e person. This was
a very delicate affair. Every one was touched with the misfortunes of so
great a man. "He needed only," says Cicero, "to have spoken one word, and
it would have restored him to his liberty, his estate, his dignity, his
wife, his children, and his country;" but that word appeared to him
contrary to the honour and welfare of the state. He therefore plainly
declared, that an exchange of prisoners ought not to be so much as thought
of: that such an example would be of fatal consequence to the republic:
that citizens who had so basely surrendered their arms to the enemy, were
unworthy of the least compassion, and incapable of serving their country;
that with regard to himself, as he was so far advanced in years, his death
ought to be considered as nothing; whereas they had in their hands several
Carthaginian generals, in the flower of their age, and capable of doing
their country great services for many years. It was with difficulty that
the senate complied with so generous and unexampled a counsel. The
illustrious exile therefore left Rome, in order to return to Carthage,
unmoved either with the deep affliction of his friends, or the tears of
his wife and children, although he knew but too well the grievous torments
which were prepared for him.(684) And indeed, the moment his enemies saw
him returned without having obtained the exchange of prisoners, they put
him to every kind of torture their barbarous cruelty could invent. They
imprisoned him for a long time in a dismal dungeon, whence (after cutting
off his eye-lids) they drew him at once into the sun, when its beams
darted the strongest heat. They next put him into a kind of chest stuck
full of nails, whose points wounding him did not allow him a moment's ease
either day or night. Lastly, after having been long tormented by being
kept for ever awake in this dreadful torture, his merciless enemies nailed
him to a cross, their usual punishment, and left him to expire on it. Such
was the end of this great man. His enemies, by depriving him of some days,
perhaps years, of life, brought eternal infamy on themselves.

The blow which the Romans had received in Africa did not discourage
them.(685) They made greater preparations than before, to retrieve their
loss; and put to sea, the following campaign, three hundred and sixty
vessels. The Carthaginians sailed out to meet them with two hundred; but
were beaten in an engagement fought on the coasts of Sicily, an