demonstration, so we are told, went on to enlarge his claim, and declared that if he were given another world to stand on, he could move the earth. Hiero was amazed, and invited him to put his theorem into practice and show him some great weight moved by a tiny force. Archimedes chose for his demonstration a three-masted merchantman of the royal fleet, which had been hauled ashore with immense labour by a large gang of men, and he proceeded to have the ship loaded with her usual freight and embarked a large number of passengers. He then seated himself at some distance away and without using any noticeable force, but merely exerting traction with his hand through a complex system of pulleys, he drew the vessel towards him with as smooth and even a motion as if she were gliding through the water. The king was deeply impressed, and recognizing the potentialities of his skill, he persuaded Archimedes to construct for him a number of engines designed both for attack and defence, which could be employed in any kind of siege-warfare. Hiero himself never had occasion to use these, since most of his life was spent at peace amid festivals and public ceremonies, but when the present war broke out, the apparatus was ready for the Syracusans to use and its inventor was at hand to direct its employment.

  15. When the Romans first attacked by sea and land, the Syracusans were struck dumb with terror and believed that nothing could resist the onslaught of such powerful forces. But presently Archimedes brought his engines to bear and launched a tremendous barrage against the Roman army. This consisted of a variety of missiles, including a great volley of stones which descended upon their target with an incredible noise and velocity. There was no protection against this artillery, and the soldiers were knocked down in swathes and their ranks thrown into confusion. At the same time huge beams were run out from the walls so as to project over the Roman ships; some of them were then sunk by great weights dropped from above, while others were seized at the bows by iron claws or by beaks like those of cranes, hauled into the air by means of counterweights until they stood upright upon their sterns, and then allowed to plunge to the bottom – or else they were spun round by means of windlasses situated inside the city and dashed against the steep cliffs and rocks which jutted out under the walls, with great loss of life to the crews. Often there would be seen the terrifying spectacle of a ship being lifted clean out of the water into the air and whirled about as it hung there, until every man had been shaken out of the hull and thrown in different directions, after which it would be dashed down empty upon the walls. As for the enormous siege-engine which Marcellus brought up, mounted on eight galleys as I have described, and known as a sambuca because of its resemblance to the musical instrument of that name,75 a stone weighing 10 talents76 was discharged while it was still approaching the city wall, immediately followed by a second and a third. These descended on their target with a thunderous crash and a great surge of water shattered the platform on which the machin
e was mounted, loosened the bolts which held it together and dislodged the whole framework from the hulks that supported it. Marcellus, finding his plan of attack thus brought to a standstill, drew off his ships as quickly as possible and ordered his land forces to retire.

  After this he held a council of war and formed a new plan to move up as closely as possible to the walls under cover of darkness. The Romans calculated that the cables which Archimedes used for his siege-engines imparted such a tremendous velocity to the missiles they discharged that these would go flying over their heads, but that at close quarters, where a low trajectory was required, they would be ineffective. However, Archimedes, it seems, had long ago foreseen such a possibility and had designed engines which were suitable for any distance and missiles to match them. He had had a large number of loopholes made in the walls, and in these he placed short-range weapons known as scorpions,77 which were invisible to the attacker, but could be discharged as soon as he arrived at close quarters.

  16. So when the Romans crept up to the walls expecting to surprise the enemy, they were again greeted by a hail of missiles. Huge stones were dropped on them almost perpendicularly, and it seemed as if they were faced by a curtain of darts along the whole length of the wall, so that the attackers soon fell back. But here, too, even while they were hurrying, as they hoped, out of danger, they came under fire from the medium-range catapults which caused heavy losses among them; at the same time, many of their ships were dashed against one another, and all this while they were helpless to retaliate. Archimedes had mounted most of his weapons under the cover of the city walls, and the Romans began to believe that they were fighting against a supernatural enemy, as they found themselves constantly struck down by opponents whom they could never see.