XVIII.  He placed guards at the gates to prevent the mob from quitting the city, and regulated the period of mourning, bidding every man mourn for thirty days in his own house, after which all signs of mourning were to be put away.  As the feast of Ceres fell during those days, it was thought better to omit both the sacrifices and the processions than to have them marred by the consciousness of their misfortune, which would be painfully evident in the small number of worshippers and their downcast looks.  However, everything that the soothsayers commanded to appease the anger of the gods and to expiate prodigies was carried out.  Fabius Pictor, a relative of the great Fabius, was sent to Delphi, and of two of the Vestal virgins who were found to have been seduced, one was buried alive, as is the usual custom, while the other died by her own hand.  Especially admirable was the spirit and the calm composure of the city when the consul Varro returned after his flight.  He came humbled to the dust, as a man would who had been the cause of a terrible disaster, but at the gate the Senate and all the people went out to greet him.  The chief men and the magistrates, amongst whom was Fabius, having obtained silence, spoke in praise of him “because he had not despaired of the State after such a calamity, but had come back to undertake the conduct of affairs and do what he could for his countrymen as one who thought they might yet be saved.”

XIX.  When they learned that Hannibal after the battle had turned away from Rome to other parts of Italy, the Romans again took courage and sent out armies and generals.  Of those the most remarkable were Fabius Maximus and Claudius Marcellus, both equally admirable, but from an entirely different point of view.  Marcellus, as has been related in his Life, was a man of activity and high spirit, rejoicing in a hand-to-hand fight, and just like the lordly warriors of Homer.  With a truly venturesome audacity, he in his first battles outdid in boldness even the bold Hannibal himself; while Fabius, on the other hand, was convinced that his former reasoning was true, and believed that without any one fighting or even meddling with Hannibal, his army would wear itself out and consume away, just as the body of an athlete when overstrained and exerted soon loses its fine condition.  For this reason Poseidonius calls Fabius the shield, and Marcellus the sword of Rome, because the steadiness of Fabius, combined with the warlike ardour of Marcellus, proved the saving of the state.  Hannibal, frequently meeting Marcellus, who was like a raging torrent, had his forces shaken and weakened; while Fabius, like a deep quiet river kept constantly undermining them and wasting them away unperceived.  Hannibal was at length reduced to such extremities that he was weary of fighting Marcellus, and feared Fabius even though he did not fight:  for these were the persons whom he generally had to deal with, as praetors, consuls, or pro-consuls,