SLC Thesis Template - ResearchSpace@Auckland - The University ...

But the next chapter leaves a more lasting, and possibly realistic, impression that Varro
and the survivors fled the battlefield in a disorganised mêlée:
ad Cannas fugientem consulem vix quinquaginta secuti sunt, alterius
morientis prope totus exercitus fuit.
Livy, 22.50.3
At Cannae the consul who fled was accompanied by a scant fifty men;
the other, dying, had well-nigh the entire army with him.
Foster, 1949, 365
In the Punica, Varro is passive in his flight. It is his horse which carries him away:
plura indignantem telis propioribus hostes
egere, et sonipes rapuit laxatus habenas.
117
Pun. 9.656-7
Further protest was cut short by the approach of the enemy: their
attack drove him back, and his warhorse with loosened rein carried
him swiftly away.
Duff, 1989, 49.
Polybius ignores Varro after Cannae; there is no mention of him in the immediate
aftermath of battle. The resumption of the narrative at the end of Histories 6 focusses on
Hannibal attempting to ransom the prisoners back to the Senate. It is possible that Varro
reappeared later in the narrative, in a section that is no longer extant, but given his
treatment at Cannae, it seems unlikely.
Livy is more sympathetic in his treatment of Varro. 291 After the initial shock at news
of the defeat and the death of a consul, Varro regains respect because he did not
surrender and one defeat is not considered the final outcome of a war. Livy adapts the
analogy of the sea-captain in a positive sense because he describes Varro sending the
formal announcement of the defeat to Rome and describes Varro remaining at Canusium
gathering the remnants of the army as if after a storm at sea (Livy, 22.61.2).
Silius Italicus conveys a sense of the mixed emotions that probably prevailed at the
time, and the sea-captain analogy is reworked in a more negative sense than Livy:
291 When Varro reappears he is a proconsul based in Picenum, 215-213. He is re-elected to the praetorship
and given command of two legions in Etruria, 208-7, considered to be an area at risk (Livy, 27.38.6). i.e.
not only was Varro re-elected to high office, he received commands critical for the defence of Rome. His
subsequent career was by no means ignominious and nor is he depicted as a demagogue or again
compared to Flaminius. Picenum: Livy, 23.25.11, 32.19; 24.10.3, 11.3, 44.5. Etruria: Livy, 27.24.1-9,
35.2, 36.13; 28.10.11, contra Goldsworthy, 2004, 199 who claims that „Livy presents Varro as a
demagogue.‟ This only holds true for Livy‟s picture of Varro prior to Cannae.