Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/23

13 Imaginary (Conversation 13 SCIPIO. Great authority ! and perhaps, as living and conversing with those who remembered the action of Cannae, preferable even to your own. POLYBIUS. It was his opinion that, from the consternation of Rome, the city might have been taken. SCIPIO. It suited not the wisdom or the experience of Hannibal to rely on the consternation of the Roman people. I too, that we may be on equal terms, have some authority to bring forward. The son of Africanus, he who adopted me into the family of the ScipioSj was, as you both remember, a man of delicate health and sedentary habits, learned, elegant, and retired. He related to me, as having heard it from his father, that Hannibal after the battle sent home the rings of the Roman knights, and said in his letter. If you will instantly give me a soldier for each ring^ together with such machines as are already in the arsenal^ I will replace them surmounted by a statue of Capitoline Jupiter^ and our supplications to the gods of our country shall be made along the streets and in the temples on the robes of the Roman senate. Could he doubt of so moderate a supply ? he waited for it in vain* And now I will relate to you another thing, which I am persuaded you will accept as a sufficient reason of itself why Hannibal did not besiege our city after the battle of Cannae. His own loss was so severe, that, in his whole army, he could not muster ten thousand men^. But, my friends, as I am certain that neither of you will ever think me invidious, and as the greatness of Hannibal does not diminish the reputation of Africanus, but augment it, I will venture to remark that he had little skill or prac- tice in sieges ; that, after the battle of Thrasymene, he attacked (you remember) Spoletum unsuccessfully ; and that, a short time before the vmhappy day at Cannae, a much smaller town than Spoletum had resisted and repulsed him. 3 Plutarch says, and undoubtedly upon some ancient authority, that both armies did not contain that number.