History of Rome

​On the following day, a crowded meeting of the senate was granted to Hannibal. There his first speech was very flattering and kind, in which he thanked the Campanians for having preferred friendship with him to their alliance with Rome, ​and among other magnificent promises, he promised that Capua would shortly be the capital of all Italy, and that from there even the Roman people, along with the other nations, would seek their laws.

​He said that there was one man excluded from the Punic friendship and the treaty made with himself, who neither ought to be a Campanian nor be called one, namely Decius Magius; and he demanded that this man be surrendered to him, and that in his own presence a reference be made concerning him and a decree of the senate passed.

​All went over to this opinion, although to a large part of them it seemed both that the man was undeserving of such a calamity, and that by no small beginning the right of liberty was being infringed.

​Having gone out of the senate-house, he took his seat in the temple of the magistrates, and ordered Decius Magius to be arrested and, being placed before his feet, to plead his cause.

​Since he, with his fierce spirit remaining, denied that this could be compelled by the law of the treaty, chains were then thrown upon him, and he was ordered to be led into the camp ahead of a lictor.

​As long as he was led with his head uncovered, he proceeded speaking like an orator to the multitude gathered around from all sides, crying out: “You have the liberty, Campanians, which you sought; in the middle of the forum, in broad daylight, before your very eyes, I, second to none of the Campanians, am dragged in chains to death.

​What more violent thing could be done if Capua were captured? Go to meet Hannibal, decorate the city and consecrate the day of his arrival, so that you may watch this triumph over your own fellow-citizen!”

​As he was vociferating this and the common people seemed to be moved, his head was covered, and he was ordered to be dragged more quickly outside the gate.

​Thus he was brought into the camp; and immediately placed on board a ship and sent to Carthage, lest, some disturbance having arisen in Capua from the indignity of the business, the senate also might repent of having surrendered their leading citizen, and, an embassy having been sent to demand him back, they would either have to offend their new allies by refusing the very first thing they asked, or, by granting it, would have to keep in Capua a promoter of sedition and disturbances.

​A storm carried the ship to Cyrene, which was then under the dominion of kings. There, when Magius had fled for refuge to a statue of King Ptolemy, he was conveyed by guards to Alexandrea to Ptolemy, ​where, after he had shown him that he had been bound by Hannibal contrary to the law of the treaty, he was freed from his chains, and permission was granted him to return, whether he preferred to Rome or to Capua. But Magius said that Capua was not safe for him, ​and that Rome, at a time when there was war between the Romans and the Campanians, would be the abode of a deserter rather than of a guest; that he wished to live nowhere rather than in the kingdom of him whom he regarded as the champion and author of his liberty.