ess no native strength. The soldiers they have are
obtained by hire;--Africans and Numidians--people remarkable above
all others for the inconstancy of their attachments. Provided no
impediment arises here, you will hear at once that I have landed, and
that Africa is blazing with war; that Hannibal is preparing for his
departure from this country, and that Carthage is besieged. Expect
more frequent and more joyful despatches from Africa than you received
from Spain. The considerations on which I ground my anticipations are
the good fortune of the Roman people, the gods, the witnesses of the
treaty violated by the enemy, the kings Syphax and Masinissa; on whose
fidelity I will rely in such a manner as that I may be secure from
danger should they prove perfidious. Many things which are not now
apparent, at this distance, the war will develope; and it is the
part of a man, and a general, not to be wanting when fortune presents
itself, and to bend its events to his designs. I shall, Quintus
Fabius, have the opponent you assign me, Hannibal; but I shall rather
draw him after me than be kept here by him. I will compel him to fight
in his own country, and Carthage shall be the prize of victory rather
than the half-ruined forts of the Bruttians. With regard to providing
that the state sustain no injury in the mean time, while I am crossing
over, while I am landing my troops in Africa, while I am advancing
my camp to the walls of Carthage; be not too sure that it is not an
insult to Publius Licinius, the consul, a man of consummate valour,
who did not draw lots for so distant a province merely that, as he was
chief pontiff, he might not be absent from religious affairs, to
say that he is unable to do that, now that the power of Hannibal is
shaken, and in a manner shattered, which you Quintus Fabius, were
able to effect when he was flying victorious throughout all Italy.
By Hercules, even if the war would not be more speedily terminated by
adopting the plan I propose, yet it were consistent with the dignity
of the Roman people, and the high character they enjoy with foreign
kings and nations, to appear to have had spirit not only to defend
Italy, but also to carry hostilities into Africa; and that it should
not be supposed and spread abroad that no Roman general dared what
Hannibal had dared; that in the former Punic war, when the contest was
about Sicily, Africa should have been so often attacked by our fleets
and armies, and tha