it pleased him to delay the time, under cover and at his ease he might see his enemy founder and defeat himself with the difficulties he was certain to encounter, being engaged in a hostile country, where before, behind, and on every side war would be made upon him; no means to refresh himself or to enlarge his quarters, should diseases infest them, or to lodge his wounded men in safety; no money, no victuals, but at the point of the lance; no leisure to repose and take breath; no knowledge of the ways or country to secure him from ambushes and surprises; and in case of losing a battle, no possible means of saving the remains.  Neither is there want of example in both these cases.

Scipio thought it much better to go and attack his enemy’s territories in Africa than to stay at home to defend his own and to fight him in Italy, and it succeeded well with him.  But, on the contrary, Hannibal in the same war ruined himself by abandoning the conquest of a foreign country to go and defend his own.  The Athenians having left the enemy in their own dominions to go over into Sicily, were not favoured by fortune in their design; but Agathocles, king of Syracuse, found her favourable to him when he went over into Africa and left the war at home.

By which examples we are wont to conclude, and with some reason, that events, especially in war, for the most part depend upon fortune, who will not be governed by nor submit unto human reasons and prudence, according to the poet: 

         “Et male consultis pretium est:  prudentia fallit
          Nec fortune probat causas, sequiturque merentes,
          Sed vaga per cunctos nullo discrimine fertur. 
          Scilicet est aliud, quod nos cogatque regatque
          Majus, et in proprias ducat mortalia leges.”

["And there is value in ill counsel:  prudence deceives:  nor does fortune inquire into causes, nor aid the most deserving, but turns hither and thither without discrimination.  Indeed there is a greater power which directs and rules us, and brings mortal affairs under its own laws.”—­Manilius, iv. 95.]

But, to take the thing right, it should seem that our counsels and deliberations depend as much upon fortune as anything else we do, and that she engages also our arguments in her uncertainty and confusion.  “We argue rashly and adventurously,” says Timaeus in Plato, “by reason that, as well as ourselves, our discourses have great participation in the temerity of chance.”

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