t the same ambassadors
who had gone to the Roman consul should be sent to Hannibal. I find in
certain annals, that before this embassy proceeded, and before they
had determined on the measure of revolting, ambassadors were sent by
the Campanians to Rome, requiring that one of the consuls should be
elected from Campania if they wished assistance to the Roman cause.
That from the indignation which arose, they were ordered to be removed
from the senate-house, and a lictor despatched to conduct them out of
the city and command them to lodge that day without the Roman
frontier. But as this request is too much like that which the Latins
formerly made, and as Coelius and other writers had, not without
reason, made no mention of it, I have not ventured to vouch for its
truth.

7. The ambassadors came to Hannibal and concluded a treaty of peace
with him on the terms, "That no Carthaginian commander should have any
authority over a Campanian citizen, nor any Campanian serve in war or
perform any office against his will: that Capua should have her own
laws and her own magistrates: that the Carthaginian should give to the
Campanians three hundred captives selected by themselves, who might be
exchanged for the Campanian horse who were serving in Sicily." Such
were the stipulations: but in addition to them, the Campanians
perpetrated the following atrocities; for the commons ordered that the
prefects of the allies and other citizens of Rome should be suddenly
seized, while some of them were occupied with military duties, others
engaged in private business, and be shut up in the baths, as if for
the purpose of keeping them in custody, where, suffocated with heat
and vapour, they might expire in a horrid manner. Decius Magius, a man
who wanted nothing to complete his influence except a sound mind on
the part of his countrymen, had resisted to the uttermost the
execution of these measures, and the sending of the embassy to
Hannibal, and when he heard that a body of troops was sent by
Hannibal, bringing back to their recollection, as examples, the
haughty tyranny of Pyrrhus and the miserable slavery of the
Tarentines, he at first openly and loudly protested that the troops
should not be admitted, then he urged either that they should expel
them when received, or, if they had a mind to expiate, by a bold and
memorable act, the foul crime they had committed in revolting from
their most ancient and intimate allies, that leaving slain the