# CHAPTER 26 — Insults and Abuse Generate Hatred Against Those Who Employ Them, Without Profit

I believe that one of the great means of exercising prudence that men can employ is to abstain either from threatening anyone or from injuring them with words, for neither of these actions takes any strength away from the enemy, but the first makes him more cautious and the second increases his hatred toward you and makes him think more actively of harming you. This can be seen in the example of the Veientes, who were discussed in the preceding chapter; they added the injury of words to the damages of war inflicted on the Romans, something every prudent commander must make his soldiers refrain from doing, because these are the things that inflame the enemy and incite him to take revenge, and in no way, as is said, do they hinder him from harming you, to the degree that these are all weapons that are turned against you.

A noteworthy example of this occurred once in Asia, where Cobades, commander of the Persians, having been encamped before the city of Amida for some time, decided to leave, exhausted by the tedium of the siege, and after he had already struck camp, the city’s inhabitants came out on the walls and, puffed up with pride, did not hesitate to employ every kind of insult, vituperating, disparaging, and reproaching the cowardice and the worthlessness of their enemy. Enraged by this, Cobades changed his mind, and once he returned to the siege his indignation over the injury was so great that in a few days he had taken the city and sacked it. This same thing happened to the Veientes, for whom, as was mentioned, it was not enough to make war upon the Romans; they also abused them with their words; and going even as far as their stockades to insult them, they irritated the Romans far more with their words than with their weapons, and those soldiers who initially fought against their will forced the consuls to take up the fight, so that like the others mentioned above, the Veientes suffered the penalty of their insolence. Good leaders of armies and good rulers of republics must, therefore, take every opportune measure to ensure that such injuries and reproaches are not used either in their cities or in their armies, either among themselves or against the enemy, because when employed against an enemy, the above-mentioned disadvantages result, and employed among themselves they would produce even worse effects, unless proper remedies were taken in the way prudent men have always taken them. After the Roman legions who were left in Capua conspired against the Capuans, as will be recounted in the appropriate place, * this conspiracy gave birth to a mutiny, and when this was put down by Valerius Corvinus, among the other articles contained in the agreement, very severe penalties were stipulated for anyone who might ever reproach the soldiers for that mutiny. Tiberius Gracchus, who during the war against Hannibal had become commander of a certain number of slaves armed by the Romans because of a shortage of men, decreed, among his very first acts, that capital punishment would be suffered by anyone who reproached any of these soldiers for their former servitude. The Romans considered insulting men and reproaching them for any disgrace on their part to be extremely harmful, as was mentioned above, because nothing inflames their spirits more nor generates greater indignation, whether it is said in earnest or in jest. ‘But crude jests, when based on truth, they rankle.’ *