thage or subduing the army of Hasdrubal,
Piso employed himself in attacking the small maritime towns of the
Phoenicians, and that mostly without success. Clupea, for example,
repulsed him, and he was obliged to retire in disgrace from Hippo
Diarrhytus, after having lost the whole summer in front of it and
having had his besieging apparatus twice burnt. Neapolis was no
doubt taken; but the pillage of the town in opposition to his pledged
word of honour was not specially favourable to the progress of
the Roman arms. The courage of the Carthaginians rose. Bithyas,
a Numidian sheik, passed over to them with 800 horse; Carthaginian
envoys were enabled to attempt negotiations with the kings of Numidia
and Mauretania and even with Philip the Macedonian pretender.
It was perhaps internal intrigues--Hasdrubal the emigrant brought
the general of the same name, who commanded in the city, into
suspicion on account of his relationship with Massinissa, and
caused him to be put to death in the senate-house--rather than
the activity of the Romans, that prevented things from assuming
a turn still more favourable for Carthage.

Scipio Aemilianus

With the view of producing a change in the state of African affairs,
which excited uneasiness, the Romans resorted to the extraordinary
measure of entrusting the conduct of the war to the only man who had
as yet brought home honour from the Libyan plains, and who was
recommended for this war by his very name. Instead of calling Scipio
to the aedileship for which he was a candidate, they gave to him
the consulship before the usual time, setting aside the laws to the
contrary effect, and committed to him by special decree the conduct
of the African war. He arrived (607) in Utica at a moment when much
was at stake. The Roman admiral Mancinus, charged by Piso with the
nominal continuance of the siege of the capital, had occupied a steep
cliff, far remote from the inhabited district and scarcely defended,
on the almost inaccessible seaward side of the suburb of Magalia, and
had united nearly his whole not very numerous force there, in the hope
of being able to penetrate thence into the outer town. In fact the
assailants had been for a moment within its gates and the camp-
followers had flocked forward in a body in the hope of spoil, when
they were again driven back to the cliff and, being without supplies
and almost cut off, were in the greatest danger. Scipio found matters
in that positi