against the enemy, when the Carthaginians sounded a retreat; Hannibal openly declaring that though he had conquered Minucius, he was himself conquered by Fabius.  The greater part of the day having been thus consumed with varying success, Minucius calling together his soldiers, when they had returned to the camp, thus addressed them:  “I have often heard, soldiers, that he is the greatest man who himself counsels what is expedient, and that he who listens to the man who gives good advice is the second, but that he who neither himself is capable of counselling, and knows not how to obey another, is of the lowest order of mind.  Since the first place of mind and talent has been denied us, let us strive to obtain the second and intermediate kind, and while we are learning to command, let us prevail upon ourselves to submit to a man of prudence.  Let us join camps with Fabius, and, carrying our standards to his pavilion, when I have saluted him as my parent, which he deserves on account of the service he has rendered us and of his dignity; you, my soldiers, shall salute those men as patrons, whose arms and right-hands just now protected you:  and if this day has conferred nothing else upon us, it hath at least conferred upon us the glory of possessing grateful hearts.”

30.  The signal being given, there was a general call to collect the baggage:  then setting out, and proceeding in order of march to the dictator’s camp, they excited at once the surprise of the dictator himself and all around him.  When the standards were planted before the tribunal, the master of the horse, advancing before the rest, having saluted Fabius as father, and the whole body of his troops having, with one voice, saluted the soldiers who surrounded him as patrons, said, “To my parents, dictator, to whom I have just now equalled you, only in name, as far as I could express myself, I am indebted for my life only; to you I owe both my own preservation and that of all these soldiers.  That order of the people, therefore, with which I have been oppressed rather than honoured, I first cancel and annul, and (may it be auspicious to me and you, and to these your armies, to the preserved and the preserver,) I return to your authority and auspices, and restore to you these standards and these legions, and I entreat you that, being reconciled, you would order that I may retain the mastership of the horse, and that these soldiers may each of them retain their ranks.”  After that hands were joined, and when the assembly was dismissed, the soldiers were kindly and hospitably invited by those known to them and unknown:  and that day, from having been a little while ago gloomy in the extreme, and almost accursed, was turned into a day of joy.  At Rome, the report of the action was conveyed thither, and was afterwards confirmed, not less by letters from the common soldiers of both armies, than from the generals themselves, all men individually extolled Maximus to the skies.  His renown was equal with Hannibal, and his enemies the