Then the two armies, joining battle, fought fiercely; when the event of an untimely movement showed Marcellus to have been guilty of an error. The right wing being hard pressed upon, he commanded one of the legions to be brought up to the front. This change disturbing the array and posture of the legions gave the victory to the enemies, and there fell two thousand seven hundred Romans.
Marcellus, after he had retreated into his camp, called his soldiers together. “I see,” said he, “many Roman arms and bodies, but I see not so much as one Roman.”
To their entreaties for his pardon, he returned a refusal while they remained beaten, but promised to give it so soon as they should overcome; and he resolved to bring them into the field again the next day, that the fame of their victory might arrive at Rome before that of their flight.
Dismissing the assembly, he commanded barley instead of wheat to be given to those companies that had turned their backs. These rebukes were so bitter to the soldiers, that though a great number of them were grievously wounded, yet they relate there was not one to whom the general’s oration was not more painful and smarting than his wounds.
Source:
Plutarch, John Dryden, and Arthur Hugh Clough. "Marcellus." Plutarch's Lives. New York: Modern Library, 2001. 427-28. Print.
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