imes, who kept themselves
strictly to their rules of war: passion has a more absolute command over
us than reason; and yet it happened in the war against Hannibal, that by
the example of the people of Rome in the city, the soldiers and captains
refused their pay in the army, and in Marcellus' camp those were branded
with the name of Mercenaries who would receive any. Having got the worst
of it near Dyrrachium, his soldiers came and offered themselves to be
chastised and punished, so that there was more need to comfort than
reprove them. One single cohort of his withstood four of Pompey's
legions above four hours together, till they were almost all killed with
arrows, so that there were a hundred and thirty thousand shafts found in
the trenches. A soldier called Scaeva, who commanded at one of the
avenues, invincibly maintained his ground, having lost an eye, with one
shoulder and one thigh shot through, and his shield hit in two hundred
and thirty places. It happened that many of his soldiers being taken
prisoners, rather chose to die than promise to join the contrary side.
Granius Petronius was taken by Scipio in Africa: Scipio having put the
rest to death, sent him word that he gave him his life, for he was a man
of quality and quaestor, to whom Petronius sent answer back, that
Caesar's soldiers were wont to give others their life, and not to receive
it; and immediately with his own hand killed himself.

Of their fidelity there are infinite examples amongst them, that which
was done by those who were besieged in Salona, a city that stood for
Caesar against Pompey, is not, for the rarity of an accident that there
happened, to be forgotten. Marcus Octavius kept them close besieged;
they within being reduced to the extremest necessity of all things, so
that to supply the want of men, most of them being either slain or
wounded, they had manumitted all their slaves, and had been constrained
to cut off all the women's hair to make ropes for their war engines,
besides a wonderful dearth of victuals, and yet continuing resolute never
to yield. After having drawn the siege to a great length, by which
Octavius was grown more negligent and less attentive to his enterprise,
they made choice of one day about noon, and having first placed the women
and children upon the walls to make a show, sallied upon the besiegers
with such fury, that having routed the first, second, and third body, and
afterwards the fourth, and the rest,