1The signal given, the cry then goes up to pack the baggage. 1Setting out and marching in column to the dictator's camp, they turned both him and all who were around him to astonishment. 2When the standards had been set down before the tribunal, the master of the horse stepped forward in front of the others and, after calling Fabius father and greeting as patrons the whole column of his soldiers crowded around, said: 'To my parents, dictator, with whom I have just now made you equal in name, as far as speech allows, I owe only my life; to you I owe both my own preservation and that of all these men.
4Therefore I am the first to repeal and annul the decree of the plebs by which I was burdened rather than honoured, and — may it be fortunate for you and me and for these armies of yours, the preserved and the preserver — I return under your command and auspices and restore to you these standards and legions. 5I beg you, be reconciled, and order me to keep the mastership of the horse, and these men each their own ranks.' 6Then right hands were clasped, and the soldiers, when the assembly had been dismissed, were invited kindly and hospitably by men they knew and men they did not, and a day that shortly before had been very sad and almost accursed was turned into a happy one.
7At Rome, when news of the event had arrived and then been confirmed by letters not only from the commanders themselves but from the ordinary soldiers of both armies, everyone for his part praised Maximus to the skies. 8His glory was equal among Hannibal and the Carthaginian enemy; 8and only then did they feel that the war was against Romans and in Italy; 9for in the two previous years they had so despised both the Roman generals and the soldiers that they scarcely believed they were at war with the same people whose fearsome reputation they had received from their fathers; 10and they say that Hannibal, returning from the battle, said that at last that cloud which used to sit on the mountain ridges had let fall its rain with a storm.