Free The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization (Politically Incorrect Guides) by Anthony Esolen

had been lured in far enough, Hannibal sent reserves from their ambush on the far side of the mountain round to press the enemy from the rear, while his “retreating” troops turned suddenly against their pursuers from the front. The Romans were caught in a vise. Both consuls died in the battle. Almost all who were not slaughtered on the shore drowned, or were cut down as they tried to swim to safety. According to Polybius, Rome lost 15,000 men on that day, one-quarter as many men as the United States lost during the entire Vietnam War. Even supposing the numbers to be exaggerated, it was a devastating loss.
     
    What was the national reaction? The Romans saw immediately that it was a rash, foolish, glory-spurred, and un-Roman thing for the consul to do. Yet they gave him full military honors, because even a rash fool may die for his country and deserves his country’s gratitude. The Romans did not send ambassadors to dicker with Hannibal, brokering a truce from a position of weakness. They also did not back down. They changed tactics. No doubt they fought over it in the Senate, and it caused recriminations between two unquestionable patriots, Fabius and Scipio. But for the next two years, the Romans held their ground patiently. They were content to lose battles, so long as Rome herself remained untouched. They waited Hannibal out, harassing him, cutting off a platoon here and there, laying waste to the fields whose produce the Carthaginian would need to feed his armies. There were, at that time, no news reports friendly to the enemy, and no daily body count to dishearten morale. Quintus Fabius Maximus, nicknamed Cunctator or “The Delayer,” saved his nation without winning any important battles, buying Rome enough time to destroy Carthaginian enemies in Spain, and to send legions by sea to Carthage itself. That forced Hannibal to return to Africa, where the young Scipio handed him his only defeat in a pitched battle, at the desert sands outside of Zama, in 202 BC. Rome did not win that war because she was richer, or smarter, or mightier. Rome won because she would not lose. 9
     

Tradition’s wisdom vs. democracy’s fickleness
     
    If you stroll about the Roman Forum or her port of Ostia and look at the ruins, you will see a common inscription, “SPQR,” standing for Senatus Populusque Romani, or “The Roman Senate and People.” It’s a phrase that resonated in the hearts of the old Romans. Virgil uses it at a critical moment in his Aeneid. He has been describing Aeneas’ shield, which tells the future glories of Rome, leading up to the great victory memorialized in the center, the naval victory of Augustus over Marc Antony and Cleopatra at Actium (31 BC). Antony and Cleopatra have priestesses in their luxurious boats, shaking their tambourines in honor of the dog-headed god Anubis and other strange deities, while in the Roman ship, behind Augustus, are the Senate and the People of Rome, with their household gods and the great gods. The victory at Actium is thus a victory of Roman piety over the self-gratification and effeminacy symbolized by the debauched Antony and his entourage. 10
     
    But why “The Senate and the People”? Why not just the Senate, or just the People? Here again we find the practical political wisdom of the Romans, emulated (after much healthy debate) by our Founders, and forgotten by us, their descendants. It is that the Senate and the People are not the same.
     
    The Roman constitution was neither monarchical, aristocratic, nor democratic, but a fascinating and tangled combination of all three. The consuls had nearly unlimited authority in the battlefield, but there were two of them and their terms were short. The Senate, too, could restrain the military power of the consuls, because it was the Senate that voted appropriations for their campaigns, nor could any war succeed without the hearts and arms of the common people. Then at the end of their terms the consuls had to stand scrutiny