Kitap 23
7
The envoys came to Hannibal and negotiated a peace with him on the following terms: No Carthaginian commander or magistrate was to have any jurisdiction over the citizens of Capua nor was any Campanian citizen to be obliged to serve in any military or other capacity against his will; Capua was to retain its own magistrates and its own laws; and the Carthaginian was to allow them to choose three hundred Romans out of his prisoners of war whom they were to exchange for the Campanian troopers who were serving in Sicily. These were the terms agreed upon, but the Campanians went far beyond the stipulations in their criminal excesses. The populace seized officers in command of our allies and other Roman citizens, some whilst occupied with their military duties, others whilst engaged in their private business, and ordered them to be shut up in the baths on the presence of keeping them in safe custody; unable to breathe owing to the heat and fumes they died in great agony. Decius Magius was a man who, if his fellow-citizens had been rational, would have gained very great authority with them. He did his best to prevent these crimes and to stop the envoys from going to Hannibal. When he heard that troops were being sent by Hannibal to garrison the city, he protested most earnestly against their being admitted and referred, as warning examples, to the tyranny of Pyrrhus and the wretched servitude into which the Tarentines fell. After they were admitted he urged that they should be expelled, or what was better, if the Capuans wished to clear themselves by a deed which would be remembered from their guilt in revolting from ancient allies and blood-relations, let them put the Carthaginian garrison to death and be once more friends with Rome.
