1This is the famous battle at Trasimene, remembered among the few disasters of the Roman people. 1Fifteen thousand Romans were slain in the battle; 2ten thousand, 2scattered in flight through all Etruria, made for the city by different routes; 3two thousand five hundred of the enemy perished in the battle, and many afterwards from their wounds. 3Others report that the slaughter on both sides was many times greater; 4I, besides not wishing anything to be exaggerated without ground, to which writers' minds are usually all too inclined, have taken Fabius, a contemporary of this war, as my chief authority. 5Hannibal, having released without ransom those of the prisoners who were of the Latin name and put the Romans in chains, ordered the bodies of his own men to be separated from the heaps of piled-up enemy dead and buried, and then sought with great care for the body of Flaminius too, to give it burial, but did not find it.
6At Rome, at the first news of this disaster, the people rushed together into the forum with great terror and uproar. 7The matrons, wandering through the streets, ask those they meet what sudden disaster had been reported, or what the fortune of the army was. 7And when the crowd, like a packed assembly, had turned towards the comitium and the senate house and was calling for the magistrates, at last, not long before sunset, the praetor Marcus Pomponius said, 'We have been defeated in a great battle.' 8And although nothing more definite was heard from him, still, filled with rumours one from another, they carry back to their homes that the consul had been killed with a large part of his forces, that few survived, and those either scattered in flight throughout Etruria or captured by the enemy.
10As many as had been the misfortunes of the defeated army, into so many cares were the minds of those torn whose kinsmen had served under the consul Gaius Flaminius, since they did not know what the fortune of each of their own was; 10nor does anyone know for certain what to hope or to fear. 11On the next day and for several days after, at the gates stood a crowd almost larger of women than of men, waiting either for one of their own or for news of them; and they would throng round those they met, questioning them, and could not be torn away, especially from people they knew, before they had inquired into everything in order.
12Then you might have seen the varied expressions of those going away from the messengers, as glad or sad news was given to each, and those returning home surrounded by people congratulating or consoling them. 12The women's joys and griefs especially were remarkable. 13One, they say, suddenly confronted at the very gate by her son safe and sound, died in his embrace; 13another, to whom her son's death had been falsely reported, as she sat sorrowful at home, was struck dead by excessive joy at the first sight of him returning. 14The praetors keep the senate in the senate house for several days from sunrise till sunset, deliberating under what leader or with what forces the victorious Carthaginians could be resisted.