Never when the city was in safety was there so great a panic and confusion within the walls of Rome.

I shall therefore shrink from the task, and not attempt to relate what in describing I must make less than the reality.

The consul and his army having been lost at the Trasimenus the year before, it was not one wound upon another which was announced, but a multiplied disaster, the loss of two consular armies, together with the two consuls: and that now there was neither any Roman camp, nor general nor soldiery: that Apulia and Samnium, and now almost the whole of Italy, were in the possession of Hannibal.

No other nation surely would not have been overwhelmed by such an accumulation of misfortune.

Shall I compare with it the disaster of the Carthaginians, sustained in a naval battle at the islands Aegates, dispirited by which they gave up Sicily and Sardinia, and thenceforth submitted to become tributary and stipendiary?
Or shall I compare with it the defeat in Africa under which this same Hannibal afterwards sunk?
In no respect are they comparable, except that they were endured with less fortitude.
55.