Reading the Roman account against its bias

The surviving account praises Marcus Aurelius Scaurus, depicts Consul Gnaeus Mallius Maximus as frightened, and makes Proconsul Caepio appear almost independent. Restoring the legal hierarchy changes that framing: the sitting consul outranked the proconsul, so Caepio was refusing lawful coordination rather than merely disagreeing with a peer. This reading also questions why negotiations and two sequential defeats are compressed into a morality tale that shifts blame away from aristocratic disobedience. The account's catalogue of ominous snakes, dreams, hymns, and sacrifices shows how Roman writers framed a military catastrophe through religious warning as well as command failure.