Book 26
2
"Now no man, when he is going to vote, takes sufficient trouble to find out what sort of a man it is to whom he is entrusting the supreme command of the army. Think of the difference between Tiberius Sempronius and Cn. Fulvius. Tiberius Sempronius had an army of slaves given to him, but in a short time, thanks to the discipline he maintained and the wise use he made of his authority, there was not a man amongst them who when he was in the field of battle gave a thought to his birth or his condition. Those men were a protection to our allies and a terror to our enemies. They snatched, as though from the very jaws of Hannibal, cities like Cumae and Beneventum and restored them to Rome. Cn. Fulvius, on the other hand, had an army of Roman citizens, born of respectable parents, brought up as free men, and he infected them with the vices of slaves, and made them such that they were insolent and riotous amongst our allies, weaklings and cowards in face of the enemy; they could not stand even the war-cry of the Carthaginians, let alone their charge. Good heavens! no wonder the soldiers gave ground, when their commander was the first to run away; the wonder is that any stood their ground and fell, and that all did not accompany Cn. Fulvius in his panic and flight. C. Flaminius, L. Paulus, L. Postumius, and the two Scipios, Cnaeus and Publius, all chose to fall in battle rather than desert their armies, when they were hemmed in by the foe. Cn. Fulvius came back to Rome as the all-but solitary herald of the annihilation of his army. After the army had fled from the field of Cannae it was deported to Sicily, not to return till the enemy had evacuated Italy, and a similar decree was recently passed in the case of Fulvius' legions. But, shame to relate, the commander himself remained unpunished after his flight from a battle brought on by his own headstrong folly; he is free to pass the rest of his life where he passed it in youth-in stews and brothels-whilst his soldiers, whose only fault is that they copied their commander, are practically sent into exile and have to undergo a service of disgrace. So unequal are the liberties enjoyed in Rome by the rich and the poor, the men of rank and the men of the people."
