STRATAGEMS, IV. v. 16-22
stabbed him to deatli. Thus, as lie desired, Crassus escaped the disgrace of servitude. '^
Marcus, son of Cato the Censor, in a certain battle fell of!" his horse, which had stumbled. Cato picked himself up, but noticing that his sword had slipped out of its scabbard and fearing disgrace, went back among the enemy, and though he received a number of wounds, finally recovered his sword and made his way back to his comrades. ^
The inhabitants of Petelia, when they were blockaded by the Carthaginians, sent away the children and the aged, on account of the shortage of food. They themselves, supporting life on hides, moistened and then dried bv the fire, on leaves of trees, and on all sorts of animals, sustained the siege for eleven months.^
The Spaniards, when blockaded at Consabra, endured all these same hardships ; nor did they surrender the town to Hirtuleius.*
The story goes that the inhabitants of Casilinum, when blockaded by Hannibal, suffered such shortage of food that a mouse was sold for two hundred denarii,^ and that the man who sold it died of starvation, while the purchaser lived. Vet the inhabitants persisted in maintaining their loyalty to the Romans.^
When Mithridates was besieging Cyzicus, he paraded the captives from that city and exhibited them to the besieged, thinking thus to force the people of the town to surrender, through compassion for their fellows. But the townspeople urged the prisoners to meet death with heroism, and persisted in maintaining their loyalty to the Romans.'
The inhabitants of Segovia, when Viriathus pro-
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