Livy Book 30
Notes on Chapter 6
The fires that have broken out in the camp of Syphax are now seen by the guards and others in the Carthaginian camp, and they run to help.
Style -- Notice the vividness of the Asterix-image or cinematography of the flames. There are three moods of chapter six (visual flames, pity for the victims, body-count military report)
Relucentem flammam ... tumultu: Livy continues to present a graphic narrative by presenting the words in a 'cinematic' order. There's a bright light! It's a fire! The guards (you can picture the glow of the flames reflected (note the prefix
re- on their faces as the camera turns towards them); then the darkness inside a hut with sleepers roused by 'night-time din'.
excitati ... cum conspexissent: Then they rush to the door and see what has roused them. Is it fanciful to hear the two 'x' sounds with the 'c' and 's' sounds as representing the crackle of flames?
ab eodem errore: Just as Syphax's guards mistakenly supposed that the fires in their own camp were accidental, so did the guards in the Carthaginian camp.
credere: Historic infinitive, often used by Roman writers in passages of excitement and action, instead of a normal verb form. It conveys a sense of urgency.
et ipsi: ipsi is the subject of
credere. et strengthens
ipsi: Even they believed ..
sua sponte incendium ortum: that spontaneously the blaze had arisen. Note the 's' and 'c' sounds continuing in this passage. The full verb form is
'ortum esse'. Livy omits the
esse to add pace.
et clamor inter caedem et uolnera sublatus; Confusion is conveyed by confused word order. The basic grammar here is:
clamor ... confusis ... sensum ... adimebat: The noise kept on taking the sense from the confused people.
confusis can be called a 'dative of disadvantage'.
Livy has not mentioned slaughter and wounds before. How have they happened?
an ex trepidatione nocturna esset: an normally introduces the second of a pair of alternative questions (utrum .... an ...), so this use, which is a common one, is slightly colloquial. Here it may help the narrative's feeling of urgency.
confusis: A 'dative of disadvantage'. 'To the disadvantage of the confused people ...' We would say 'from the confused people'.
sensum ueri adimebat: Literally 'was taking away the sense of the truth'.
igitur: Normally this word does not come first in a sentence.
pro se quisque inermes: 'inermes' is the (plural) subject of the main verb, 'ruebant'. In the phrases
pro se quisque and
qua cuique proximum erat the (singular) quisque and cuique refer to the subject, as in an old-fashioned English sentence such as 'They went each to his own home'
.
ut quibus nihil hostile suspectum esset: literally 'as [men] to whom nothing hostile had been suspected.' The verb is subjunctive, not because the clause is introduced by
ut meaning 'in order that' (purpose clause) or 'so that' (result clause), but apparently to suggest some doubt.
omnibus portis, qua cuique proximum erat: literally 'by all the gates where, (or perhaps by which singular) to each man it was nearest (to go)'. The general sense is quite clear (each man by the nearest gate), but the syntax is hard to unravel.
ea: object of portantes.
modo: only (not part of modus)
quae restinguendo igni forent :
quae ... forent is a purpose clause. The verb form
forent is an alternative to
essent.
restinguendo igni, a gerundive phrase in the dative, again with the idea of purpose: 'for extinguishing the fire'.
in agmen Romanum: It seems that the Romans were still in marching order, a column rather than a line of battle (acies). They had deployed as if for battle while they were still a long way from the enemy camp, so this is a puzzle.
quibus caesis omnibus: The wholesale slaughter of unarmed men, announced rather dismissively in a mere ablative absolute, perhaps seemed to Livy to need extra justification, so he suggests two reasons, not as alternatives but both contributing to the slaughter.
praeterquam hostili odio etiam ne quis nuntius refugeret: The two reasons were hatred for the enemy and to avoid anyone escaping to report what had happened. Livy gives variety by using an ablative phrase for one reason and a purpose clause for the other.
neglectas ut in tali tumultu: The inclusion of
ut suggests that the gates were left unattended 'as they would be in a crisis like that.'
ignibusque in proxima tecta coniectis: The firing of the Carthaginian camp follows the same pattern as that of the King's camp: flaming torches are thrown onto the thatched roofs, and the fire spreads from hut to hut. It would be worth while to compare how Livy tells essentially the same story twice, and find out whether he manages to avoid telling the story in exactly the same way.
effusa ... uelut sparsa: The fire is described with words appropriate to water, 'poured out' and 'sprinkled'.
serpens: Now the fire is creeping like a living creature.
uno repente omnia incendio hausit: A very effectively composed five-word phrase. First, the observation of fire that creeps and then suddenly bursts out into a great conflagration; then the grouping of the contrasting words for 'one' and 'all', with the word for 'suddenly' in between: 'one - suddenly - everything!'; the verb
hausit continues the theme of liquid, but this time it is the fire which is drinking up or draining everything; the two words for the blaze,
uno ... incendio, surround the word
omnia as the fire overwhelmed the whole camp.
ambusti homines: Now the horror mounts as Livy nears the end of his description. Men on fire or badly burned are familiar to cinema-goers nowadays.
iumentaque foeda: What made the animals 'foul'? Livy leaves it vague, and our imaginations do the work.
primum fuga, dein strage: first a panic rush to escape, then butchery. It is a nightmare come true.
obruebant itinera portarum: In the King's camp men had fallen over each other. Here they were entirely clogging up the roads through the camp gates.
quos non oppresserat ignis ferro absumpti: Another scene from a nightmare. In the Old Testament the prophet Amos pictures the Day of the Lord: "In that day you will be like a man who is chased by a lion - and met by a bear, or a man in a dark room who leans again a wall - and puts his hand on a snake.." There was no escape.
binaque castra clade una deleta: Note the contrast:
bina ... una. The first four words are a chiasmus: adjective+noun, noun+adjective. Notice also the omission of the verbs 'sunt' and 'est' from
absumpti and
deleta. Livy is striving for brevity and so vividness.
The fighting and burning are over. It is time to take a reckoning of the casualties, all on the Carthaginian side.
duces tamen ambo: Livy keeps us waiting. Having mentioned the two leaders, Syphax and Hasdrubal, he leaves the verb that tells us their fate (effugerunt, they escaped) until he has listed the numbers of infantry and cavalry who ..... escaped.
semermes: Also in the form 'semiermes', half-armed, poorly armed.
magna pars saucii: Singular subject, plural verb, as we might loosely say: "A large proportion of them were wounded".
adflatique incendio: Literally 'blown on by the fire'.
adflo is a poetic word. Livy is searching for a novel way of saying 'burned' or 'scorched'.
hausta flammis: Livy uses the same metaphor three times in these two chapters.
capta .... senatores: Livy does not repeat
sunt. Brevity again.
signa militaria: The Roman standard must be defended at all cost. To lose a standard was a great disgrace. The Carthaginians lost so many.
equi Numidici: We often hear of Numidian cavalry; their horses must have been a real prize to the Romans, like capturing the latest military vehicles today.
elephanti: Elephants were a regular part of the Carthaginian battle line. Hannibal famously brought some across the Alps in his invasion of Italy.
magna uis armorum: Although
vis means 'force', this phrase has no sense of 'force of arms'. In this context
vis means no more than a quantity. Elsewhere it is used of a quantity of honey!
Uolcano sacrata: Why should Scipio dedicate captured arms and armour to Vulcan before burning them? Vulcan the blacksmith god (or his Greek equivalent Hephaestus) made divine armour for Achilles, so it may have been appropriate to give armour back to him.
incendit: After a long list of passive verbs, this active verb brings the chapter to a marked and definite end. One can imagine Scipio watching the bonfire and saying "That's that! Finished!"
