Sam Osherson

“He remembered, too, the day an exhausted horseman - dusty sash of Carthahinian purple around his chest - caught up to the army with a message. War had been formally declared. Carthage had refused to hand Hannibal over to Rome. Standing in the senate at Carthage the senior member of the Roman delegation had held out two fists, one for war and the other for peace. Which did Carthage choose? Defiantly, the suffete, the chief magistrate of the senate, replied that it was Rome’s choice. “We choose war,” the Roman replied. “And we accept it,” the Carthaginian senators cried out.”
― Sam Osherson, The Wolf Boy: A Novel