Kitap 21
53
To no one in the whole army did the victory appear more important or more decisive than to the consul himself. What gave him especial pleasure was that he had proved superior in that arm in which his colleague had been worsted. He saw that the spirits of his men were restored, and that there was no one but his colleague who wished to delay battle; he believed that Scipio was more sick in mind than in body, and that the thought of his wound made him shrink from the dangers of the battlefield. "But we must not be infected by a sick man's lethargy. What will be gained by further delay, or rather, by wasting time? Whom are we expecting as our third consul; what fresh army are we looking for? The camp of the Carthaginians is in Italy, almost in sight of the City. They are not aiming at Sicily and Sardinia, which they lost after their defeats, nor the Spain which lies on this side the Ebro; their sole object is to drive the Romans away from their ancestral soil, from the land on which they were born. What groans our fathers would utter, accustomed as they were to warring round the walls of Carthage, if they could see us, their descendants, with two consuls and two consular armies, cowering in our camp in the very heart of Italy, whilst the Carthaginian is annexing to his empire all between the Alps and the Apennines." This was the way he spoke when sitting by his incapacitated colleague, this the language he used before his soldiers as though he were haranguing the Assembly. He was urged on, too, by the near approach of the time for the elections, and the fear that the war, if delayed, might pass into the hands of the new consuls, as well as by the chance he had of monopolising all the glory of it while his colleague was on the sick list. In spite, therefore, of the opposition of Cornelius he ordered the soldiers to get ready for the coming battle.
