. And as to
those towns which you do defend, you must so arrange, both in respect of
the garrison within and the army without, that in the event of a siege
your whole forces can be employed. All other towns you must leave
undefended. For, provided your army be kept together, you do not, in
losing what you voluntarily abandon, forfeit your military reputation,
or sacrifice your hopes of final success. But when you lose what it was
your purpose, and what all know it was your purpose to hold, you suffer
a real loss and injury, and, like the Gauls on the defeat of their
champion, you are ruined by a mishap of no moment in itself.

Philip of Macedon, the father of Perseus, a great soldier in his day,
and of a great name, on being invaded by the Romans, laid waste and
relinquished much of his territory which he thought he could not defend;
rightly judging it more hurtful to his reputation to lose territory
after an attempt to defend it, than to abandon it to the enemy as
something he cared little to retain. So, likewise, after the battle of
Cannae, when their affairs were at their worst, the Romans refused aid to
many subject and protected States, charging them to defend themselves as
best they could. And this is a better course than to undertake to defend
and then to fail; for by refusing to defend, you lose only your friend;
whereas in failing, you not only lose your friend, but weaken yourself.

But to return to the matter in hand, I affirm, that even when a captain
is constrained by inexperience of his enemy to make trial of him by
means of skirmishes, he ought first to see that he has so much the
advantage that he runs no risk of defeat; or else, and this is his
better course, he must do as Marius did when sent against the Cimbrians,
a very courageous people who were laying Italy waste, and by their
fierceness and numbers, and from the fact of their having already routed
a Roman army, spreading terror wherever they came. For before fighting
a decisive battle, Marius judged it necessary to do something to lessen
the dread in which these enemies were held by his army; and being a
prudent commander, he, on several occasions, posted his men at points
where the Cimbrians must pass, that seeing and growing familiar with
their appearance, while themselves in safety and within the shelter of
their intrenched camp, and finding them to be a mere disorderly rabble,
encumbered with baggage, and either without weapons, or with none t