or with the fortune of either nation? Your good
general refused to admit into his camp ambassadors
coming from allies and in behalf of allies, and set
at nought the law of nations. They, however,
after being there repulsed, where not even the ambassadors
of enemies are prohibited admittance, come to you:
they require restitution according to the treaty:
let not guilt attach to the state, they demand to
have delivered up to them the author of the transgression,
the person who is chargeable with this offence.
The more gently they proceed,—the slower
they are to begin, the more unrelentingly, I fear,
when they have once commenced, will they indulge resentment.
Set before your eyes the islands Aegates and Eryx,
all that for twenty-four years ye have suffered by
land and sea. Nor was this boy the leader, but
his father Hamilcar himself, a second Mars, as these
people would have it: but we had not refrained
from Tarentum, that is, from Italy, according to the
treaty; as now we do not refrain from Saguntum.
The gods and men have, therefore, prevailed over us;
and as to that about which there was a dispute in
words, whether of the two nations had infringed the
treaty, the issue of the war, like an equitable judge,
hath awarded the victory to the party on whose side
justice stood. It is against Carthage that Hannibal
is now moving his vineae and towers: it is the
wall of Carthage that he is shaking with his battering-ram.
The ruins of Saguntum (oh that I may prove a false
prophet!) will fall on our heads; and the war commenced
against the Saguntines must be continued against the
Romans. Shall we, therefore, some one will say,
deliver up Hannibal? In what relates to him I
am aware that my authority is of little weight, on
account of my enmity with his father. But I both
rejoice that Hamilcar perished, for this reason, that,
had he lived we should have now been engaged in a war
with the Romans; and this youth, as the fury and firebrand
of this war, I hate and detest. Nor ought he
only to be given up in atonement for the violated
treaty; but even though no one demanded him, he ought
to be transported to the extremest shores of earth
or sea, and banished to a distance, whence neither
his name nor any tidings of him can reach us, and
he be unable to disturb the peace of a tranquil state.
I therefore give my opinion, that ambassadors be sent
immediately to Rome to satisfy the senate; others to
tell Hannibal to lead away his army from Saguntum,
and to deliver up Hannibal himself, according to the
treaty to the Romans; and I propose a third embassy
to make restitution to the Saguntines.”


