§23.45.1proelium erat anceps: summa vi et duces hortabantur et milites pugnabant.
The battle was undecided; both the generals encouraged with their utmost strength and the soldiers fought.
Marcellus victis ante diem tertium, fugatis ante paucos dies a Cumis, pulsis priore anno ab Nola ab eodem se duce, milite alio, instare iubet.
Marcellus ordered his men to press hard upon those who had been defeated three days before, put to flight from Cumae a few days before, and driven from Nola the previous year by himself as the same general, though with other soldiers.
§23.45.2non omnis esse in acie; praedantis vagari in agris; et qui pugnent, marcere Campana luxuria, vino et scortis omnibusque lustris per totam hiemem confectos.
He said that not all of them were in the battle line; that those who were plundering were wandering in the fields; and that those who were fighting were sluggish, exhausted by Campanian luxury, wine, prostitutes, and all kinds of debauchery through the whole winter.
§23.45.3abisse illam vim vigoremque, dilapsa esse robora corporum animorumque, quibus Pyrenaei Alpiumque superata sint iuga.
That strength and vigor, by which the peaks of the Pyrenees and the Alps had been overcome, had departed, and the robustness of their bodies and minds had melted away.
reliquias illorum virorum vix arma membraque sustinentis pugnare.
It was only the remnants of those men, scarcely supporting their weapons and limbs, who were fighting.
Capuam Hannibali Cannas fuisse.
Capua had been a Cannae to Hannibal.
§23.45.4ibi virtutem bellicam, ibi militarem disciplinam, ibi praeteriti temporis famam, ibi spem futuri extinctam.
There their warlike valor, there their military discipline, there the glory of the past, there the hope of the future had been extinguished.
§23.45.5cum haec exprobrando hosti Marcellus suorum militum animos erigeret, Hannibal multo gravioribus probris increpabat: §23.45.6arma signaque eadem se noscere, quae ad Trebiam Trasumennumque, postremo ad Cannas viderit habueritque; militem alium profecto se in hiberna Capuam duxisse, alium inde eduxisse.
While Marcellus was raising the spirits of his soldiers by thus reproaching the enemy, Hannibal was chiding his own men with much more severe reproaches: He recognized the same weapons and standards which he had seen and possessed at the Trebia, at Trasumennus, and lastly at Cannae; but the soldiers he had led into winter quarters at Capua were surely different from those he had led out of there.
§23.45.7“legatumne Romanum et legionis unius atque alae magno certamine vix toleratis pugnam, quos binae acies consulares numquam sustinuerunt?
“Are you, whom two consular armies could never withstand, now scarcely enduring in a great struggle the battle of a Roman lieutenant and of a single legion and an ala?
§23.45.8Marcellus tirone milite ac Nolanis subsidiis inultus nos iam iterum lacessit? ubi ille miles meus est, qui derepto ex equo C. Flaminio consuli caput abstulit? ubi, qui L. Paulum ad Cannas occidit?
Is Marcellus, with raw soldiers and Nolan reserves, now provoking us a second time with impunity? Where is that soldier of mine who, having dragged the consul Gaius Flaminius from his horse, cut off his head? Where is he who slew Lucius Paulus at Cannae?
§23.45.9ferrum nunc hebet? an dextrae torpent? an quid prodigii est aliud? qui pauci plures vincere soliti estie, nunc paucis plures vix restatis? Romam vos expugnaturos, si quis duceret, fortes lingua iactabatis;
Is your iron now blunt? Or are your right hands numb? Or is there some other prodigy? You who, being few, were accustomed to conquer many, do you now, being many, scarcely withstand a few? You used to boast, brave in tongue, that you would storm Rome if anyone would lead you.
§23.45.10en in minore re experiri vim virtutemque volo: expugnate Nolam, campestrem urbem, non flumine, non mari saeptam.
Behold, I wish to test your strength and valor in a smaller matter: storm Nola, a city in a plain, enclosed neither by river nor by sea.
hinc vos ex tam opulenta urbe praeda spoliisque onustos vel ducam, quo voletis, vel sequar. ”
From here, loaded with booty and spoils from so rich a city, I will either lead you wherever you wish, or I will follow you.”