Ab urbe condita

Titus Livius (Livy)

Livy. History of Rome, Volumes 1-2. Roberts, Canon, Rev, translator. London, New York: J. M. Dent and Sons; E. P. Dutton and Co., 1912.

The consuls assured them that they neither had yielded nor would yield to any man in showing their hatred of the enemy, and as they had been their leaders in the fighting so they would have been foremost in encouraging their insatiable rage and vengeance.

But they had to consider the 6oo equites who were being detained as hostages in Luceria, and to take care that the enemy, despairing of any quarter for themselves, did not wreak their blind rage on their captives, and destroy them before they perished themselves.