[The following occurs during the Battle of Lake Trasimene. Context for the battle, courtesy of Wikipedia: “The Battle of Lake Trasimene (24 June 217 BC, April on the Julian calendar) was a major battle in the Second Punic War. The Carthaginians under Hannibal defeated the Romans under the consul Gaius Flaminius. Hannibal’s victory over the Roman army at Lake Trasimene remains, in terms of the number of men involved, the largest ambush in military history. In the prelude to the battle, Hannibal also achieved the earliest known example of a strategic turning movement.”]
In this situation they [the Romans] could do nothing to help themselves, and yet they would not yield to circumstances; they considered it their supreme duty, as all their training had taught them, never to turn tail or to leave their ranks. As for those in the rear who had been trapped between the hillside and the lake, they suffered an even more humiliating, or rather pitiable fate. They found themselves herded into the lake, whereupon some lost their heads, tried to swim away in their armour and were drowned, while the greater number waded out as far as they could. There they stood with only their heads above the water; then, when the cavalry rode in after them and death stared them in the face, they raised their hands, uttering the most piteous pleas for mercy and begging to be spared. In the end they were either killed by the horsemen or steeled themselves to self-destruction.
Source:
Polybius, et al. “The Second Punic War.” The Rise of the Roman Empire. Penguin, 2003. 251. Print.
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