inquire of the oracle by what prayers and offerings they might appease the gods, and what termination there would be to such great distresses.  Meanwhile certain extraordinary sacrifices were performed, according to the directions of the books of the fates; among which a Gallic man and woman, and a Greek man and woman, were let down alive in the cattle market, into a place fenced round with stone, which had been already polluted with human victims, a rite by no means Roman.  The gods being, as they supposed, sufficiently appeased, Marcus Claudius Marcellus sends from Ostia to Rome, as a garrison for the city, one thousand five hundred soldiers, which he had with him, levied for the fleet.  He himself sending before him a marine legion, (it was the third legion,) under the command of the military tribunes, to Teanum Sidicinum, and delivering the fleet to Publius Furius Philus, his colleague, after a few days, proceeded by long marches to Cannsium.  Marcus Junius, created dictator on the authority of the senate, and Titus Sempronius, master of the horse, proclaiming a levy, enrol the younger men from the age of seventeen, and some who wore the toga praetexta:  of these, four legions and a thousand horse were formed.  They send also to the allies and the Latin confederacy, to receive the soldiers according to the terms of the treaty.  They order that arms, weapons, and other things should be prepared; and they take down from the temples and porticoes the old spoils taken from the enemy.  They adopted also another and a new form of levy, from the scarcity of free persons, and from necessity:  they armed eight thousand stout youths from the slaves, purchased at the public expense, first inquiring of each whether he was willing to serve.  They preferred this description of troops, though they had the power of redeeming the captives at a less expense.

58.  For Hannibal, after so great a victory at Cannae, being occupied with the cares of a conqueror, rather than one who had a war to prosecute, the captives having been brought forward and separated, addressed the allies in terms of kindness, as he had done before at the Trebia and the lake Trasimenus, and dismissed them without a ransom; then he addressed the Romans too, who were called to him, in very gentle terms:  “That he was not carrying on a war of extermination with the Romans, but was contending for honour and empire.  That his ancestors had yielded to the Roman valour; and that he was endeavouring that others might be obliged to yield, in their turn, to his good fortune and valour together.  Accordingly, he allowed the captives the liberty of ransoming themselves, and that the price per head should be five hundred denarii for a horseman, three hundred for a foot soldier, and one hundred for a slave.”  Although some addition was made to that sum for the cavalry, which they stipulated for themselves when they surrendered, yet they joyfully accepted any terms of entering into the compact.  They determined that ten persons