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Ab Urbe Condita, books 28-30 - 30

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   Book XXX GNAEUS SERVILIUS and Gaius Servilius, the consuls, whose year was the sixteenth of the Punic war, having laid before the senate the condition of the state and the war and the assignments, the senators voted that the consuls should arrange between them, or determine by lot, which of them should have as his assignment the land of the Bruttii, confronting Hannibal, and which of them Etruria and Liguria; that the consul to whom the Bruttii should fall was to take over an army from Publius Sempronius; that Publius Sempronius —for he also had his command prolonged for one year as proconsul —should succeed Publius Licinius; that the latter should return to Rome. In war also Licinius was now highly rated, in addition to the other fields in which no citizen was at that time considered more fully equipped, since all the advantages possible to man had been heaped upon him by nature and fortune. Of noble birth he was at the same time wealthy. Conspicuous for a handsome figure and physical strength, he was considered a very eloquent speaker, whether a legal case was to be conducted, or when there was occasion in the senate and before the people to persuade or dissuade. In the pontifical law he was accounted a master; and now, to crown these distinctions, his consulship had brought him military laurels as well. The decision taken in regard to the land of the Bruttii as a province was repeated in the case of Etruria and Liguria. Marcus Cornelius was ordered to turn over his army to the new consul, and himself, with his command continued, to hold Gaul as his assignment, having the legions which Lucius Scribonius had held the year before. Thereupon they drew their assignments by lot, the Bruttian country falling to Caepio, Etruria to Geminus. Lots were then cast for the praetors' assignments. Aelius Paetus drew the city praetorship, Publius Lentulus Sardinia, Publius Villius Sicily, Quinctilius Varus Ariminum with two legions which had been under the command of Spurius Lucretius. Lucretius' command also was continued, that he might build up the town of Genua, destroyed by Mago the Carthaginian. Publius Scipio's command was prolonged, not for a fixed time but to the completion of his task, until the war in Africa should be over. And it was decreed that there should be a season of prayer that his crossing over to Africa as his province might be beneficial to the Roman people and to the commander himself and his army. For Sicily three thousand soldiers were enrolled because all the best troops that province used to have had been transported to Africa. Furthermore, because it had been decided to defend the sea-coast of Sicily with forty ships, in order to prevent any fleet from crossing over from Africa, Villius took with him thirteen new ships to Sicily, while the rest in Sicily were old ships repaired. Placed in charge of this fleet, with his command continued, was Marcus Pomponius, praetor in the preceding year, who provided the ships with new soldiers brought from Italy. The same number of ships were by decree of the senate assigned, with the same extension of his command, to Gnaeus Octavius, who likewise had been praetor in the preceding year, in order to defend the coast of Sardinia. Lentulus, the praetor, was ordered to furnish two thousand soldiers for the ships. As for the defence of the coast of Italy, since it was not known to what point the Carthaginians would send their fleet —while they seemed likely to attack any part of it that was left unguarded —that task with the same number of ships was entrusted to Marcus Marcius, praetor in the previous year. Three thousand soldiers were enrolled by the consuls for that fleet in accordance with a decree of the senate, and two city legions for emergency duty. The Spanish provinces were assigned by a decree of the senate to their veteran commanders, Lucius Lentulus and Lucius Manlius Acidinus with the armies and military authority. The Roman state was administered that year with a total of twenty legions and a hundred and sixty war-ships. The praetors were ordered to go to their provinces, while the consuls were bidden, before their departure from the city, to conduct the great games which Titus Manlius Torquatus as dictator had vowed for the fourth year, if the state should remain as it was before. And new religious fears were aroused in men's minds by portents reported from a number of places. On the Capitol ravens were believed not only to have torn away gilding with their beaks but even to have eaten it. At Antium mice gnawed a golden wreath. The whole region around Capua was covered by an immense number of locusts, while there was no agreement as to whence they had come. At Reate a colt with five feet was foaled. At Anagnia there were at first shooting-stars at intervals and then a great meteor blazed out. At Frusino a halo encircled the sun with its slender circumference, and then the ring itself had a greater circle bright as the sun circumscribed about it. At Arpinum in an open meadow the earth settled into a huge depression. One of the consuls on sacrificing his first victim found the head of the liver lacking. These prodigies were expiated by full-grown victims; the gods to whom sacrifices should be offered were announced by the college of the pontiffs. Having completed these tasks the consuls and praetors set out for their provinces. All of them, however, turned their attention to Africa, just as though that had been allotted to them, either because they saw it was there that the main issue and the outcome of the war were centred, or in order to show Scipio favour, on whom the eyes of all the citizens were then fixed. Accordingly not only from Sardinia, as has been said above, but also from Sicily and Spain clothing and grain were being transported thither, and arms as well and supplies of every kind from Sicily. And at no time in the winter had Scipio lessened his military operations, which were many and all around him at the same time. He was besieging Utica; the camp of Hasdrubal could be seen; the Carthaginians had launched their ships; they kept their fleet ready and equipped, in order to intercept supplies. In the midst of all this he had also not forgotten his effort to recover the support of Syphax, in case by that time, after much indulgence, satiety might have overtaken him in his love for his wife. From Syphax came rather terms of peace with the Carthaginians under which the Romans should withdraw from Africa, the Carthaginians from Italy, than any hope that in the event of war he would change sides. That these dealings went on through messengers I am more inclined to believe —and for this a majority of the historians vouch —than that Syphax came in person into the Roman camp for a conference, as Valerius Antias relates. At first the Roman general scarcely listened to such terms. Later, that his men might have a plausible reason for visiting the enemy's camp, he was less firm in rejecting the same offers, and encouraged the hope that, if they repeatedly discussed the matter from both sides, agreement would be reached. The winter quarters of the Carthaginians, being constructed of building material gathered at random from the farms, were almost entirely of wood. In particular the Numidians were dwelling in huts of plaited reeds, most of them under thatched roofs, and scattered without a plan, some of their number even outside the fosse and earthwork —the natural result of seizing upon a site without waiting for orders. This was reported to Scipio and had inspired the hope of setting fire to the camp of the enemy when opportunity should offer. With the legates whom he kept sending to Syphax he would send some first centurions of attested courage and discretion as servants and garbed as slaves, that while the legates were in conference they might roam about the camp in different directions and take note of all entrances and exits, the situation and plan both of the camp as a whole and of its divisions, where the Carthaginians and where the Numidians had their quarters. They were to discover what was the distance between Hasdrubal's camp and that of the king, also to learn their practice as regards outposts and sentries, whether they were more exposed to an unexpected attack by night or by day. And in the course of numerous conferences other men and again others were purposely sent, that a larger number might acquaint themselves with everything. When repeated discussions were giving Syphax, and through him the Carthaginians, a daily surer hope of peace, the Roman legates announced that they were forbidden to return to their general unless a definite answer was made to them. Therefore, if his own decision was already made, <let him declare it>; if on the other hand Hasdrubal and the Carthaginians had to be conferred with, let him confer with them. It was time, they said, either to agree upon peace or to wage war in earnest. While Hasdrubal was being conferred with by Syphax, and the Carthaginians by Hasdrubal, the spies had time to observe everything, as had Scipio to get together whatever was needful. And out of the talk of peace and the hope of it, as usually happens, there sprang a neglect on the part of the Carthaginians and the Numidian to guard against any attack which might be made upon them in the meantime. At last the answer was returned, including certain unreasonable terms adroitly added just because the Roman seemed extremely desirous of peace. These furnished Scipio, who was eager to denounce the truce, a very timely pretext. And after stating to the king's messenger that he would lay the matter before his council, on the next day he reported that, while he alone strove in vain to bring about peace, no one else had favoured it. The messenger therefore, he said, should report that Syphax had no other hope of peace with the Romans except by abandoning the Carthaginians. His purpose in denouncing the truce was that, being no longer bound by promises, he might carry out his undertaking.. And launching his ships —it was now the beginning of spring —he mounted engines of war and artillery upon them, as though intending to attack Utica from the sea. He also sent two thousand soldiers to seize the hill he had. previously held, looking down upon Utica, both in order to divert the attention of the enemy from his real purpose to anxiety about a different attack, and at the same time that, when he should himself set out to meet Syphax and Hasdrubal, there should be no sally from the city and no attack upon his camp when left with only a small garrison. After these preparations, summoning the council, he ordered the spies to set forth what information they had to report, and Masinissa as well, who knew everything about the enemy. Finally he laid before them his plan for the following night. To the tribunes he gave orders that, when the council had been dismissed and the trumpets had sounded, they should at once lead their legions out of the camp. In accordance with the orders he had given the standards were first set in motion just before sunset; at about the first watch the column was deployed. At midnight —for it was a march of seven miles —proceeding at a moderate speed they reached the enemy's camp. There Scipio assigned to Laelius a part of the forces and Masinissa with his Numidians, and bade them burst into the camp of Syphax and set fire to it. He then led Laelius and Masinissa aside separately and implored each of them to make up by their diligence and alertness for all the foresight of which night deprived them. He was about to attack Hasdrubal, he said, and the Carthaginian camp; but he would not begin until he should see fire in the king's camp. Nor did that delay him long; for as soon as fire was thrown upon the first huts it caught, and then at once laying hold of everything that was near, and so on in unbroken succession, it spread hither and thither through the entire camp. Great was the alarm, to be sure, as was inevitable in a fire so widespread in the night; but they thought the blaze accidental, not due to an enemy and war. Pouring out without arms to extinguish the flames, they encountered armed enemies, particularly Numidians posted in suitable places at the ends of the streets by Masinissa, familiar as he was with the king's camp. Many even in their beds and half-asleep were burned to death; many rushing pell-mell in headlong flight were trodden down in the narrow gateways. When the light of the fire had been seen, first by sentries of the Carthaginians and then by others whom the uproar in the night aroused, they likewise made the same mistake in believing the fire to be spontaneous. And outcries raised in the midst of slaughter and wounds made men unable to grasp the real situation, being half-inclined to think it due to a disturbance in the night. Accordingly, having no suspicion of any attack, they outdid one another in dashing out of all the gates unarmed, each taking the nearest way, carrying only what would be of use to extinguish the fire, and suddenly encountered the Roman column. When they had all been slain, not only because of an enemy's hatred, but also that no man might escape to tell the tale, Scipio at once burst into the gates, naturally unguarded in such a commotion. And then as firebrands were thrown upon the nearest roofs, the flames pouring out at first seemed to blaze at a number of scattered points; and then creeping along without a break they promptly consumed everything in one conflagration. Men and beasts of burden that had suffered burns blocked streets leading to the gates, at first by their panic-stricken flight and then by their fallen bodies. Those whom the fire had not overtaken were destroyed by the sword, and two camps were wiped out in a single disaster. Both of the generals, however, made their escape, and out of so many thousand armed men two thousand infantry and five hundred horsemen escaped half-armed, many of the men wounded and scorched by the flames. Slain or burned to death were some forty thousand men, more than five thousand captured, many Carthaginian nobles, eleven senators. Of military standards a hundred and seventy-four were taken, of Numidian horses over two thousand seven hundred. Six elephants were captured, eight destroyed by sword or by fire. A great number of arms were captured, and all of these the general-in-command dedicated to Vulcan and burned. Hasdrubal after fleeing had made his way with a few men to the nearest city of the Africans; and to it had come all the survivors, following the trail of their general. Then for fear that it might surrender to Scipio he left the city. Soon after the gates were opened and the Romans admitted to the same city. And since they had voluntarily submitted no hostile step was taken. Thereafter two cities were captured and plundered. Their booty and what had been rescued from the flames when the camps were burned was granted to the soldiers. Syphax established himself in a fortified place at a distance of about eight miles. Hasdrubal hastened to Carthage, that no weak action might be taken in the fear induced by the recent disaster. At first the news brought such alarm to the city that they believed Scipio would leave Utica to itself and forthwith besiege Carthage. The senate was accordingly convened by the sufĕtes, whose authority corresponded to that of consuls. There it was a conflict between three proposals: one favoured peace envoys to Scipio; the second was for recalling Hannibal to defend their city from a war which meant destruction; the third showed a Roman steadfastness in adversity. This proposal was that they should repair the losses to the army and urge Syphax not to give up the war. This motion was carried because Hasdrubal in person and all of the Barcine party supported the war. Then they began to conduct a levy in the city and in the country, and emissaries were sent to Syphax, who on his part also was making every effort to renew the war, since his wife had influenced him —no longer, as before, by caresses, effectual enough for the temper of a lover —but by prayers and moving entreaty, imploring him, as her eyes filled with tears, not to betray her father and her city and allow Carthage to be destroyed by the same flames with which the camps had been consumed. Hope also at the right moment was brought by the emissaries in the news that four thousand Celtiberians, the flower of their youth, had met them near a city named Obba, having been hired in Spain by their own recruiting-officers; and Hasdrubal, they said, would soon arrive with a force by no means to be despised. In consequence he not only gave a favourable answer to the legates but also showed them a large number of Numidian rustics to whom he had just been furnishing arms and horses, and assured them that he would call out all the young men from his kingdom. He was aware, he said, that the disaster had been due to fire, not to battle; that a war is lost only by the man who is defeated in battle. Such was his answer to the legates, and after a few days Hasdrubal and Syphax again united their forces. The total strength of that army was about thirty thousand armed men. Scipio, as though the war was already over so far as concerned Syphax and the Carthaginians, was intent upon the siege of Utica and already bringing up his engines to the walls when news of renewed hostilities turned his attention in another direction. And leaving sufficient land and sea forces merely to keep up the appearance of a blockade, he himself at once advanced with the main body of his army against the enemy. At first he established himself upon a hill about four miles from the king's camp. On the following day with his cavalry he went down into the so-called Great Plain, at the foot of that hill, and spent the day in light engagements, advancing against the enemy's outposts and challenging them. And on the next two days by irregular charges, now from one side and now from the other by turns, they accomplished nothing worthy of mention. On the fourth day both went down into battle-line. The Roman placed his principes behind the front line maniples, made up of the hastati, and as reserves the tiarii. The Italic cavalry he posted on the right wing, on the left the Numidians and Masinissa. Syphax and Hasdrubal opposed the Numidians to the Italic cavalry, the Carthaginians to Masinissa, and then placed the Celtiberians in the centre of the battle-line facing the maniples of the legions. In this formation they clashed. By the first attack both wings, Numidians and Carthaginians alike, were beaten back at the same time. For neither could the Numidians, most of them rustics, withstand the Roman cavalry, nor could the Carthaginians, who were likewise raw recruits, hold out against Masinissa, a foe to be feared for other reasons and also on account of his recent victory. Stripped of both wings the line of the Celtiberians made a stand because they could see no safety in flight since they did not know the country, and they had no hope of pardon from Scipio since they had come to Africa as mercenaries to attack him in spite of his kind treatment of them and their tribe. Therefore when the enemy had completely encircled them, falling one above another they were resolute in dying. And while all the enemy were intent upon them Syphax and Hasdrubal took advantage of a considerable interval for flight. Nightfall surprised the victors exhausted by a slaughter outlasting the battle. On the following day Scipio sent Laelius and Masinissa with all the Roman and Numidian cavalry and light-armed soldiers to pursue Syphax and Hasdrubal. He himself with the main body of the army, partly by inspiring hope, partly by arousing fear, partly by the use of force, gained possession of neighbouring cities, all of which were subject to the Carthaginians. At Carthage there was a veritable panic, and they believed that Scipio, whose forces were circling about them, after swiftly vanquishing all their neighbours would suddenly assail Carthage itself. Accordingly they were repairing the walls and providing them with battlements; and men also each for himself brought in from the country what was needed in order to endure a long siege. Seldom was mention made of peace, more frequently they spoke of sending messengers to summon Hannibal. The majority urged that they should take the fleet, which had been made ready to intercept supplies, and send it to surprise the ships at anchor before Utica while off their guard. Perhaps, men said, they would surprise the naval camp as well, which had been left with a small garrison. To this plan they were particularly inclined, but voted to send messengers to Hannibal. For, they said, even supposing a great victory gained by the fleet, the siege of Utica would indeed be partially relieved; but for the defence of Carthage itself there remained no other general than Hannibal, no other army than that of Hannibal. Consequently ships were launched next day and at the same time the messengers sailed for Italy. There was also haste in all that they did under the goad of misfortune, while every one felt that if he should relax any effort he would be betraying the safety of all. Scipio, who was slowly leading an army laden -now with the spoils of many cities, sent captives and the rest of the spoils to the old camp before Utica, and being now intent upon Carthage, took possession of Tynes, abandoned by a fleeing garrison. The place is about fifteen miles from Carthage and defended by fortifications and particularly by its natural situation. It can also be seen from Carthage, at the same time itself affording a view both towards that city and towards the sea around the city. From that point, just as they were throwing up an earthwork, the Romans sighted the enemy's fleet making towards Utica from Carthage. Accordingly work was dropped, marching orders given and the standards hastily set in motion, that the ships, headed towards land and. the besieged city, also in no condition for a naval battle, might not be taken by surprise. For how could an easily manœuvred fleet, properly rigged with ship's gear and armed, have been resisted by ships carrying artillery and engines, and either converted now into transports or lying so close to the walls as to make scaling possible as if from an embankment and drawbridges? Consequently Scipio, on reaching the place, gave those war-ships which might have defended the others a place in the rear line near the land, contrary to the usual practice in a naval battle. On the other hand he placed four lines of transports as a bulwark against the enemy. To prevent the lines from being broken in the confusion of the battle he also held these transports together by placing masts and yards crosswise from ship to ship and lashing them with stout ropes as if by a single cable. In addition he laid down planks above to make a gangway the whole length of the line of ships; and beneath these bridges he left openings where scouting vessels could dash out against the enemy and return in safety. These preparations having been hastily completed as best the circumstances permitted, about a thousand picked fighting men were placed on board the transports. A vast number of weapons, chiefly missiles, were assembled, that they might be sufficient for a battle no matter how long-continued. Thus equipped and alert they were awaiting the approach of the enemy. The Carthaginians, whose first attack, had they made it in good time, would have been overpowering when everything was confused by the mass of men dashing about, were discouraged by their disastrous defeats on the land. And having in consequence no sufficient confidence on the sea either, where lay their own superiority, after spending the day in sailing slowly, they put in with their fleet about sunset into a harbour called Rusucmon by the Africans. On the next day about sunrise they drew up their ships in the open sea, as if for a regular naval battle and anticipating that the Romans would come out against them. After keeping their position for a long time and observing no movement on the part of the enemy, then only did they attack the transports. It was not in the least like a naval battle, but had almost the appearance of ships attacking the walls of a city. The transports were considerably higher. From their war-ships the Carthaginians generally hurled their weapons to no purpose against a higher position, since they did so leaning backwards, while a hit from the transports above was heavier and from its mere weight had more force. Scouting vessels and other light craft, which kept dashing out through openings underneath the bridges, were at first themselves sunk by the mere momentum and mass of the war-ships. Later they interfered with the fighting men as well because, as they mingled with the enemy's vessels, they often compelled the soldiers to withhold their missiles for fear in their uncertain aim they might hit their own men. Finally poles with an iron hook at the end —grappling-irons the soldiers call them —began to be thrown from the Carthaginian ships upon the Roman. Since the crews were unable either to cut off these poles or the chains by which they were hanging when thrown, whenever a warship was propelled astern, dragging a transport grappled by the hook, one might have seen men breaking up the links by which it had been bound to others, and even several of the vessels being towed away together. Much after this fashion the bridges in the first line were broken down and hardly enough time was given the fighting men to spring across to the second line of ships. About sixty transports were towed away by the stern to Carthage. Rejoicing for that was excessive, but all the more acceptable because, in the midst of uninterrupted defeats and sorrows, one ray of joy however small had unexpectedly beamed upon them. In addition it was clear to them that the Roman fleet had narrowly escaped destruction, and would have been destroyed if the captains of their own ships had not loitered, and if Scipio had not come to its aid in the nick of time. About the same time, as it happened, after Laelius and Masinissa had reached Numidia in about fifteen days, the Maesulians, that is, the kingdom of Masinissa's father, joyfully submitted to his rule, as that of a long-wished-for king. Syphax, when his commanders and garrisons had been driven out, confined himself to his old kingdom with no intention of remaining inactive. Love-sick, he was spurred on by his wife and father-in-law, and he had men and horses in such abundance that, when the forces of a kingdom that had flourished for many years were before his eyes, they could have roused a spirit that was even less barbarous and uncontrollable. Therefore, concentrating all the men fit for war, he assigned them horses, arms and missile weapons. He organized cavalry in troops, infantry in cohorts, in the manner he had formerly learned from Roman centurions. With an army no smaller than that which he had had before, but almost entirely raw and untrained, he at once advanced against the enemy. And after a camp had been pitched not far away, at first a few horsemen rode forth from the outposts, scouting from a safe distance; then being driven away by lances they dashed back- to their own men. Next in order came attacks made from both sides and, as men beaten back were inflamed by anger, more and more came to help them —the usual provocation in cavalry engagements, when either hope adds reinforcements to the successful or anger to those who have been repulsed. So on this occasion, the battle having been begun by a few, all the cavalry of both sides in the end were sent pouring out by their zest for the fray. And so long as it was purely a cavalry battle, the great numbers of the Masaesulians, while Syphax was sending out huge columns, could hardly be withstood. Then when Roman infantry by a sudden movement into the openings made for them by troops of their own cavalry had steadied the battle-line and checked the wild charge of the enemy, the barbarians at first gave their horses less rein, then were at a standstill and all but confounded by the strange tactics. Finally they not only gave way before the infantry but did not withstand the cavalry either, who were emboldened by the protection of infantry. And now the units of legionaries also were approaching. Then indeed the Masaesulians failed to sustain not only the first attack but even the sight of the standards and arms. Such was the effect either of remembering former defeats or of their present alarm. Then Syphax, while riding up to the enemy's troops of cavalry in the hope that by putting his men to shame, by exposing himself, he might be able to stem their flight, was thrown from a horse which had been seriously wounded, was overpowered, captured and brought alive to Laelius, a welcome sight presently to Masinissa above all others. The slaughter in that battle was not in proportion to the scale of the victory, since only a cavalry battle had been fought. Not more than five thousand men were slain; less than half of that number were captured in an attack upon the camp, to which very many men, losing heart with the loss of their king, had retreated. Cirta was the capital of the kingdom of Syphax, and to that city came a vast number of men from the rout. Masinissa said that, while for himself nothing was at that moment more attractive than to visit as victor his ancestral kingdom, recovered after so long an interval, nevertheless in success as well as in misfortune no time is allowed for loitering. If Laelius should permit him to go on in advance to Cirta with the cavalry and with Syphax in chains, he would surprise everybody in the excitement due to alarm. Laelius, he said, could follow with the infantry in short marches. With Laelius' assent he went to Cirta in advance and ordered that the leading Cirtensians be called out of the city to a conference. But with men who were unaware of the king's misadventure he accomplished nothing by revealing what had taken place, nor by threats nor by persuasion, until the king was placed before their eyes in chains. Then before a sight so grievous wailing began, and in alarm some deserted the walls, others with the sudden agreement of men who curry favour with the victor threw open the gates. And Masinissa, first sending detachments to all the gates and to favourable points on the walls, that no one might have a way of escape open to him, rode at full speed to take possession of the palace. As he was entering the forecourt Sophoniba, the wife of Syphax, daughter of Hasdrubal the Carthaginian, met him at the very threshold. And when in the midst of the column of armed men she caught sight of Masinissa, conspicuous both by his arms and the rest of his dress, thinking it was the king, as was the fact, she clasped his knees and said: All power over us has indeed been given you by the gods and by your courage and good fortune. But if a captive is permitted in the house of the master of her life and death to lift the voice of a suppliant, if she may touch his knees, his victorious right hand, I pray and entreat you by the royal state in which we too have lived a short time ago, by the name of the Numidian race, which you have shared with Syphax, by the gods of this palace here —and may they receive you under better auspices than those under which they sent Syphax away! —I beg you to grant this favour to a suppliant, that, whatever your inclination, you yourself decide in regard to your captive and do not suffer me to be subjected to the haughty and cruel decision of any Roman. If I had been nothing else than the wife of Syphax, still I should have preferred to trust the word of a Numidian and a man born in the same Africa as myself rather than that of a foreigner by birth and nationality. What a Carthaginian woman, what a daughter of Hasdrubal has to fear from a Roman you see. If by no other means you are able to do so, I beg and implore you to save me by death from the decision of Romans. Her beauty was conspicuous and her age at full bloom. Consequently while she was clasping now his knees and now his right hand, begging for his promise not to surrender her to any Roman, and her words were now more nearly those of a charmer than of a suppliant, the heart of the victor was quickly moved not to pity only, but with the amorous susceptibility of the Numidian race the victor was captivated by love of the captive. He gave her his right hand as a pledge for the fulfilment of her request and withdrew into the palace. Then he began by himself to consider how he could guarantee that the promise would be kept. As he was unable to solve that problem he borrowed from love a plan that was reckless and unbecoming. He promptly ordered preparations to be made for a wedding the very same day, in order not to leave any decision open either to Laelius or to Scipio himself in regard to her as a captive when she should be already married to Masinissa. After the wedding Laelius arrived, and so far was he from concealing his disapproval of the act that at first he even attempted to tear her away from the marriage couch and send her to Scipio with Syphax and the rest of the captives. He was then persuaded by the entreaties of Masinissa, who begged him to refer to Scipio the decision which of the two kings was to have Sophoniba share his lot. Whereupon, after sending Syphax and the captives away, he with Masinissa's aid subdued the remaining cities of Numidia which were held by the king's garrisons. When it was announced that Syphax was being brought into the camp all the rank and file poured out, as though they were to witness a triumph. First came Syphax himself in chains, followed by a company of noble Numidians. Then all the soldiers in enlarging upon their own victory did their best to magnify Syphax and the fame of his race, saying that he was the king to whose majesty the two most powerful peoples in the world, the Roman and the Carthaginian, paid such honour that Scipio, their own general, left his province of Spain and his army and with two quinqueremes sailed to Africa to court his friendship, while Hasdrubal, a general of the Carthaginians, not only came himself to him in his kingdom but also gave him his daughter in marriage. They said that he had at the same time had two generals, a Carthaginian and a Roman, in his power; that just as both sides had sought the favour of the immortal gods by offering sacrifices, so had his friendship been sought at the same time by both sides. Moreover, so great, they said, had been his power that when Masinissa had been driven out of his kingdom, Syphax brought him so low that his life was protected only by the report of his death and by hiding-places where he lived in the forest like wild animals on what they caught. Honoured by such utterances of the bystanders the king was brought before Scipio at headquarters. Even Scipio was moved by the comparison of the man's former estate with his present condition, but especially by the memory of their guest-friendship and the clasp of hands, and of the compact made for the state and of that made in his own name. The same considerations gave Syphax also spirit in addressing the victor. For when Scipio repeatedly asked him what he had meant by not only rejecting a Roman alliance but also taking the aggressive in war, he would admit that he had indeed done wrong and lost his reason, but not then for the first time when he had taken up arms against the Roman people. That had been the culmination, not the beginning, of his madness. The time when he lost his reason, when he put out of his head all private guest-friendships and public treaties, was when he admitted a noble Carthaginian lady to his house. From those nuptial torches his palace had taken fire; that baneful fury by all her blandishments had unbalanced and unhinged his mind, and she had never rested until with her own hands she had herself put on him guilt-stained arms against a guest-friend and a personal friend. Yet for himself, ruined and crushed, there was this consolation in his misfortunes, to see that the same baneful fury had passed into the house and home of the greatest enemy he had in the world. Masinissa was neither wiser, he said, nor more steadfast than Syphax; he was even more imprudent owing to his youth. Certainly there had been -more folly and lack of self-control in Masinissa's marriage to her than in his own. By speaking thus, not only out of hatred as an enemy but also under the goad of jealousy, as he saw his beloved in the possession of his rival, he aroused no slight anxiety in the mind of Scipio. The charges against her were substantiated both by the marriage hastily celebrated, almost on the battlefield, without either seeking the advice of Laelius or waiting for his arrival, and by such precipitate haste that on the very day on which he saw her as a captured enemy he took her to wife and performed the nuptial rites before the household gods of his foe. Again, all this seemed the more repulsive to Scipio because in Spain, in spite of his youth, he had himself never been smitten by the beauty of any captive. Such thoughts were in his mind when Laelius and Masinissa arrived. Scipio welcomed them both alike with kindly expression and lauded them in distinguished terms before a crowded council, and then leading Masinissa to a place apart thus addressed him: Some good qualities you saw in me, I suppose, Masinissa, and so came to me first in Spain, to cement a friendship with me, and later in Africa entrusted yourself and all your hopes to my protection. But of those virtues on account of which my friendship might seem to you desirable there is none on which I might have prided myself so much as on self-restraint and continence. This virtue I would have you also, Masinissa, add to your other remarkable excellences. There is no danger —believe me, there is none —so great to our time of life from armed enemies as from pleasures all about us. Whoever has checked and mastered them by his self-control has gained for himself a far greater distinction and a greater victory than is ours by the defeat of Syphax. All that you in my absence have done with energy and courage I was glad to mention and gladly remember. Upon the rest of your acts I prefer to have you reflect inwardly yourself, rather than blush at my recital. Syphax has been defeated and captured under the auspices of the Roman people. In consequence he himself, his wife, his kingdom, territory, towns, the people who inhabit them, in short whatever has belonged to Syphax, is booty of the Roman people. And as for the king and his wife, even if she were not a Carthaginian citizen, even if we did not see in her father a high commander of the enemy, they would have to be sent to Rome, and the senate and the Roman people would properly have the right to judge and decide the case of her who is alleged to have estranged from us an allied king and driven him headlong into war. Conquer yourself; do not disfigure many good qualities by one defect and forfeit the favour earned by so many services through a fault out of all proportion to its cause. On hearing these words not only did Masinissa blush, but tears also came. And after saying that he on his part would be under the orders of the general and imploring him to have such regard as the case permitted for the promise he had rashly given, namely that he would not hand her over to any man's power, he withdrew from headquarters to his own tent a distracted man. There, with no witnesses present, he spent considerable time, with frequent sighs and groans, so that they could easily be heard by those who stood about the tent. Then at last, after one very loud groan, he called the faithful slave in whose keeping was the poison, against the uncertainties of fortune, as usual with kings, and bade him mix. it and carry it in a cup to Sophoniba. He also ordered him at the same time to tell her that Masinissa would gladly have fulfilled the most important promise which as husband he was bound to keep for a wife; that since the freedom to do so was taken away by those who had the power, he was keeping the promise next to it in importance, namely, that she should not come into the Romans' power alive. Mindful of her father the general, and of her native city, and of the two kings to whom she had been married, she was to decide for herself. When the slave bearing this message together with the poison had reached Sophoniba she said, I receive the wedding gift, and it is not unwelcome if my husband has been able to bestow nothing better upon his wife. But tell him this, that it would have been easier for me to die if I had not married at my funeral. No less high-spirited than her words was her acceptance of the cup, fearlessly drained without a sign of wavering. As soon as this was reported to Scipio he at once summoned Masinissa, for fear the high-spirited young man in his distress of mind might do something desperate. He offered now consolation, now gentle rebuke because he atoned for one reckless act by another and made the matter more deplorable than was necessary. On the following day, in order to divert Masinissa's thoughts from the emotion of the moment, Scipio mounted the tribune and ordered that an assembly be called. There for the first time he addressed Masinissa as king, bestowing upon him the highest terms of praise, and presented him with a golden wreath, a golden patera, a curule chair and ivory sceptre, an embroidered toga and a tunic adorned with palms. He added this tribute: that there was no higher distinction among the Romans than a triumph, and that those who triumphed had no more magnificent array than that of which Masinissa alone of all foreigners was accounted worthy by the Roman people. He then warmly. praised Laelius also and presented him with a golden wreath. Other officers also and men were rewarded, each according to the service he had performed. By these distinctions the king was appeased and roused to the hope, soon to be fulfilled, that with Syphax removed he would gain possession of all Numidia. Scipio, having sent Gaius Laelius with Syphax and other captives to Rome, while with these went Masinissa's legates also, himself moved his camp back again to Tynes and completed the fortifications he had already begun. The Carthaginians, on account of their attack upon the fleet with considerable success for the moment, had been filled with a joy not only short-lived but almost unfounded. But on hearing of the capture of Syphax, on whom they had rested their hopes almost more than on Hasdrubal and their own army, they were discouraged. No longer listening to any advocate of war, they sent their thirty elder statesmen to plead for peace. This was their privy council, and it had great influence even in guiding the senate. When they reached the Roman camp and headquarters they fell to the ground after the custom of courtiers, having derived that ceremony, I suppose, from the region from which they sprang. Such humble obeisance was matched by their discourse, as they did not try to clear themselves of blame, but shifted the original blame to Hannibal and to those who supported his power. They craved pardon for a state now twice overthrown by the rashness of its citizens, to be saved a second time by the favour of its foes. It was power, they said, that the Roman people sought from vanquished enemies, not their destruction. They were ready to be obedient servants; let him give them whatever commands he pleased. Scipio said he had come to Africa in the hope that he would carry home a victory, not a treaty of peace; that his hope had been also confirmed by a successful issue of the war. Nevertheless, although he had victory almost within his grasp, he was not rejecting a peace, in order that all nations might know that the Roman people acted fairly both in beginning and ending wars. He said that he announced the following terms of peace: that they restore captives and deserters and fugitive slaves; that they withdraw their armies from Italy and Gaul; that they have nothing to do with Spain; that they give up ownership of all the islands lying between Italy and Africa; that they deliver all their war-ships except twenty, and 500,000 pecks of wheat, 300,000 pecks of barley. —As for money, there is no agreement as to the sum which he imposed. In one source I find that 5,000 talents were imposed, in another 5,000 pounds of silver, in another double the pay of his soldiers. — Whether on these terms, said he, you are disposed to make peace, on that point three days will be given you for deliberation. If that shall be your decision, make an armistice with me, send your embassy to the senate at Rome. Dismissed with these words, the Carthaginians agreed that no peace terms should be rejected, since they were seeking to gain time for Hannibal to cross over to Africa. Accordingly they sent one embassy to Scipio to arrange an armistice and another to Rome to sue for peace, taking with them a few captives and deserters and fugitive slaves for appearance' sake, that they might more readily obtain peace. Many days before this, together with Syphax and the leading Numidian captives, Laelius reached Rome and set forth to the senate in order everything that had been done in Africa, in the midst of great rejoicing for the present and high hopes for the future. Thereupon the senate after deliberation voted that the king should be sent to Alba to be interned; that Laelius should be detained until the Carthaginian embassy arrived. A thanksgiving for four days was decreed. Publius Aelius, the praetor, having dismissed the senate, then summoned an assembly and with Gaius Laelius mounted the Rostra. Thereupon, hearing that the Carthaginian armies had been routed, a famous king conquered and captured, all Numidia overrun in a series of extraordinary victories, they were unable to keep their joy to themselves, but expressed their unbounded delight by shouting and such other means as the multitude commonly employs. Accordingly the praetor at once gave orders that the temple wardens should open all the shrines throughout the city, and that people should have all day long the opportunity to make the rounds and pay their respects to the gods and return thanks to them. On the next day he introduced Masinissa's envoys into the senate. They began by congratulating the senate on Publius Scipio's successful campaign in Africa. They then thanked the senators because he had not only saluted Masinissa as king but had made him king in restoring him to his father's kingdom, in which he would reign without fear and without contest since the removal of Syphax, if that should be the mind of the senators; also because, after warmly praising him before an assembly, he had conferred upon him the highest decorations, of which Masinissa had striven and would continue to strive to be not unworthy. He begged the senate, they said, by a decree to confirm the kingly title and the rest of Scipio's favours and gifts; and unless objection was made, another request of Masinissa's was this, that they return the Numidian captives who were interned at Rome. That would bring him great credit, he felt, among his countrymen. The response to these words of the envoys was that the senators reciprocated the king's congratulations on successes in Africa; that Scipio in their opinion had been entirely correct in saluting him as king, and that they approved and commended all else that he had done which gave pleasure to Masinissa. In addition gifts were decreed, to be carried to the king by the envoys: two purple military cloaks, each with a golden brooch, and tunics having the broad stripe, two horses with their trappings, two sets of arms with cuirasses for a horseman, and tents and field furniture such as were customarily furnished to a consul. These things the praetor was ordered to send to the king. For the envoys gifts were decreed, not less than five thousand asses for each of them, for their attendants one thousand each; and two garments apiece for the envoys, one each for their attendants, and for the Numidians who were ordered to be released from internment and restored to the king. In addition dwellings were ordered to be placed at the envoys' disposal, and places of honour, and hospitable entertainment were provided. In the same summer in which these measures were taken at Rome and these operations carried on in Africa, Publius Quinctilius Varus, a praetor, and Marcus Cornelius, the proconsul, fought a pitched battle with Mago the Carthaginian in the territory of the Insubrian Gauls. The praetor's legions were in the first line. Cornelius kept his legions in reserve while he himself rode up to the front. And from in front of the two wings praetor and proconsul kept urging the soldiers to advance their ranks against the enemy with all their strength. When they failed to drive the enemy back, Quinctilius then said to Cornelius: The battle is slowing down, as you see, and their unexpected resistance is hardening the enemy against fright, and the danger is that fear may turn into daring. We must rouse our cavalry to a sudden charge if we wish to confuse and dislodge them. Accordingly, either do you in the front line keep up the fight, and I will lead the cavalry into the fray. Or I will command here at the front, and you shall send out the horse of four legions into the enemy. As the proconsul was ready to accept whichever part of the task the praetor wished him to take, Quinctilius, the praetor, with his son, an active youth whose praenomen was Marcus, made his way to the cavalry and ordering them to mount suddenly sent them out against the enemy. The confusion wrought by the cavalry was heightened also by the shouting of the legions, and the enemy's line would not have kept its position if Mago at the first movement of the cavalry had not at once led the elephants, which were kept in readiness, into battle. Terrified by their roar and odour and by the sight of them the horses made the assistance of the cavalry useless. And although, so long as they were in the thick of the fight, where they could make use of the lance and, at close quarters, of the sword, the Roman horsemen were the stronger, still when they were carried to a distance by frightened horses, the Numidians were the more successful in hurling javelins from a longer range. Of the infantry also the twelfth legion at the same time was largely cut to pieces and holding its ground more from a sense of honour than by its strength. And it would not have held on long if the thirteenth legion, brought up from the reserves into the front line, had not taken over the indecisive battle. Mago likewise brought up Gauls from his reserves to face the fresh legion. After these had been routed with no great effort, the hastati of the eleventh legion massed together and attacked the elephants, which by this time were bringing disorder even to the-infantry line. When the legionaries had hurled javelins against them in their close order, scarcely one missile being without effect, they drove all the elephants back into their own battle-line. Four of them, hampered by wounds, fell to the ground. Then for the first time the enemy's line was driven back, since all the cavalry, on seeing the elephants in flight, dashed out to increase the panic and confusion. But so long as Mago stood before the standards, his men as they slowly retired kept their ranks and continued to fight. After they saw him falling with his thigh pierced, and then borne almost lifeless from the battlefield, at once they all took to flight. About five thousand of the enemy were slain that day and twenty-two military standards were captured. Nor was it a bloodless victory for the Romans. Two thousand three hundred were lost from the army of the praetor, much the larger part of them from the twelfth legion; from it also two tribunes of the soldiers, Marcus Cosconius and Marcus Maevius. Of the thirteenth legion also, which had taken part in the last phase of the battle, Gaius Helvius, tribune of the soldiers, fell while rallying the men. And about twenty-two knights of the upper class were trampled by the elephants and perished together with a number of centurions. Also the engagement would have lasted even longer, had not victory been conceded because of the general's wound. Mago set out in the stillness of the following night and, lengthening the day's marches as much as he could endure by reason of his wound, he reached the sea in the country of the Ligurian Ingauni. There envoys from Carthage came to him, having put in a few days before into the Gallic Gulf, bringing him orders to cross over to Africa as soon as possible. His brother Hannibal, they said, would do the same; for to him also envoys had gone bearing the same command; that the Carthaginian state was in no position to hold Gaul and Italy by armed forces. Mago was not only swayed by the command from the senate and the danger of his city, but also feared that if he delayed the victorious enemy might be upon him, and the Ligurians themselves, seeing that the Carthaginians were abandoning Italy, might go over to the side of those in whose power they would presently be. Hoping at the same time that motion would be less painful to his wound on shipboard than on the road and everything more convenient for treatment, he embarked his troops and sailed, but had hardly passed Sardinia when he died of his wound. In addition a considerable number of the Carthaginian ships, being scattered in the open sea, were captured by the Roman fleet which was off Sardinia. Such were the events on land and sea in that part of Italy which borders upon the Alps. The consul Gaius Servilius, who had accomplished nothing that deserves mention in his province of Etruria and in Gaul —for he had advanced into that country as well-rescued from slavery after fifteen years his father Gaius Servilius and Gaius Lutatius, who had been captured near the village of Tannetum by the Boii. Upon that he returned to Rome escorted by his father on one side and Catulus on the other, gaining distinction for an act that was personal rather than official. A bill was brought before the people that it should not be a ground for charges against Gaius Servilius that while his father, who had occupied a curule chair, was still alive-a fact of which he was unaware-he had been tribune of the plebs and plebeian aedile, contrary to provisions of the laws. This bill became a law, whereupon he returned to his province. As for Gnaeus Servilius, the consul, who was in the land of the Bruttii, Consentia, Aufugum, Bergae, Baesidiae, Ocriculum, Lymphaeum, Argentanum, Clampetia and many other unimportant communities, came over to his side, seeing that the Punic war was failing. The same consul engaged in battle with Hannibal in the territory of Croton. The story of that battle is not clear. Valerius Antias says five thousand of the enemy were slain-a victory on such a scale as to have been either shamelessly fabricated or else carelessly passed over. What is certain is that nothing further was accomplished by Hannibal in Italy. For to him also came emissaries from Carthage to recall him to Africa just at the time, it chanced, that others came to Mago. Gnashing his teeth and groaning-so they say-and scarcely keeping back the tears he listened to the words of the emissaries. After they had delivered their message he said: It is no longer obscurely but openly that I am being recalled by men who, in forbidding the sending of reinforcements and money, were long ago trying to drag me back. The conqueror of Hannibal is therefore not the Roman people, so often cut to pieces and put to flight, but the Carthaginian senate by carping and envy. And over this inglorious return of mine it will not be Publius Scipio who wildly exults, so much as Hanno, who, unable to do so by any other means, has ruined our family by the downfall of Carthage. Already foreboding this very thing he had previously put his ships in readiness. Accordingly, after distributing the mass of useless troops, nominally as garrisons, among the few Bruttian towns that were being held rather by fear than by loyalty, he transported the flower of his army to Africa. Many men of Italic race refusing to follow him to Africa had retired to the shrine of Juno Lacinia, never desecrated until that day, and had been cruelly slain actually within the temple enclosure. They say that rarely has any other man leaving his country to go into exile departed so sorrowfully as Hannibal on withdrawing from the enemy's land; that he repeatedly looked back upon the shores of Italy and, accusing gods and men, called down a curse upon himself also and his own head because he had not led his soldiers blood-stained from the victory of Cannae to Rome. Scipio had dared, he said, to approach Carthage —a man who in his consulship had not seen a Carthaginian enemy in Italy —whereas he himself, after a hundred thousand armed men had been slain at Trasumennus, at Cannae, had grown old round Casilinum and Cumae and Nola. Such were his accusations and laments as he was dragged away from his long occupation of Italy. XXI. At Rome the news of Mago's departure and that of Hannibal were received about the same time. Rejoicing over this two-fold ground for congratulation was tempered by two circumstances: that men thought the generals had lacked either the spirit or the strength to detain them, although this had been ordered by the senate; and that they were concerned for the outcome, now that the whole burden of the war came down upon one army and one commander. About the same time envoys arrived from Saguntum bringing Carthaginians alleged to have crossed over into Spain to hire auxiliaries, having been seized together with the money. They set down two hundred and fifty pounds of gold and eight hundred pounds of silver in the forecourt of the Senate House. After accepting the captives, remanding them to prison and returning the gold and silver, the senate thanked the envoys; and in addition presents were made to them and ships furnished for their return to Spain. The older members thereupon observed that men are slower to recognize blessings than evils; that upon Hannibal's passage into Italy they remembered what alarm and panic there had been. Since that time what disasters, what sorrows had befallen them! The enemy's camp had been visible from the walls of the city; what prayers had been said by individuals and by the entire people! How often in their deliberations had men been heard to say, as they lifted their hands to heaven, Would the day ever come when they should see Italy cleared of the enemy and prospering in a blessed peace! At last, they said, but not before the sixteenth year, the gods had granted that prayer; and yet there was no one to propose a vote of thanks to the gods; so true was it that men did not gratefully receive a blessing upon its coming, much less duly remember it when past. Upon that shouts came from every part of the Senate House that Publius Aelius, the praetor, should bring up the question. And it was voted that for five days thanks should be offered at all the pulvinaria, also that a hundred and twenty full-grown victims should be sacrificed. After Laelius and the envoys of Masinissa had been dismissed, word came that the Carthaginian envoys, on their way to the senate to sue for peace, had been seen at Puteoli and would proceed thence by land. Whereupon it was decided that Gaius Laelius should be recalled, in order that the discussion of peace might be in his presence. Quintus Fulvius Gillo, Scipio's lieutenant, conducted the Carthaginians to Rome. Being forbidden to enter the city, they were entertained in the Villa Publica and a hearing in the senate was granted them in the Temple of Bellona. XXII. They made substantially the same plea as they had done before Scipio, shifting all blame for the war from public responsibility to Hannibal: that he had crossed not merely the Alps but even the Ebro without orders from the senate, and on his own responsibility had waged war not only on the Romans but before that upon the Saguntines also. The senate and the Carthaginian people, they claimed, had a treaty with the Romans which in any fair judgment was to that day unbroken; consequently they had no other instructions than to beg permission to abide by the last peace-treaty, made with Gaius Lutatius. When the praetor, following traditional practice, had given the senators permission to ask any question of the envoys if any one was so disposed, and older members, who had been present when action was taken on the treaties, were asking various questions, the envoys kept saying that on account of their age they did not remember —nearly all of them being young men. Upon that there were shouts from every part of the house that Punic trickery had led them to choose men who did not themselves remember it, to ask that the old treaty should be revived. XXIII. Then after the envoys had been ushered out of the house, opinions began to be called for. Marcus Livius moved that Gaius Servilius, the consul, being the nearer, should be summoned, in order that discussion of peace might be in his presence. Since there could be no more important subject for deliberation than that, it did not seem to him, he said, that debate on the question in the absence of one or both of the consuls was quite in keeping with the dignity of the Roman people. Quintus Metellus, who had been consul three years before and also dictator, said that, whereas Publius Scipio by slaying their armies and ravaging their lands had reduced the enemy to such straits that as suppliants they were suing for peace, and whereas no man in the world could more correctly judge of the spirit in which they were seeking that peace than he who was conducting a war at the gates of Carthage, peace must be accepted or rejected according to the advice of none other than Scipio. Marcus Valerius Laevinus, who had twice been consul, contended that spies, not envoys, had come to them, and that they should be ordered to depart from Italy, and guards sent with them all the way to their ships, and that a written order should be sent to Scipio not to relax effort in the war. Laelius and Fulvius added that Scipio also had based his hope of peace only upon the supposition that Hannibal and Mago were not to be recalled from Italy. But while waiting for those generals and their armies, they said, the Carthaginians would use every pretence, and then, forgetful of treaties however recent and of all the gods, would carry on the war. Consequently a still larger number voted for Laevinus' motion. The envoys were sent away without securing peace and almost without an answer. About that time Gnaeus Servilius, the consul, who had no doubt that to him belonged the glory of giving peace to Italy, as if in pursuit of a Hannibal whom he had driven out himself, crossed over to Sicily, intending to cross from there to Africa. When this was noised abroad at Rome, at first the senators had voted that the praetor should write to the consul that the senate thought it proper for him to return to Italy. Then, as the praetor said that Servilius would disregard his letter, Publius Sulpicius was made dictator for that very purpose; and by virtue of his higher authority he recalled the consul to Italy. The rest of the year he spent with his master of the horse, Marcus Servilius, in making the rounds of such cities in Italy as had been estranged by the war and in hearing their cases one after another. During the armistice a hundred transports sent from Sardinia by the praetor Publius Lentulus with supplies and convoyed by twenty war-ships crossed to Africa over a sea safe from the enemy and safe from storms. Gnaeus Octavius, crossing over from Sicily with two hundred transports and thirty war-ships, was not so fortunate. When he had almost come in sight of Africa after a favourable passage, the wind at first failed him; then shifting into a southwester, it damaged and scattered the ships far and wide. He himself with the war-ships battled against head seas by great efforts on the part of the oarsmen and reached the Promontory of Apollo. Most of the transports were carried to the island of Aegimurus —which on the seaward side closes the bay upon which lies Carthage, about thirty miles from the city —the rest of them to Aquae Calidae, opposite the city itself. Everything could be seen from Carthage; and so from all parts of the city people ran to the market-place. The magistrates summoned the senate; the people before the entrance of the Senate House protested against letting go so much booty out of their sight and reach. While some objected, pleading the sanctity of peace negotiations, others that of the armistice —for its term had not yet expired —the meeting of the senate was all but merged with that of the people. It was agreed that Hasdrubal should sail over to Aegimurus with his fleet of fifty ships, and then gather up the Roman ships scattered along the shore and in the harbours. Deserted by the flight of their crews the transports were towed by the stern to Carthage, first from Aegimurus and then from Aquae. Not yet had the envoys returned from Rome, nor was it known what had been the decision of the Roman senate in regard to war or peace; not yet had the term of the armistice expired. For that reason Scipio thought it an even more shameful outrage that both the hope of peace and the sanctity of an armistice had been treated with disrespect by men who had sued for peace and an armistice. At once he sent Lucius Baebius, Lucius Sergius and Lucius Fabius as envoys to Carthage. These narrowly escaped injury at the hands of a mob and foresaw that their return would be no safer. Accordingly they begged the magistrates whose help had prevented violence to send ships to escort them. Two triremes were furnished, and having reached the river Bagradas, from which the Roman camp was visible, they returned to Carthage. The Carthaginian fleet was lying at anchor near Utica. Three quadriremes from that fleet, just as the Roman quinquereme was rounding the promontory, suddenly attacked her from the seaward side, perhaps because a secret order to do so had been sent from Carthage, possibly because Hasdrubal, who was in command of the fleet, made bold to act without complicity on the part of the government. But they were unable to ram her as she eluded them by her speed, and the marines could not spring across from the lower vessels to the higher one. Also she was brilliantly defended so long as their missiles held out. When these failed them there was nothing else which could protect the ship but nearness to the land and the great numbers that poured out to the shore from the camp. For propelled at full speed by the oars, they ran her on the shore with all possible momentum. Consequently the ship only was lost, and the men themselves escaped. Thus the armistice beyond doubt had been broken by one crime after another when Laelius and Fulvius arrived from Rome with the Carthaginian envoys. Scipio informed these men that, although not only the sanctity of an armistice had been violated by the Carthaginians, but also the law of nations in regard to his envoys, nevertheless he would not in their case do anything unworthy of the established usages of the Roman people or of his own character. Whereupon he dismissed the envoys and made preparations for war. As Hannibal was already nearing land, one of the sailors was ordered to go aloft, in order to make out what region they were approaching. When he reported that the bow was headed toward a ruined tomb, Hannibal with a prayer to avert such an omen ordered the pilot to sail on, brought his fleet in at Leptis, and there disembarked his troops. Such were the events of that year in Africa. What follows runs over into the year in which Marcus Servilius Geminus, who at that time was master of the horse, and Tiberius Claudius Nero became consuls. But at the end of the previous year envoys from Greece representing allied cities had complained that their territories had been ravaged by the king's forces, and that envoys who had gone into Macedonia to claim damages were not admitted to King Philip's presence. They had at the same time brought word that four thousand soldiers under the command of Sopater were alleged to have crossed over to Africa to defend the Carthaginians, and that a considerable sum of money was said to have been sent with them. Consequently the senate voted to send envoys to the king to report that in the opinion of the senators these acts had violated the treaty. The men sent were Gaius Terentius Varro, Gaius Mamilius, Marcus Aurelius; three quinqueremes were furnished them. The year was marked by a great conflagration in which the Clivus Publicius was burned to the ground, and by floods, but also by the low price of grain, because not only was all Italy open by reason of peace, but also a great quantity of grain had been sent from Spain; and Marcus Valerius Falto and Marcus Fabius Buteo, the curule aediles, distributed this to the populace by precincts at four asses a peck. In the same year Quintus Fabius Maximus died at a very advanced age, if indeed it is true that he had been an augur for sixty-two years, as some authorities say. He certainly was a man who deserved such a surname, even if it had been first applied to him. He surpassed the number of magistracies held by his father and equalled those of his grandfather. A larger number of victories and greater battles made the fame of his grandfather Rullus; but all of them can be balanced by a single enemy, Hannibal. Nevertheless Fabius has been accounted a man of caution rather than of action. And while one may question whether he was the Delayer by nature, or because that was especially suited to the war then in progress, still nothing is more certain than that one man by delaying restored our state, as Ennius says. In his place as augur his son Quintus Fabius Maximus was installed; likewise in his place as pontifex —for he held two priesthoods —Servius Sulpicius Galba. The Roman Games were repeated for a single day, the entire Plebeian Games three times over by the aediles Marcus Sextius Sabinus and Gnaeus Tremelius Flaccus. Both of them were made praetors, and with them Gaius Livius Salinator and Gaius Aurelius Cotta. As for the elections of that year, conflicting authorities make it uncertain whether Gaius Servilius as consul conducted them or Publius Sulpicius as dictator, appointed by Servilius because business detained him in Etruria, where in accordance with a decree of the senate he was conducting trials for conspiracy among the leading citizens. At the beginning of the following year Marcus Servilius and Tiberius Claudius summoned the senate to the Capitol and raised the question of the provinces. They wished that lots should be cast for Italy and Africa, both of them being eager to have Africa. But chiefly owing to the efforts of Quintus Metellus Africa was not refused nor yet given them. The consuls were instructed to arrange with the tribunes of the plebs that, with their approval, they should bring before the people the question whom they wished for the conduct of the war in Africa. All the tribes voted for Publius Scipio. In spite of that the consuls cast lots for Africa as a province, for so the senate had decreed. Africa fell to Tiberius Claudius, with the provision that he should take a fleet of fifty ships, all of them quinqueremes, over to Africa, and that he should be commanding general with an authority equal to that of Scipio. Marcus Servilius received Etruria by lot. In the same province Gaius Servilius' command was also continued, in case the senate decided that the consul should remain near the city. Of the praetors Marcus Sextius received Gaul by lot, with the understanding that Publius Quinctilius Varus should turn over to him the two legions with the province; Gaius Livius received the land of the Bruttii with the two legions which Publius Sempronius had commanded in the previous year as proconsul; Gnaeus Tremelius was allotted Sicily, to take over the province from Publius Villius Tappulus, praetor of the previous year, and the two legions. Villius as propraetor was to defend the coast of Sicily with twenty war-ships and a thousand soldiers. Marcus Pomponius with the remaining twenty ships was to transport fifteen hundred soldiers back to Rome. The city praetorship fell to Gaius Aurelius Cotta. For the rest of the praetors their commands were continued just as they then held their several provinces and armies. With no more than sixteen legions the empire was defended that year. And that they might begin everything and carry it on with the favour of the gods, inasmuch as in the consulship of Marcus Claudius Marcellus and Titus Quinctius the dictator Titus Manlius had vowed games and full-grown victims if the state should remain for four years as it was before, it was ordered that the consuls should celebrate those games before they set out for the war. The games were celebrated in the Circus for four days, and victims were sacrificed to the gods to whom they had been vowed. Meanwhile hope and anxiety alike were increasing from day to day, and men could not quite make up their minds whether it was a fit subject for rejoicing that Hannibal, retiring from Italy after sixteen years, had left the Roman people free to take possession of it, and not rather a ground for apprehension that he had crossed over to Africa with his army intact. The place doubtless had been changed, they thought, not the danger. Foretelling that mighty conflict Quintus Fabius, recently deceased, had often predicted, not without reason, that in his own land Hannibal would be a more terrible enemy than in a foreign country. And Scipio would have to deal neither with Syphax, king of a land of untrained barbarians, for whom Statorius, who was little more than a sutler, commonly commanded his armies, nor with the father-in-law of Syphax, Hasdrubal, a general very swift in flight, nor with irregular armies suddenly raised from a half-armed mob of rustics. Rather would he have to do with Hannibal, who had been born, one might almost say, at the headquarters of his father, the bravest of generals, had been reared and brought up in the midst of arms; who even in boyhood was a soldier, in earliest manhood a general; who, ageing as a victor, had filled the Spanish and Gallic lands and Italy from the Alps to the Straits with the evidence of his mighty deeds. He was in command of an army whose campaigns equalled his own in number; was toughened by enduring such hardships as one could scarcely believe human beings had endured; had been spattered with Roman blood a thousand times and carried the spoils, not of soldiers only but also of generals. Many men who would encounter Scipio in battle had with their own hands slain Roman praetors, generals-in-command, consuls; had been decorated with crowns for bravery in scaling city-walls and camp defences; had wandered through captured camps, captured cities of the Romans. All the magistrates of the Roman people did not at that time have so many fasces as Hannibal was able to have borne before him, having captured them from fallen generals. By brooding over such terrifying thoughts men were adding to their own anxieties and fears, for another reason too: whereas year after year it had been their habit to carry on a war before their eyes in one part and then in another of Italy, with hope deferred and looking to no immediate end of the conflict, all men's interest was now intensified by Scipio and Hannibal, as it were, pitted against each other for the final combat. Even in the case of those who had great confidence in Scipio and high hope of victory, the more their minds were bent upon immediate victory the more intense were their anxieties. Not unlike were the feelings of the Carthaginians, who at one moment, when they thought of Hannibal and the greatness of his achievements, regretted having sued for peace, at another moment, on reflecting that they had been twice defeated in battle, that Syphax had been captured, that they had been driven out of Spain, driven out of Italy, and all this accomplished by the courage and strategy of Scipio alone, they dreaded him as a predestined commander, born to work their destruction. XXIX. By this time Hannibal had reached Hadrumetum. From there, after he had spent a few days that his soldiers might recuperate from sea-sickness, he was called away by alarming news brought by men who reported that all the country round Carthage was occupied by armed forces, and he hastened to Zama by forced marches. Zama is distant five day's marches from Carthage. Scouts who had been sent in advance from that position were captured and brought before Scipio by their Roman guards. Thereupon he turned them over to a tribune of the soldiers, and bidding them go and see everything without fear, he ordered them to be led about the camp wherever they wished to go; and after questioning them as to whether they had examined everything quite at their leisure, he sent them back to Hannibal, furnishing men to escort them. Hannibal did not indeed hear with joy any of the reports of his scouts, for they reported that Masinissa had also arrived that very day, as it happened, with six thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry. But he was particularly dismayed by the enemy's confidence, which surely seemed to be not without foundation. Consequently, although he was himself at once the cause of the war and by his coming the breaker of a truce already arranged and of a prospective treaty as well, nevertheless, thinking that fairer terms could be obtained if he should sue for peace while his army was intact, rather than after defeat, he sent a messenger to Scipio, requesting that he grant the privilege of a conference with him. Whether he did so on his own responsibility or that of the state, I have no means of deciding either this way or that. Valerius Antias relates that he was defeated by Scipio in their first engagement, in which twelve thousand soldiers were slain in battle and seventeen hundred captured; and that as an envoy with ten other envoys Hannibal came to Scipio in his camp. To resume, once Scipio had assented to the conference, both generals by agreement advanced the position of their camps, so that their meeting might be at a short distance. Scipio established himself not far from the city of Naraggara, in a situation otherwise favourable, but particularly because water was to be had within the range of a javelin. Hannibal occupied a hill four miles away, safe and convenient otherwise, except that one had to go far for water. Half-way between them a spot was chosen which was visible from all sides, that there might be no ambuscades. Keeping their armed men at the same distance the generals, each attended by one interpreter, met, being not only the greatest of their own age, but equal to any of the kings or commanders of all nations in all history before their time. For a moment they remained silent, looking at each other and almost dumbfounded by mutual admiration. Then Hannibal was the first to speak: "If it was foreordained by fate that I, who was the first to make war upon the Roman people and who have so often had the victory almost in my grasp, should come forward to sue for peace, I rejoice that destiny has given me you, and no one else, to whom I should bring my suit. For you also, among your many distinctions, it will prove not the least of your honours that Hannibal, to whom the gods have given the victory over so many Roman generals, has submitted to you, and that you have made an end of this war, which was memorable at first for your disasters and then for ours. This also may prove to be Fortune's mocking sport, that having taken up arms when your father was consul, and having fought with him my first battle with a Roman general, I come to his son unarmed to sue for peace. It would indeed have been best if the gods had given our fathers the disposition to be contented, you with rule over Italy and us in turn with ruling Africa. For even for you Sicily and Sardinia have been no adequate compensation for the loss of so many fleets, so many armies, so many remarkable generals. But the past is sooner disapproved than changed for the better. In grasping at what was not ours we fell to fighting for our own; and for us Carthaginians it came to be a war not in Italy alone, nor for you entirely in Africa. On the contrary you have seen the enemy's standards and arms almost at your gates and walls, just as we can hear from Carthage the noise of a Roman camp. Consequently we discuss terms of peace while Fortune is favouring you —a situation most ominous for us, while you could pray for nothing better. We who are treating have the most to gain by peace, and furthermore, whatever terms we are to make our states will ratify. We need only a temper not averse to measures calmly considered. "As for myself, age has at last taught me, returning as an old man to my native city, from which I set out as a boy, success and failure have at last so schooled me that I prefer to follow reason rather than chance. In your case I am apprehensive alike of your youth and of your unbroken success, both of them too refractory for the demands of calmly considered measures. It is not easy for a man whom fortune has never deceived to weigh uncertain chances. What I was at Trasumennus, at Cannae, that you are today. Although you had received a command when hardly of an age to serve, and undertook everything with the greatest boldness, nowhere has fortune deluded you. By avenging the death of your father and uncle you won from the disaster to your family signal honour for courage and extraordinary devotion. You recovered the lost Spanish provinces by driving out of them four Punic armies. Elected consul, while the rest lacked courage to defend Italy, you crossed over to Africa; and by destroying two armies here, by taking and at the same time burning two camps in the same hour, by capturing Syphax, a most powerful king, by seizing so many cities of his kingdom, so many in our domain, you dragged me away when now for sixteen years I had clung to the possession of Italy. It is possible for the heart to prefer victory to a peace. I know those aspirations that soar but are ineffectual; on me too such fortune as yours once shone. But if in prosperity the gods blessed us with sound reason also, we should be reflecting not merely upon what has happened but also upon what can happen. Though you forget everything else, I am a sufficient warning against all that may chance. For it was I that, pitching my camp not long ago between the Anio and your city, was advancing my standards and now almost scaling the walls of Rome. But here bereft of my two brothers, the bravest of men, the most eminent of generals, you see me before the walls of my native city, already almost invested, and I am praying that she may be spared the terrors which I brought to yours. "The greatest good fortune is always the least to be trusted. In your favourable circumstances, in our uncertain situation, peace, if you grant it, will bring you honour and glory; for us who sue it is necessary rather than honourable. Better and safer is an assured peace than a victory hoped for. The one is in your own power, the other in the hands of the gods. Do not commit the success of so many years to the test of a single hour. Bear in mind not only your own resources but also the might of Fortune and the impartial god of war. On both sides will be the sword, on both sides human bodies. Nowhere less than in war do results match men's hopes. You will not add so much glory, if victorious in battle, to what you can now have by granting peace, as you will lose in case of any reverse. The fortune of a single hour can lay low honours already won, and with them those in prospect. In making peace, Publius Cornelius, you have everything in your own power. In the other case you will have to bear the lot which the gods may give. Among the foremost examples of success and courage would have been Marcus Atilius formerly in this same land, if as victor he had granted the peace which our fathers requested. But by setting no limit to his success and not reining in an unruly fortune, the higher he had climbed the more terribly did he fall. "It belongs, to be sure, to the giver of peace, not to the suitor, to name the terms. But possibly we may not be unworthy to impose a penalty upon ourselves. We do not reject the condition that all the possessions for which we went to war shall be yours —Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, and any islands existing in all the sea between Africa and Italy. Let us Carthaginians, confined by the coasts of Africa, behold you ruling under your authority even foreign countries by land and sea, since that has been the will of the gods. I would not deny that, on account of a lack of sincerity in our recent suit for peace, and because we did not wait for it, Punic honour for you Romans is now tainted with suspicion. For the faithful observance of a peace much depends, Scipio, on the persons by whom the suit is presented. Your senators also have refused the peace, I hear, partly for the reason that the embassy was lacking in dignity. I, Hannibal, am suing for peace, I who should not be so doing if I did not think it an advantageous peace; and I shall uphold it because of the same advantage on account of which I have sued for it. And just as I, having begun the war, therefore made sure —until the gods themselves became envious —that no one should regret it, so will I strive to prevent any man from regretting the peace obtained through me. To these pleas the Roman general replied somewhat to this effect: "I was not unaware, Hannibal, that the Carthaginians, anticipating your arrival, showed no respect either for present obligations to the armistice or for the peace in prospect; and you surely make no concealment of that fact when you omit from the earlier terms of peace everything except what has long been in our possession. But just as you are concerned to have your citizens appreciate how great is the burden of which they are relieved by you, so I must exert myself that they do not have as the reward of perfidy any relaxation of the terms of peace to which they at that time agreed. Unworthy to have the same terms open to you as before, you Carthaginians are asking to have your dishonesty profit you. Our fathers were not aggressors in making war for Sicily; no more were we for Spain. In the former case the peril of our allies, the Mamertines, as in the latter instance the destruction of Saguntum, armed us with the weapons of duty and justice. That your people were the aggressors you yourself admit, and the gods as well are our witnesses, who gave for that war and are giving and will give for this one an outcome in accordance with justice and the right. So far as I am concerned, I am mindful of human weakness, and I reflect upon the might of Fortune and know that everything that we do is exposed to a thousand chances. But, just as I should admit that I were acting with arrogance and violence if, before I had crossed over to Africa, I were to reject you when you were voluntarily withdrawing from Italy and, while your army was already on shipboard, you were coming in person to sue for peace, so now, when I have dragged you to Africa, resisting and shifting ground as we almost came to blows, I am under no obligation to respect you. Therefore, if to the terms upon which peace was formerly about to be made, as it seemed, you are adding some kind of compensation for the ships loaded with supplies that were taken by force during the armistice, and for violence done to my envoys, I have reason to bring it before the council. But if that addition also seems too severe, prepare for war, since you have been unable to endure a peace. Accordingly without making peace they returned from the conference to their armies, reporting that words had been of no avail; that arms must decide the issue and they must accept whatever lot the gods should give them. Arrived at their camps, they both ordered their soldiers to have arms and their spirits in readiness for the final conflict to make them victors, if success attended them, not for one day but forever. Whether Rome or Carthage should give laws to the nations they would know the next day before nightfall. For not Africa, they said, or Italy but the whole world would be the reward of victory —a reward matched by the danger for those whom the fortune of battle should not favour. In fact the Romans had no way of escape open in a foreign and an unknown land, and for Carthage, once it had poured out its last resources, immediate destruction seemed impending. For this decision on the following day two generals far and away the most distinguished and two of the bravest armies of the two wealthiest nations went forth, on that day either to crown the many distinctions heretofore won, or to bring them to naught. Consequently a wavering between hope and fear confused their spirits; and as they surveyed now their own battle-line, now that of the enemy, while weighing their strength more by the eye than by calculation, the bright side and at the same time the dark was before their minds. What did not occur to the men themselves of their own accord the generals would suggest in admonition and exhortation. The Carthaginian kept recalling to their minds the achievements of sixteen years in the land of Italy, so many Roman generals, so many armies wiped out completely, and brave deeds of individuals, whenever he came to a soldier distinguished in the record of some battle. Scipio would recall the Spanish provinces and recent battles in Africa and the enemy's admission, in that on account of fear they could but sue for peace, and yet had been unable to abide by the peace on account of their ingrained perfidy. Furthermore, as his conference with Hannibal had been in private and could be freely altered, he gave it the direction he desired. He divined that as the Carthaginians went out into battle-line, the gods had given them the same omens as when their fathers fought at the Aegates Islands. The end of the war and hardship was at hand, he said, the spoils of Carthage within reach, and the return home to their native city, to parents, children, wives and household gods. So erect did he stand as he spoke these words, and with so happy a look on his face that one would have believed him already the victor. Thereupon he drew up in the first line the hastati, behind them the principes, in the rear the triarii closing the formation. However, he did not form cohorts in close contact, each in advance of its standards, but rather maniples at a considerable distance from each other, so that there should be an interval where the enemy's elephants might be driven through without breaking up the ranks. Laelius, whom he had previously had in his service as lieutenant, but in the present year as quaestor, assigned not by lot but by decree of the senate, was posted with the Italic cavalry on the left wing, Masinissa and the Numidians on the right. The open passages between the maniples of the front line troops Scipio filled with velites, the light-armed of that day, under orders that, upon the charge of the elephants, they should either flee behind the ranks in the line, or else dashing to right and left and closing up to the maniles in the van, should give the beasts an opening through which they might rush among missiles hurled from both sides. Hannibal in order to create a panic drew up his elephants in front, and there were eighty of them, a number he had never before had in any battle. Next in order he placed the Ligurian and Gallic auxiliaries in combination with Balearic and Mauretanian troops; in the second line Carthaginians and Africans and the legion of Macedonians. Then, leaving a moderate interval, he drew up a reserve line of Italic soldiers, most of these Bruttians, more of whom had followed him under compulsion and of necessity than of their own consent as he retired from Italy. As for the cavalry, he also placed them on the wings; the Carthaginians held the right wing, the Numidians the left. In an army made up of so many men who had no language, no custom, no law, no arms, no clothing and general appearance in common, nor the same reason for serving, exhortation took various forms. To the auxiliaries was offered pay in cash and greatly increased by a share in the booty. The Gauls had their own inbred hatred of the Romans fanned into flame. Ligurians were offered as an incentive to victory the rich plains of Italy, once they were brought down from their rugged mountains. Mauretanians and Numidians were frightened by Hannibal with the prospect of Masinissa's tyrannical rule. To different nations different hopes and fears were displayed. The Carthaginians' attention was called to the walls of their city, to household gods, tombs of ancestors, children and parents and terror-stricken wives, to destruction and servitude on the one hand, on the other to rule over the world, to the absence of any ground between the extremes of fear and hope. Just as the general was thus speaking among the Carthaginians, and the national leaders among their countrymen, mainly through interpreters, since foreigners were intermingled, trumpets and horns sounded on the Roman side, and such shouts were raised that the elephants turned against their own men, especially against the left wing, the Mauretanians and Numidians. Masinissa easily increased their panic and stripped that end of the line of its cavalry support. A few of the beasts, however, being fearlessly driven into the enemy, caused great losses among the ranks of the light-armed, though suffering many wounds themselves. For springing back to the maniples the light-armed made way for the elephants, to avoid being trampled down, and then would hurl their lances from both sides against the beasts doubly exposed to missiles. Nor was there any slackening in the javelins of the men in the front lines until these elephants also, driven out of the Roman line and into their own men by missiles showered upon them from all sides, put the right wing, even the Carthaginian cavalry, to flight. Laelius, on seeing the enemy in confusion, increased their panic. On both sides the Punic battle-line had been stripped of its cavalry when the infantry clashed, now no longer matched either in their hopes or in their strength. In addition there were what seem small things to mention, but at the same time were highly important in the battle: a harmony in the shouting of the Romans, which consequently was greater in volume and more terrifying; on the other side discordant voices, as was natural from many nations with a confusion of tongues; for the Romans a battle of little movement, as they pressed on into the enemy by their own weight and that of their arms; on the other side repeated charges at high speed but with less power. Consequently by the first attack the Romans at once dislodged the enemy's line. Then beating them back with their shoulders and the bosses of their shields, being now in close contact with men forced from their position, they made considerable progress, as no one offered any resistance, while as soon as they saw that the enemy's line had given way, even the rear line pressed upon the first, a circumstance which of itself gave them great force in repulsing the enemy. Among the enemy so far was their second line, the Africans and Carthaginians, from supporting the auxiliaries as they gave way, that on the contrary they even drew back for fear the enemy, by slaying the men of the first line if these stoutly resisted, should reach themselves. Accordingly the auxiliaries suddenly retreated and facing their own men, some found refuge in the second line, others, having been refused aid shortly before, and also admission now to the ranks, slashed at those who would not make place for them. And by this time there were almost two battles in one, since the Carthaginians were forced to engage with the enemy and at the same time with their own men. Nevertheless even so they did not admit the panic-stricken, angry men into the line, but closing up their ranks, they forced them out upon the wings and into the empty plain on this side and that outside of the battle, in order not to contaminate their own line, still intact and fresh, with soldiers alarmed by the flight and their wounds. But such heaps of bodies and arms had covered the place where the auxiliaries had stood shortly before that to make their way across was almost more difficult than it had been through the dense mass of the enemy. Accordingly the men of the front line, the hastati, pursuing the enemy wherever they could over heaps of bodies and arms and through pools of blood, broke up both their own maniples and their ranks. The maniples of the principes also began to waver, as they saw the unsteady line in front of them. When Scipio saw this he ordered the recall to be sounded at once for the hastati, and after withdrawing the wounded to the rear line, he led the principes and triarii to the wings, in order that the centre, composed of hastati, might be safer and steadier. Thus began an entirely new battle. For they had reached the real enemy, their equals in the character of their weapons and their experience in war and the celebrity of their deeds and the greatness whether of their hopes or of their danger. But the Roman was superior both in numbers and in spirit, because he had already routed the cavalry, had already routed the elephants, and was already fighting against the second line, having repulsed the first. At the right moment Laelius and Masinissa, who had pursued the routed cavalry for a considerable distance, returned and dashed into the rear of the enemy's line. That charge of the cavalry finally worsted the enemy. Many were overpowered and slain in the battle-line, many were scattered in flight over the open plain all around, and as the cavalry were in complete possession, they perished everywhere. Over twenty thousand of the Carthaginians and their allies were slain on that day. About the same number were captured, together with one hundred and thirty-two military standards and eleven elephants. Of the victors about fifteen hundred fell. Hannibal, escaping with a few horsemen in the midst of the confusion, fled to Hadrumetum, having tried every expedient both before the battle and during the engagement before he withdrew from the fray. And even by Scipio's admission and that of all the military experts he had achieved this distinction, that he had drawn up his line that day with extraordinary skill: the elephants in the very front, that their haphazard charge and irresistible strength might prevent the Romans from following their standards and keeping their ranks, upon which tactics they based most of their hopes; then the auxiliaries in front of the line of Carthaginians, that men who were brought together from the offscouring of all nations and held not by loyalty but by their pay might have no way of escape open to them; that at the same time, as they met the first fiery attack of the enemy, they might exhaust them, and if they could do no more, might blunt the enemy's swords by their own wounds; next in order the soldiers in whom lay all his hopes, the Carthaginians and Africans, that being equal to the Romans in everything else, they might have the advantage in fighting with strength undiminished against the weary and the wounded; then, removed to the last line and separated by an open space as well, the Italic troops, of whom it was uncertain whether they were allies or enemies. Having produced this as his last masterpiece Hannibal after his flight to Hadrumetum was called away, returning to Carthage in the thirty-sixth year after he had left it as a boy. Thereupon in the Senate House he admitted that he had been defeated not only in a battle but also in the war, and that there was no hope of safety except in successfully suing for peace. Scipio immediately after the battle stormed and plundered the enemy's camp and with immense booty returned to the sea and his ships, having received word that Publius Lentulus, in command of fifty war-ships and a hundred transports with supplies of every kind, had arrived near Utica. Thinking therefore that he must bring terror to bear from every side against disheartened Carthage, after sending Laelius to Rome with a report of the victory, he ordered Gnaeus Octavius to bring the legions to Carthage by land. He himself went to his old fleet, now enlarged by the new fleet of Lentulus, and then sailed from Utica towards the harbour of Carthage. He was not far away when a Carthaginian ship bedecked with fillets and olive branches met him. There were ten envoys, leading citizens, sent at the instance of Hannibal to sue for peace. When they approached the stern of the flagship, holding out the symbols of suppliants, begging and beseeching the help and pity of Scipio, no other answer was given them than that they should come to Tynes; that thither he would move his camp. Scipio sailed near in order to view the situation of Carthage, not so much for the purpose of an immediate reconnaissance as to humiliate the enemy, and returned to Utica, recalling Octavius also to the same place. While proceeding from there to Tynes they received news that Vermina, the son of Syphax, commanding more cavalry than infantry was coming to the help of the Carthaginians. Part of the infantry and all the cavalry attacked the column of the Numidians on the first day of the Saturnalia, and routed it after a slight engagement. As even the way of escape was cut off, with the cavalry surrounding them on all sides, fifteen thousand men were slain, twelve hundred captured alive, fifteen hundred Numidian horses taken and seventy-two military standards. The prince himself in the midst of the confusion escaped with a few men. Then camp was pitched near Tynes on the same site as before, and thirty envoys from Carthage came to Scipio. Their pleading was, to be sure, much more piteous than before, in proportion as misfortune was more compelling; but they were heard with much less pity owing to the memory, still fresh, of their treachery. In the council, although righteous indignation spurred them all to the destruction of Carthage, nevertheless they reflected how serious a matter and how protracted also was the siege of a city so well fortified and so strong. Scipio himself was also troubled as he looked forward to a successor who would come into what had been won by the hardship and danger of another —the glory of finishing the war. Consequently they all were inclined to peace. On the following day the envoys were recalled and with repeated upbraiding for their treachery were advised that, being taught at last by so many disasters, they should believe that the gods and an oath mean something. Whereupon the peace terms were stated to them: they were to live as free men under their own laws; to hold the cities and territories which they had held before the war, with the same boundaries; and the Roman was on that day to make an end of devastation. They were to deliver all deserters and runaway slaves and captives to the Romans, and to surrender their war-ships except ten triremes, and the trained elephants in their possession, and not to train others; to wage war neither in Africa nor outside of Africa without consent of the Roman people. They were to make restitution to Masinissa and frame a treaty with him; to furnish grain and pay to the auxiliaries until the envoys should return from Rome; to pay ten thousand silver talents, divided into equal payments for fifty years; to give a hundred hostages selected by Scipio, not younger than fourteen nor older than thirty years. He would grant an armistice, he said, provided the transports captured during the previous armistice and whatever was on board the ships should be returned; otherwise there would be no armistice nor any hope of a peace. Such terms the envoys were bidden to carry home, and as they announced them in the assembly Gisgo came forward to oppose the peace. While the multitude was listening, equally incapable of keeping a peace and of carrying on a war, Hannibal, indignant that such things should be said and heard at so critical a moment, seized Gisgo and with his own hand dragged him down from the platform. When this novelty for a free state called forth protests from the people, the man of arms, confounded by freedom in the city, said At nine years of age I left you, and after thirty-six years I have returned. With the soldier's arts, in which from boyhood first my own lot, and then a public exigency gave me training, I may pass as well acquainted. In the rights, laws, usages of the city and the marketplace it is you who should train me. Having apologized for his ignorance, he discoursed at length upon the peace, showing how far from unjust it was and how inevitable. The most troublesome point of all was that of the ships captured during the armistice nothing was to be seen except the ships themselves, and investigation was not easy since the accused were opponents of the peace. It was decided that the ships should be returned and the men at all costs traced; that appraisal of whatever else was lacking be committed to Scipio, and that thus the Carthaginians should pay the amount in cash. —There are some historians who relate that Hannibal leaving the battle made his way to the sea and then on a ship prepared for him at once sailed to King Antiochus; and that when Scipio demanded above all things that Hannibal be surrendered to him, the answer was that Hannibal was not in Africa. After his envoys had returned to Scipio the quaestors were ordered from entries in the public accounts to make a declaration of what public property had been on the ships, and owners were to do the same for private property. In place of that sum total twenty-five thousand pounds of silver were exacted in immediate payment. And an armistice for three months was granted the Carthaginians. In addition they were not to send envoys during the period of the armistice to any other place than to Rome, and in case any envoys should come to Carthage they were not to let them go until they informed the Roman commander who they were and for what purpose they had come. With the Carthaginian envoys Lucius Veturius Philo and Marcus Marcius Ralla and Lucius Scipio, brother of the general-in-command, were sent to Rome. About that time supplies from Sicily and Sardinia lowered the price of grain so much that the merchant would leave his grain to the mariners to cover the freight. At Rome upon the first news of the Carthaginians' renewed hostilities there had been alarm, and Tiberius Claudius had been ordered to take his fleet promptly to Sicily and then to cross to Africa, and the other consul, Marcus Servilius, to remain near the city until it should be known what was the state of affairs in Africa. Everything in the assembling and launching of his fleet had been carried on without spirit by Tiberius Claudius, the consul, because the senate had voted that authority over the terms on which peace should be granted belonged to Scipio rather than to the consul. Reports of prodigies also at the very time when there were rumours of fresh hostilities had inspired alarm. At Cumae the sun was partially eclipsed and it rained stones, and in the district of Velitrae the ground settled in huge cavities and trees were swallowed in the depths. At Aricia the forum and shops round it, at Frusino the city wall at a number of places and a gate were struck by lightning; and on the Palatine there was a shower of stones. That portent was atoned for by nine days of rites according to ancestral custom, the rest by full-grown victims. Meanwhile the unusual height of rivers was also interpreted as a portent. For the Tiber so far overflowed that, as the Circus was flooded, preparations for the Games of Apollo were made outside the Porta Collina, near the Temple of Venus of Eryx. On the very day of the games, however, after a sudden clearing the procession, already on its way to Porta Collina, was recalled and directed into the Circus when word was received that the water had retired from it. Restoration of its normal scene to the customary spectacle also added to the delight of the people and to the throngs who attended the games. Claudius, the consul, had at last left the city when a very violent storm, which he encountered between the harbour of Cosa and the Portus Loretanus, caused him great alarm. Then after reaching Populonium and lying at anchor there until the rest of the storm should abate, he crossed over to the Island of Elba and from Elba to Corsica, from Corsica to Sardinia. There as he was passing the Raving Mountains, a much more savage storm, descending upon him in a much more dangerous situation, scattered the fleet. Many of the ships were leaking and had lost their rigging, some were wrecked. In this storm-tossed, damaged condition the fleet reached Carales. There, while the beached ships were undergoing repairs, winter overtook him, and as the turn of the year came while no one sought to prolong his command, it was as a private citizen that Tiberius Claudius brought the fleet back to Rome. Marcus Servilius, to avoid being recalled to the city to hold the elections, named Gaius Servilius Geminus dictator and went to his province. The dictator named Publius Aelius Paetus master of the horse. Repeatedly a date for the elections was announced, but storms prevented them from taking place. Consequently, since the old magistrates had left office on the eve of the Ides of March and new men had not been elected in their places, the state had no curule magistrates. Titus Manlius Torquatus, the pontiff, died that year and Gaius Sulpicius Galba was named in his place. The Roman Games were repeated three times throughout by Lucius Licinius Lucullus and Quintus Fulvius, the curule aediles. For having secretly abstracted money from the Treasury, clerks and messengers of the aediles were condemned on evidence of an informer, not without disgrace for Lucullus as aedile. Publius Aelius Tubero and Lucius Laetorius, owing to a defect in their election as plebeian aediles, abdicated their office after they had conducted the games and in connexion with them a banquet for Jupiter, and had placed on the Capitol three statues of which the cost was met by money paid in fines. The festival of Ceres was under the direction of the dictator and master of the horse by decree of the senate. Upon the arrival at Rome of the envoys from Africa, the Roman and the Carthaginian at the same time, the senate sat in the Temple of Bellona. There Lucius Veturius Philo to the great joy of the senators set forth how they had fought with Hannibal in a battle that was for the Carthaginians their last, and that at length an end had been made of a war of grievous losses. He then added that Vermina also, the son of Syphax, had been defeated —a small supplement to a victorious campaign. Upon that he was bidden to go out into the assembly and share the joyful news with the people. Then all the temples in the city were opened for the offering of thanks, and three days of thanksgiving were ordered. When the Carthaginian envoys and those of King Philip —for these also had arrived —requested that a hearing in the senate be granted them, by order of the senate the dictator replied that the new consuls would grant them a hearing in the senate. Thereupon the elections were held. As consuls Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus and Publius Aelius Paetus were elected, as praetors Marcus Iunius Pennus, to whom fell the city praetorship, Marcus Valerius Falto, to whom the land of the Bruttii, Marcus Fabius Buteo, to whom Sardinia, Publius Aelius Tubero, to whom Sicily was allotted. As for the consuls' provinces, the senators were not disposed to take up the matter until the envoys of King Philip and those of the Carthaginians had been heard. They foresaw the end of one war, the beginning of another. Gnaeus Lentulus, the consul, was fired with the desire to have Africa as his province, aspiring to an easy victory if the war continued, or if it were already ending, to the glory of having so great a war end in his consulship. Accordingly he declared that he would allow nothing to be taken up before Africa had been assigned him by decree as his province. He had the consent of his colleague, a moderate man and wise who saw that a contest with Scipio for that glory not only was unfair but also would prove unequal. Quintus Minucius Thermus and Manius Acilius Glabrio, tribunes of the plebs, declared that Gnaeus Cornelius was attempting what had been vainly attempted in the preceding year by Tiberius Claudius, the consul; that by authority of the senators the question whom they wished to have the high command in Africa had been brought before the people; that all thirty-five tribes had awarded that command to Scipio. After many disputes, while the matter was before the senate and the people as well, the decision was ultimately left to the senate. The senators therefore under oath — for such had been the agreement —decided that the consuls should determine their provinces by mutual agreement or by lot, which of them was to have Italy and which the fleet of fifty ships; that he to whom the fleet fell should sail to Sicily, and if peace could not be arranged with the Carthaginians, he should cross over to Africa; that the consul should conduct operations on the sea and Scipio on the land, with the same authority to command as heretofore; that if the peace terms should be agreed upon, the tribunes of the plebs should bring before the people the question whether to order the consul or Publius Scipio to grant peace, and, if the victorious army was to be brought back from Africa, who was to bring it back. If the people should order that peace be granted through Publius Scipio, and that the army should be brought back by him as well, the consul should not cross over from Sicily to Africa. The other consul, to whom Italy should fall, was to receive two legions from Marcus Sextius, the praetor. Publius Scipio's command in his province of Africa was continued with the armies which he already had. Of the praetors Marcus Valerius Falto was assigned in the land of the Bruttians two legions which Gaius Livius had commanded in the preceding year; Publius Aelius was to receive two legions in Sicily from Gnaeus Tremelius; Marcus Fabius was assigned for Sardinia the one legion which Publius Lentulus had held as propraetor. For Marcus Servilius, consul in the previous year, his command in Etruria was continued, likewise with his own two legions. As for the Spanish provinces, they said that for some years already Lucius Cornelius Lentulus and Lucius Manlius Acidinus had been there; that the consuls should urge the tribunes, if it met with their approval, to bring before the people the question who by their decree should be commander in Spain. Out of the two armies the general was to enrol Roman soldiers in a single legion and Latin allies in fifteen cohorts, in order that with these he might hold the province. As for the veterans, Lucius Cornelius and Lucius Manlius were to bring them back to Italy. The consul was assigned a fleet of fifty ships, made up from two fleets, that of Gnaeus Octavius, which was in African waters, and that of Publius Villius, which was defending the coast of Sicily, the consul being free to select such ships as he pleased. Publius Scipio was to have the forty war-ships which he had before, and if he desired that Gnaeus Octavius should command them, as he had done, Octavius was to have military authority as propraetor for that year. If he should name Laelius commander, Octavius was to leave the province for Rome and to bring back such ships as the consul did not need. Ten war-ships also were assigned to Marcus Fabius for Sardinia. And the consuls were ordered to enrol two city legions, so that in that year the state was carried on with fourteen legions and a hundred war-ships. Then the senate deliberated concerning the embassies of Philip and the Carthaginians. It was decided that the Macedonians should be brought in first. Their speeches were in different veins, as some of them tried to excuse acts of which envoys who were sent from Rome to the king in regard to the ravaging of allied territory had complained. Others actually turned accuser, attacking allies of the Roman people, to be sure, but Marcus Aurelius with much more violence, alleging that, being one of three envoys sent to them, he had conducted a levy, had remained and made war upon them in violation of the treaty, and had repeatedly engaged in regular battles with their commanders. Still others demanded that the Macedonians and their general, Sopater, who as mercenaries had served with Hannibal and at the time were captives in chains, be restored to them. In reply Marcus Furius, who had been sent for the very purpose from Macedonia by Aurelius, maintained that Aurelius had been left behind in order to prevent allies of the Roman people from being exhausted by raids and forced by acts of violence to go over to the king's side; that he had not gone beyond the boundaries of the allies; that he had exerted himself that raiders should not come over into the allies' lands with impunity. He said that Sopater was one of the king's high officials and of his kin; that he had been sent recently to Africa with four thousand Macedonians and money to bring aid to Hannibal and the Carthaginians. Inasmuch as the Macedonians, when questioned in regard to these matters, gave ambiguous answers, they in turn received an answer of a very different sort: that the king was looking for war and if he kept on would soon find it; that he had twice violated the treaty, in that he wronged allies of the Roman people and harried them with war and arms, and in that he aided the enemy by reinforcements and money; that not only had Scipio acted and was now acting in their opinion with perfect propriety in keeping in chains as enemies men who had been captured while bearing arms against the Roman people, but also that Marcus Aurelius was acting in conformity with the interest of the state, and that the senate was grateful that he was defending allies of the Roman people by arms, since he was unable to do so by the obligations of a treaty. With so stern an answer as this the Macedonians were dismissed and the Carthaginian ambassadors summoned. When the senators observed the age and high station of each-for these were the very first of the citizens-thereupon all agreed that they were really treating for peace. Most conspicuous among them, however, was Hasdrubal surnamed Haedus among his people, always a supporter of peace and an opponent of the Barcine party. Hence he had all the more weight then, as he shifted the blame for the war from the state to the greed of the few. His speech was in different keys, now excusing what was charged, now making some admissions, lest pardon should be harder to obtain if they shamelessly denied known facts, and now even admonishing the conscript fathers to make a moderate and restrained use of their good fortune. He said that if the Carthaginians had listened to him and to Hanno and had been minded to take advantage of the right moment, the Romans would have given the terms of peace which they were at that time seeking; that seldom were men given good fortune and good judgment at the same time; that the Roman people was invincible for the reason that in its good fortune it remembered to be wise and to take counsel. And certainly, he said, it would have been wonderful if its practice were different. Men whose good fortune was new because of its strangeness went wild, unable to control their rejoicing; for the Roman people the joys of victory were familiar and now all but threadbare, and they had enlarged their empire almost more by sparing the vanquished than by conquest. The rest of the speakers employed more pathos as they stated from what wealth the Carthaginians' situation had fallen to what depths; that men who recently held almost the whole world by their arms had nothing left but the walls of Carthage. Shut up within these walls, they said, they saw nothing on land or sea subject to their rule. Even the city itself and their homes they would hold only in case the Roman people did not choose to vent its animosity upon those possessions also, the last possible step. When it was clear that the senators were inclining to pity, one of their number, outraged by the perfidy of the Carthaginians, is said to have called out to them, asking who were the gods in whose name they were to make the treaty, inasmuch as they had proved false to the gods in whose name the former treaty had been made. The same said Hasdrubal, since they are so hostile to treaty-breakers." When all were now disposed to make peace the consul Gnaeus Lentulus, to whom the fleet had been assigned, vetoed a decree of the senate. Thereupon Manius Acilius and Quintus Minucius, tribunes of the plebs, brought before the people the question whether it was their will and command that the senate should decree that peace be made with the Carthaginians; and whom they should command to grant that peace, and whom to bring the army back from Africa. In regard to the peace all the tribes voted affirmatively: that Publius Scipio should grant the peace, that he also should bring back the army. In accordance with this enactment the senate decreed that Publius Scipio on the advice of ten envoys should make peace with the Carthaginian people upon such terms as he saw fit. The Carthaginians thereupon thanked the senators and begged permission to enter the city and to converse with fellow-citizens who as captives were in prison, saying that among them some were their own relatives and friends, men of rank, and others men for whom they had messages from their relatives. When this was arranged and they made a further request that they might have the opportunity of ransoming such of them as they desired, they were bidden to furnish the names. And when they furnished some two hundred names a decree of the senate was passed that the Roman envoys should carry to Publius Cornelius in Africa two hundred selected by the Carthaginians from the number of the captives, and should report to him that, if the peace should be agreed to, he was to deliver the captives to the Carthaginians without ransom. When orders were being given to the fetial priests to go to Africa in order to make the treaty, at their own request a decree of the senate was passed in these terms: that they should each take one flint knife and one tuft of foliage with them, in order that when the Roman general ordered them to make the treaty they should demand of the general the sacred tufts. It is customary to gather foliage of this kind from the Citadel and give it to the fetials. Under these circumstances the Carthaginians were sent away from Rome, and having presented themselves to Scipio in Africa, they made peace upon the terms above mentioned. They surrendered warships, elephants, deserters, runaway slaves, and four thousand captives, among whom was Quintus Terentius Culleo, a senator. The ships Scipio ordered to be put to sea and to be burned. Some historians relate that there were five hundred of them —every type of vessel propelled by oars; and that when the Carthaginians suddenly caught sight of the fire it was as doleful for them as if Carthage itself were in flames. The deserters were more severely treated than the runaway slaves, Latin citizens being beheaded, Romans crucified. Forty years before, in the consulship of Quintus Lutatius and Aulus Manlius, peace had last been made with the Carthaginians. The war which began twenty-three years later, in the consulship of Publius Cornelius and Tiberius Sempronius, was brought to an end in the seventeenth year, the consulship of Gnaeus Cornelius and Publius Aelius. Later Scipio often stated, so they say, that first Tiberius Claudius' thirst for fame, and then that of Gnaeus Cornelius had hindered him from ending that war with the destruction of Carthage. At Carthage when raising money for the first payment seemed difficult to men whose resources were drained by the long war, and in the Senate House there was mourning and weeping, they say that Hannibal was seen laughing. When Hasdrubal Haedus upbraided him for laughing while the people wept, he being himself the cause of their tears, he said: If the mind within us could be seen, just as expression of face is seen by our eyes, it would readily be clear to you that this laughter which you upbraid is not that of a happy spirit but of one almost beside itself through misfortunes. Nevertheless it is by no means so untimely as are those senseless, misplaced tears of yours. The time for us to weep was when our arms were taken from us, our ships burned, foreign wars forbidden; for that wound was fatal to us. And you have no reason to believe that the Romans had regard for your domestic peace. No great state can long be in peace. If it lacks an enemy abroad it finds one at home, just as powerful bodies seem protected against infection from without, but are of themselves weighed down by their very strength. Of course we feel only so much of the public misfortunes as bears upon our private concerns, and in these nothing has so painful a sting as the loss of money. Hence when the spoils were being stripped from vanquished Carthage, although you saw her placed, now unarmed and naked, in the midst of so many armed tribes of Africa, no one moaned, while now because tribute must be raised from private property you are mourners, as it were, at a public funeral. How much I fear you will very soon be aware that today you have wept over a very slight misfortune! So spoke Hannibal to the Carthaginians. Scipio summoned an assembly and assigning to him his father's kingdom, presented Masinissa with the city of Cirta in addition and the rest of the cities and lands which, he said, had passed from the kingdom of Syphax into the power of the Roman people. He ordered Gnaeus Octavius to take the fleet to Sicily and turn it over to Gnaeus Cornelius, the consul; also the Carthaginian envoys to go to Rome, in order that all his acts on the advice of his ten legati might be confirmed by the authority of the senate and command of the people. When peace had been secured by land and sea, Scipio embarked his army and crossed over to Lilybaeum in Sicily. Then after sending a large part of the army by sea, he himself, making his way through Italy, which was exulting in peace no less than in the victory, while not cities only poured out to do him honour, but crowds of rustics also were blocking the roads, reached Rome and rode into the city in the most distinguished of all triumphs. He brought into the treasury one hundred and twenty-three thousand pounds weight of silver. To his soldiers he distributed four hundred asses apiece out of the booty. The death of Syphax withdrew him rather from the eyes of spectators than from the glory of the triumphing general. He had died not long before at Tibur, to which he had been transferred from Alba. Nevertheless his death attracted attention because he was given a state funeral. Polybius, an authority by no means to be despised, relates that this king was led in the triumphal procession. Following Scipio as he triumphed was Quintus Terentius Culleo wearing the liberty cap; and for all the rest of his life, as was fitting, he honoured in Scipio the giver of his freedom. As for the surname Africanus, whether his popularity among the soldiers, or fickle favour of the people first gave it currency I am unable to state, or whether it began with the flattery of his intimates, as did the surname Felix for Sulla and Magnus for Pompey in the time of our fathers. What is certain is that he was the first general to be distinguished by the name of a nation conquered by him. Later, following his example men who were by no means his equals in their victories gained outstanding inscriptions for their masks and glorious surnames for their families.

Perseus Latin. CTS URN phi0914.phi00130.perseus-eng1. Via the Perseus Digital Library / Open Greek and Latin TEI corpora. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source.