Hannibal, seeing this,
said, "I am better pleased at this than if he had handed them over to me
bound hand and foot." This anecdote is found in those writers who have
described the incidents of the battle in detail. Of the consuls, Varro
escaped with a few followers to Venusia. Paulus, in the whirling eddies
of the rout, covered with darts which still stuck in his wounds, and
overwhelmed with sorrow at the defeat, sat down on a stone to await his
death at the hands of the enemy. The blood with which his face and head
were covered made it hard for any one to recognise him; but even his own
friends and servants passed him by, taking no heed of him. Only
Cornelius Lentulus, a young patrician, saw and recognised him.
Dismounting from his horse and leading it up to him he begged him to
take it and preserve his life, at a time when the State especially
needed a wise ruler. But he refused, and forced the youth, in spite of
his tears, to remount his horse. He then took him by the hand, saying,
"Lentulus, tell Fabius Maximus, and bear witness yourself, that Paulus
Aemilius followed his instructions to the last, and departed from
nothing of what was agreed upon between us; but he was vanquished first
by Varro, and secondly by Hannibal." Having given Lentulus these
instructions he sent him away, and flinging himself on to the enemy's
swords perished. In that battle it is reckoned that fifty thousand
Romans fell, and four thousand were taken prisoners, besides not less
than ten thousand who were taken after the battle in the camps of the
two consuls.
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