History of Rome

​When he made an end, immediately a tearful cry was raised by that crowd which was in the comitium, and they stretched out their hands toward the senate house, praying that they would restore to them their children, brothers, and kinsmen.

​Fear and necessity had also mingled the women in the forum with the crowd of men. The senate began to be consulted, after the spectators had been removed.

​There, while opinions varied, and some thought that they should be ransomed at public expense, others that no public expense should be made, but that they should not be prohibited from being ransomed from private funds, ​and that, if money was lacking to any at present, loan money should be given from the treasury, and security should be given to the state by sureties and estates, ​then Titus Manlius Torquatus, a man of ancient and, as it seems to most, too harsh severity, being asked his opinion, is reported to have spoken thus:

”If the envoys had only petitioned on behalf of those who are in the power of the enemy, that they might be ransomed, I would have completed my opinion in brief without censure of any of them;

​for what else was there than that you should be admonished to preserve the custom handed down by your fathers as a necessary example for military discipline? But now, since they have almost boasted of having surrendered themselves to the enemy, and have thought it right that they should be preferred not only to those captured in battle by the enemy, but also to those who reached Venusia and Canusium, and even to the consul Gaius Terentius himself, I will suffer you to be ignorant of nothing, conscript fathers, of what was done there.

​And would that I were discussing these things, which I am about to discuss before you, at Canusium in the presence of the army itself, the best witness of each man’s cowardice and courage, or at least that this one man, Publius Sempronius, were present, whom if they had followed as leader, they would today be soldiers in a Roman camp, not prisoners in the power of the enemy.

​But when, since the enemy were exhausted by fighting and then joyful with victory, and most of them indeed had returned to their camp, they had a night free for breaking through, and seven thousand armed men could break through even through the dense ranks of the enemy, they neither attempted to do this by themselves nor wished to follow another.

​During almost the entire night, Publius Sempronius Tuditanus did not cease to advise and exhort them, while the small number of the enemy around the camp permitted, while there was quiet and silence, while the night could cover their undertaking, to follow him as leader: that they could reach safe places, the cities of the allies, before dawn.

​If, as in the memory of our grandfathers the military tribune Publius Decius did in Samnium, if, as when we were youths in the first Punic War Calpurnius Flamma said to three hundred volunteers when he was leading them to capture a hill situated in the midst of the enemy: ‘Let us die, soldiers, ​and by our death let us rescue the surrounded legions from siege,’ if Publius Sempronius had said this, indeed I would not have considered you either men or Romans, if no companion of such great courage had stood forth.

​He shows a path leading not to glory more than to safety; he makes you return to your country, to your parents, to your wives and children. That you may be saved, courage is lacking to you.”