History of Rome

​At the beginning of that year, when the matter of Lucius Marcius’s letter was referred to the senate, his achievements seemed splendid to them; but his title of honor, because he had written “the propraetor to the senate,” though command had been given to him neither by the order of the people nor by the authority of the fathers, offended a great part of the men.

​For they thought that it was a matter of bad precedent for generals to be chosen by armies, and for the solemn rite of holding assemblies with auspices to be transferred to military rashness in camps and provinces, far from the laws and magistrates.

​And although some thought that the matter should be referred to the senate, it seemed better that this consultation should be postponed until the horsemen who had brought the letter from Marcius had departed.

​It was resolved that a reply should be written concerning the grain and clothing of the army, and that both of these matters would be a care to the senate; however, it was not resolved that “to the propraetor Lucius Marcius” should be added to the address, lest the reply itself should convey as already decided that very matter which they had left for consultation.

​Once the horsemen had been dismissed, the consuls brought forward no business before this, and the opinions of all agreed on one point: that they must treat with the tribunes of the plebs, so that they might propose to the plebs at the very first opportunity whom it pleased them should be sent with command to Spain to that army which the general Gnaeus Scipio had commanded.

​This matter was transacted with the tribunes and published. But another struggle had occupied their minds.

​Gaius Sempronius Blaesus, having appointed a day for trial, harassed Gnaeus Fulvius in public assemblies on account of the army lost in Apulia, repeatedly asserting that many generals through rashness and ignorance had led their armies into precarious places, ​but that no one before Gnaeus Fulvius had corrupted his own legions with every vice before he betrayed them. And so, it could truly be said that they had perished before they saw the enemy, and had been conquered not by Hannibal, but by their own general.

​No one, when he enters to cast his vote, sufficiently perceives to whom he is entrusting command and to whom the army. What difference had there been between Tiberius Sempronius and Gnaeus Fulvius?

​Tiberius Sempronius, when an army of slaves had been given to him, had in a short time brought it about by discipline and command that no one of them was mindful of his descent and blood in the battle-line, and that they were a protection to the allies and a terror to the enemy; and they restored to the Roman people Cumae, Beneventum, and other cities snatched as if from the jaws of Hannibal.

​But Gnaeus Fulvius had imbued an army of Roman citizens, honorably born and liberally educated, with slavish vices. Therefore, he had brought it about that they were fierce and restless among the allies, cowardly and unwarlike among the enemy, and could not withstand not only the attack of the Carthaginians, but not even their shout.

​Nor, by Hercules, was it any wonder that the soldiers had given way in the battle-line, since the general was the first of all to flee;

​he wondered rather that some had fallen standing, and that all had not been Gnaeus Fulvius’s companions of fear and flight. Gaius Flaminius, Lucius Paulus, Lucius Postumius, and Gnaeus and Publius Scipio had preferred to fall in battle rather than desert their surrounded armies;

​Gnaeus Fulvius had returned to Rome almost as the sole messenger of the destroyed army. It was a scandalous thing that the army of Cannae, because it had fled from the battle-line, had been transported to Sicily, not to be discharged from there before the enemy should depart from Italy, and that this same measure had recently been decreed for the legions of Gnaeus Fulvius;

​while for Gnaeus Fulvius himself, his flight from a battle committed by his own rashness went unpunished, and he, in eating-houses and brothels where he spent his youth, ​would spend his old age, while the soldiers, who had sinned in nothing else than that they had been like their general, banished almost into exile, suffered a shameful military service; so unequal was liberty in Rome for the rich and the poor, the honored and the unhonored.