t, and the reduction of Carthage to the condition of a dependent
city. Such a proposal was rejected, and despair gave courage to the
defeated Carthaginians.

(M839) They made one grand effort while Regulus lay inactive in winter
quarters. The return of Hamilcar from Sicily with veteran troops, which
furnished a nucleus for a new army, inspired the Carthaginians with hope,
and assisted by a Lacedaemonian general, Xanthippus, with a band of Greek
mercenaries, the Carthaginians marched unexpectedly upon Regulus, and so
signally defeated him at Tunis, that only two thousand Romans escaped.
Regulus, with five hundred of the legionary force, was taken captive and
carried to Carthage.

(M840) The Carthaginians now assumed the offensive, and Sicily became the
battle-field. Hasdrubal, son of Hanno, landed on the island with one
hundred and forty elephants, while the Roman fleet of three hundred ships
suffered a great disaster off the Lucanian promontory. A storm arose,
which wrecked one hundred and fifty ships--a disaster equal to the one
which it suffered two years before, when two-thirds of the large fleet
which was sent to relieve the two thousand troops at Clupea was destroyed
by a similar storm. In spite of these calamities, the Romans took Panormus
and Thermae, and gained a victory under the walls of the former city which
cost the Carthaginians twenty thousand men and the capture of one hundred
and twenty elephants. This success, gained by Metellus, was the greatest
yet obtained in Sicily, and the victorious general adorned his triumph
with thirteen captured generals and one hundred and four elephants.

(M841) The two maritime fortresses which still held out at the west of the
island, Drepanum and Lilybaeum, were now invested, and the Carthaginians,
shut up in these fortresses, sent an embassy to Rome to ask an exchange of
prisoners, and sue for peace. Regulus, now five years a prisoner, was
allowed to accompany the embassy, on his promise to return if the mission
was unsuccessful. As his condition was now that of a Carthaginian slave,
he was reluctant to enter the city, and still more the Senate, of which he
was no longer a member. But when this reluctance was overcome, he
denounced both the peace and the exchange of prisoners. The Romans wished
to retain this noble patriot, but he was true to his oath, and returned
voluntarily to Carthage, after having defeated the object of the
ambassadors, knowing that a cruel death a