there were no flowery passages, no empty graces of style, but there was
a plain common sense peculiar to himself, and a depth of sententious
maxims which is said to have resembled Thucydides. One of his speeches
is extant, a funeral oration which he made in public over his son who
died after he had been consul.

II. He was consul five times, and in his first consulship obtained a
triumph over the Ligurians. They were defeated by him and driven with
great loss to take refuge in the Alps, and thus were prevented from
ravaging the neighbouring parts of Italy as they had been wont to do.
When Hannibal invaded Italy, won his first battle at the Trebia, and
marched through Etruria, laying everything waste as he went, the Romans
were terribly disheartened and cast down, and terrible prodigies took
place, some of the usual kind, that is, by lightning, and others of an
entirely new and strange character. It was said that shields of their
own accord became drenched with blood: that at Antium standing corn bled
when it was cut by the reapers; that red-hot stones fell from heaven,
and that the sky above Falerii was seen to open and tablets to fall, on
one of which was written the words "Mars is shaking his arms."

None of these omens had any effect upon Caius Flaminius, the consul,
for, besides his naturally spirited and ambitious nature, he was excited
by the successes which he had previously won, contrary to all reasonable
probability. Once, against the express command of the Senate, and in
spite of the opposition of his colleague, he engaged with the Gauls and
won a victory over them. Fabius also was but little disturbed by the
omens, because of their strange and unintelligible character, though
many were alarmed at them. Knowing how few the enemy were in numbers,
and their great want of money and supplies, he advised the Romans not
to offer battle to a man who had at his disposal an army trained by many
previous encounters to a rare pitch of perfection, but rather to send
reinforcements to their allies, keep a tight hand over their subject
cities, and allow Hannibal's brilliant little force to die away like a
lamp which flares up brightly with but little oil to sustain it.

III. This reasoning had no effect upon Flaminius, who said that he would
not endure to see an enemy marching upon Rome, and would not, like
Camillus of old, fight in the streets of Rome herself. He ordered the
military tribunes to put the army in motion, a