t without a garrison.
Assemblages of the multitude at the gates were forbidden; onlookers
and women were sent to their houses; the time of mourning for the
fallen was restricted to thirty days that the service of the gods of
joy, from which those clad in mourning attire were excluded, might
not be too long interrupted--for so great was the number of the
fallen, that there was scarcely a family which had not to lament its
dead. Meanwhile the remnant saved from the field of battle had been
assembled by two able military tribunes, Appius Claudius and Publius
Scipio the younger, at Canusium. The latter managed, by his lofty
spirit and by the brandished swords of his faithful comrades, to
change the views of those genteel young lords who, in indolent despair
of the salvation of their country, were thinking of escape beyond the
sea. The consul Gaius Varro joined them with a handful of men; about
two legions were gradually collected there; the senate gave orders
that they should be reorganized and reduced to serve in disgrace and
without pay. The incapable general was on a suitable pretext recalled
to Rome; the praetor Marcus Claudius Marcellus, experienced in the
Gallic wars, who had been destined to depart for Sicily with the fleet
from Ostia, assumed the chief command. The utmost exertions were made
to organize an army capable of taking the field. The Latins were
summoned to render aid in the common peril. Rome itself set the
example, and called to arms all the men above boyhood, armed the
debtor-serfs and criminals, and even incorporated in the army eight
thousand slaves purchased by the state. As there was a want of arms,
they took the old spoils from the temples, and everywhere set the
workshops and artisans in action. The senate was completed, not as
timid patriots urged, from the Latins, but from the Roman burgesses
who had the best title. Hannibal offered a release of captives at the
expense of the Roman treasury; it was declined, and the Carthaginian
envoy who had arrived with the deputation of captives was not admitted
into the city: nothing should look as if the senate thought of peace.
Not only were the allies to be prevented from believing that Rome was
disposed to enter into negotiations, but even the meanest citizen was
to be made to understand that for him as for all there was no peace,
and that safety lay only in victory.

Notes for Chapter V

1. Polybius's account of the battle on the Tre