Book 3
19
The Consul Aemilius having thus taken Pharos at a blow, levelled the city to the ground; and then having become master of all Illyria, and having ordered all its affairs as he thought right, returned towards the end of the summer to Rome, where he celebrated a triumph amid expressions of unmixed approval; for people considered that he had managed this business with great prudence and even greater courage.
20
But when news came to Rome of the fall of Saguntum, Indignation at Rome at the fall of Saguntum. there was indeed no debate on the question of war, as some historians assert; who even add the speeches delivered on either side. But nothing could be more ridiculous. For is it conceivable that the Romans should have a year before proclaimed war with the Carthaginians in the event of their entering the territory of Saguntum, and yet, when the city itself had been taken, should have debated whether they should go to war or no? Just as absurd are the wonderful statements that the senators put on mourning, and that the fathers introduced their sons above twelve years old into the Senate House, who, being admitted to the debate, refrained from divulging any of its secrets even to their nearest relations. All this is as improbable as it is untrue; unless we are to believe that Fortune, among its other bounties, granted the Romans the privilege of being men of being men of the world from their cradles. I need not waste any more words upon such compositions as those of Chaereas and Sosilus;Of Chaereas nothing seems known; a few fragments of an historian of his name are given in Müller, vol. iii. Of Sosilus, Diodorus (26, fr. 6) says that he was of Ilium and wrote a history of Hannibal in seven books. Nepos (Hann. 13) calls him a Lacedaemonian, and says that he lived in Hannibal’s camp and taught him Greek. which, in my judgment, are more like the gossip of the barber’s shop and the pavement than history.
