njoying the
fertile plains of Italy, and quitting their rugged mountains, if
victorious. The Moors and Numidians were terrified with subjection to
the government of Masinissa, which he would exercise with despotic
severity.

Different grounds of hope and fear were represented to different
persons. The view of the Carthaginians was directed to the walls of
their city, their household gods, the sepulchres of their ancestors,
their children and parents, and their trembling wives; they were told
that either the destruction of their city and slavery or the empire of
the world awaited them; that there was nothing intermediate which they
could hope for or fear.

While the general was thus busily employed among the Carthaginians, and
the captains of the respective nations among their countrymen, most of
them employing interpreters among troops intermixed with those of
different nations, the trumpets and cornets of the Romans sounded; and
such a clamor arose that the elephants, especially those in the left
wing, turned round upon their own party, the Moors and Numidians.
Masinissa had no difficulty in increasing the alarm of the terrified
enemy, and deprived them of the aid of their cavalry in that wing. A
few, however, of the beasts which were driven against the enemy, and
were not turned back through fear, made great havoc among the ranks of
the velites, though not without receiving many wounds themselves; for
when the velites, retiring to the companies, had made way for the
elephants, that they might not be trampled down, they discharged their
darts at them; exposed as they were to wounds on both sides, those in
the van also keeping up a continual discharge of javelins, until driven
out of the Roman line by the weapons which fell upon them from all
quarters, these elephants also put to flight even the cavalry of the
Carthaginians posted in their right wing. Laelius, when he saw the enemy
in disorder, struck additional terror into them in their confusion.

The Carthaginian line was deprived of the cavalry on both sides, when
the infantry, who were now not a match for the Romans in confidence or
strength, engaged. In addition to this there was one circumstance,
trifling in itself, but at the same time producing important
consequences in the action. On the part of the Romans the shout was
uniform, and on that account louder and more terrific, while the voices
of the enemy, consisting as they did of many nations of different