iii.]--But fear does then manifest its utmost power when it throws us upon a valiant despair, having before deprived us of all sense both of duty and honour.

In the first pitched battle the Romans lost against Hannibal, under the Consul Sempronius, a body of ten thousand foot, that had taken fright, seeing no other escape for their cowardice, went and threw themselves headlong upon the great battalion of the enemies, which with marvellous force and fury they charged through and through, and routed with a very great slaughter of the Carthaginians, thus purchasing an ignominious flight at the same price they might have gained a glorious victory .-- [Livy, xxi.

56.] The thing in the world I am most afraid of is fear, that passion alone, in the trouble of it, exceeding all other accidents.

What affliction could be greater or more just than that of Pompey's friends, who, in his ship, were spectators of that horrible murder?
Yet so it was, that the fear of the Egyptian vessels they saw coming to board them, possessed them with so great alarm that it is observed they thought of nothing but calling upon the mariners to make haste, and by force of oars to escape away, till being arrived at Tyre, and delivered from fear, they had leisure to turn their thoughts to the loss of their captain, and to give vent to those tears and lamentations that the other more potent passion had till then suspended.
"Tum pavor sapientiam omnem mihiex animo expectorat." ["Then fear drove out all intelligence from my mind."-- Ennius, ap.
Cicero, Tusc., iv.

8.] Such as have been well rubbed in some skirmish, may yet, all wounded and bloody as they are, be brought on again the next day to charge; but such as have once conceived a good sound fear of the enemy, will never be made so much as to look him in the face.