.At the beginning of the year a despatch from L. Marcius was laid before the senate. The senators fully appreciated the successful way in which he had conducted his operations, but a good many of them were indignant at the honorific title he had assumed. [2] The superscription of the letter was "The propraetor to the senate," though the imperium had not been conferred upon him by an order of the people nor with the sanction of the senate. An evil precedent had been set, they said, when a commander was chosen by his army, and the solemn procedure at elections, after the auspices were duly taken, [3??] was transferred to camps and provinces far away from the magistrates and the laws, and left to the caprice of the soldiers. [4] Some thought the senate ought to take the matter up, but it was thought better to adjourn the consideration of it until the horsemen who had brought the despatch had left the City. With regard to the food and clothing of the army, they ordered a reply to be sent to the effect that both these matters would be attended to by the senate. [5] They refused, however, to allow the despatch to be addressed "To the propraetor L. Marcius," lest it should appear that the question which was to be discussed had been prejudged. After the messengers had been dismissed the consuls gave this question priority over everything else, and it was unanimously agreed that the tribunes should consult the plebs as soon as possible as to whom they wished to have sent [6??] to Spain with the imperium as commander-in-chief to take over the army which Cn. Scipio had commanded. [7] The tribunes undertook to do so, and due notice of the question was given to the Assembly. But the citizens were preoccupied with a controversy of a very different nature. C. Sempronius Blaesus had fixed a day for bringing Cn. Fulvius to trial for losing his army in Apulia, and made a very bitter attack upon him beforehand in the Assembly. [8] "Many commanders," he said, "have through rashness and inexperience led their armies into most dangerous positions, but Cn. Fulvius is the only one who has demoralised his army by every form of vice before betraying them. They may with perfect truth be said to have been destroyed before they saw the enemy; they owed their defeat to their own commander, not to Hannibal.
[9] "Now no man, when he is going to vote, takes sufficient trouble to find out what sort of a man it is to whom he is entrusting the supreme command of the army. [10] Think of the difference between Tiberius Sempronius and Cn. Fulvius. Tiberius Sempronius had an army of slaves given to him, but in a short time, thanks to the discipline he maintained and the wise use he made of his authority, there was not a man amongst them who when he was in the field of battle gave a thought to his birth or his condition. [11] Those men were a protection to our allies and a terror to our enemies. They snatched, as though from the very jaws of Hannibal, cities like Cumae and Beneventum and restored them to Rome. Cn. Fulvius, on the other hand, had an army of Roman citizens, born of respectable parents, brought up as free men, and he infected them with the vices of slaves, and made them such that they were [12??] insolent and riotous amongst our allies, weaklings and cowards in face of the enemy; they could not stand even the war-cry of the Carthaginians, let alone their charge. [13] Good heavens! no wonder the soldiers gave ground, when their commander was the first to run away; the wonder is that any stood their ground and fell, and that all did not accompany Cn. Fulvius in his panic and flight. C. Flaminius, L. Paulus, L. Postumius, and the two Scipios, Cnaeus and Publius, all chose to fall in battle rather than desert their armies, when they were hemmed in by the foe. [14] Cn. Fulvius came back to Rome as the all-but solitary herald of the annihilation of his army. After the army had fled from the field of Cannae it was deported to Sicily, not to return till the enemy had evacuated Italy, and a similar decree was recently passed in the case of Fulvius' legions. [15] But, shame to relate, the commander himself remained unpunished after his flight from a battle brought on by his own headstrong folly; he is free to pass the rest of his life where he passed it in youth-in stews and brothels-whilst his soldiers, whose only fault is that they copied their commander, are practically sent into exile and have to undergo a service of disgrace. [16] So unequal are the liberties enjoyed in Rome by the rich and the poor, the men of rank and the men of the people."
