Kitap 26
13
"Now look at the other side, consider their determined hostility to us and see if you have anything to hope for. Though there was a foreign enemy on Italian soil, and that enemy Hannibal, though the flames of war were being kindled in every quarter, they neglected everything, even Hannibal himself, and sent both the consuls, each with an army, to Capua. For two years now have they hemmed us in with their lines of circumvallation, and are wearing us down with famine. They have endured as much as we have in the extremity of peril, the utmost severity of toil; often have they been slaughtered about their entrenchments, and all but driven out of them. But I pass over these things; the labours and dangers of a siege are an old and common experience. But to show their rage and implacable hatred against us I will remind you of these incidents: Hannibal assaulted their lines with an enormous force of infantry and cavalry, and partly captured them, but they did not raise the siege; he crossed the Volturnus and desolated the district of Calenum with fire; the sufferings of their allies failed to call off the Romans; he ordered a general advance on Rome itself, they disregarded the threatening storm; he crossed the Anio and encamped within three miles of the City, and at last rode up to its walls and gates and made as though he would take their city from them if they did not loose their hold on Capua; they did not loose their hold. When wild beasts are mad with rage you can still divert their blind fury by approaching their lairs and young ones which they will hasten to defend. The Romans were not diverted from Capua by the prospect of their city being besieged, or by the terrified cries of their wives and children which could almost be heard here, or by the threatened desecration of their hearths and altars, of the shrines of their gods and the tombs of their ancestors. So eager are they to visit us with punishment, so greedily do they thirst for our blood. And, perhaps, rightly; we should have done the same had fortune favoured us.
