Latin Texts & Translations

ch. 58.5On their arrival in Rome, the senate assembled in the Capitol and granted them an audience. T. Manlius, the consul, acting on the instructions of the senate, recommended them not to make war upon the Samnites, with whom the Romans had a treaty, on which Annius, as though he were a conqueror who had captured the Capitol by arms instead of an ambassador protected by the law of nations, said:

It is about time, Titus Manlius and senators, that you gave up treating us as though you were our suzerains, when you see the State of Latium raised by the bounty of the gods to a most flourishing position, both in population and in military power, the Samnites defeated, the Sidicines and Campanians in alliance with us, even the Volscians now making common cause with us, whilst your own colonies actually prefer the government of Latium to that of Rome. But since you cannot bring your minds to abandon your impudent claims to sovereignty, we will go so far, in recognising that we are kindred nations, as to offer peace upon the conditions of equal rights for both, since it has pleased the gods to grant equal strength to both; though we are quite able to assert the independence of Latium by force of arms. One consul must be elected from Rome, the other from Latium; the senate must contain an equal number of members from both nations; there must be one nation, one republic. And in order that there may be one seat of govern- ment and one name for all, since one side or the other must make some concession, let us, if this City really takes pre- cedence, be all called Romans. It so happened that the Romans had in their consul T. Manlius, a man who was quite as proud and passionate as Annius. He was so enraged as to declare that if the senate were visited by such madness as to accept these conditions from a man from Setia, he would come with his sword drawn into the Senate- house and kill every Latin he found there. Then turning to the image of Jupiter, he exclaimed: Hear, O Jupiter, these abominable words! Hear them, O Justice and Right! Thou, Jupiter, as though thou hadst been conquered and made cap- tive, art to see in thy temple foreign consuls and a foreign senate! Were these the terms of the treaty, Latins, which Tullus, the King of Rome, made with your fathers of Alba, or which L. Tarquin made with you afterwards? Have you forgotten the battle at Lake Regillus? Are you so utterly oblivious of your defeats in the old days and of our kindness towards you?

This outburst was followed by the indignant protest of the senate, and it is recorded that whilst on all hands appeals were being made to the gods, whom the consuls were continually in- voking as the guardians of treaties, the voice of Annius was heard pouring contempt upon the divine majesty of the Jupiter of Rome. At all events when, in a storm of passion he was flinging himself out of the vestibule of the temple, he slipped down the steps and struck his head so heavily against the bottom step that he became unconscious. The authorities are not agreed as to whether he was actually killed, and I leave the question undecided, as also the statement that during the appeals to the gods to avenge the breach of treaties, a storm burst from the sky with a terrific roar; for they may either be true or simply invented as an appropriate representation of the wrath of the gods.

Torquatus was sent by the senate to conduct the envoys away, and when he saw Annius lying on the ground he exclaimed, loud enough to be heard by the senators and populace alike: It is well. The gods have commenced a just and righteous war! There is a divine power at work; thou, O Great Jupiter, art here . Not in vain have we consecrated this to be thine abode, O Father of gods and men . Why do you hesitate, Quirites, and you, senators, to take up arms when the gods are your leaders? I will lay the legions of the Latins low, just as you see their envoy lying here.

The consul's words were received by the people with loud applause and raised them to such a pitch of excitement that when the envoys took their departure they owed their safety more to the care of the magistrates who, on the consul's order, accompanied them to protect them from the attacks of the angry people than to any respect felt for the law of nations.

War having been decided upon by senate as much as people, the consuls enrolled two armies and proceeded through the territories of the Marsi and Paeligni, where they were joined by an army of Samnites. They fixed their camp at Capua, where the Latins and their allies had assembled. It is said that whilst they were there each consul had the same vision in the quiet of the night. A Form greater and more awful than any human form appeared to them and announced that the com- mander of the one army and the army itself on the other side were destined as a sacrifice to the Dii Manes and to Mother Earth. In whichever army the commander should have de- voted the legions of his enemies and himself as well to those deities, that army, that people would have the victory. When the consuls compared these visions of the night together, they decided that victims should be slain to avert the wrath of the gods, and further, that if, on inspection, they should portend the same as the vision had announced, one of the two consuls should fulfill his destiny. When the answers of the soothsayers, after they had inspected the victims, proved to correspond with their own secret belief in the vision, they called up the superior officers and told them to explain publicly to the soldiers what the gods had decreed, in order that the voluntary death of a consul might not create a panic in the army. They arranged with each other that when either division began to give way, the consul in command of it should devote himself on behalf of the Roman people and the Quirites. The council of war also decided that if ever any war had been conducted with the strict enforcement of orders, on this occasion certainly, military discipline should be brought back to the ancient standard. Their anxiety was increased by the fact that it was against the Latins that they had to fight, a people resembling them in language, manners, arms, and especially in their military organisation. They had been colleagues and comrades, as soldiers, centurions, and tribunes, often stationed together in the same posts and side by side in the same maniples. That this might not prove a source of error and confusion, orders were given that no one was to leave his post to fight with the enemy.