Kitap 26
13
"Heaven, however, has ordered otherwise, and so, though I am bound to meet my death in any case, I can, whilst I am still free, escape the insults and the tortures which the enemy is preparing for me, I can dispose of myself by a death as peaceful as it is honourable. I refuse to look upon Appius Claudius and Q. Fulvius exulting in all the insolence of victory; I refuse to be dragged in chains through the streets of Rome to grace their triumph, and then in the dungeon or bound to the stake, with my back torn with the scourge, pass under the headsman's axe. I will not see my city plundered and burnt, and the matrons and maidens and noble boys of Capua ravished and outraged. Alba, the mother city of Rome, was rased by the Romans to its foundations in order that no memorial of their origin and of the stock whence they sprung might survive; much less can I believe that they will spare Capua which they hate more bitterly than they hate Carthage. So, for those of you who intend to meet your fate before you witness all these horrors I have prepared a banquet today at my house. When you have taken your fill of food and wine, the same goblet that is handed to me will be passed round to you. That draught will free our bodies from torture, our spirits from insult, our eyes and ears from seeing and hearing all the suffering and outrage which await the vanquished. Men will be in readiness to place our lifeless bodies on a vast pile which will be kindled in the court-yard of the house. This is the only path to death which is honourable and worthy of free men. Even the enemy will admire our courage, and Hannibal will know that the allies whom he has abandoned and betrayed were, after all, brave men."
