now,
when something more was at stake; Cato weighed the question
to whom the place of commander-in-chief belonged, as if the matter
had reference to a field at Tusculum, and adjudged it to Scipio.
By this sentence his own candidature and that of Varus were set aside.
But he it was also, and he alone, who confronted with energy
the claims of king Juba, and made him feel that the Roman nobility
came to him not suppliant, as to the great-prince of the Parthians,
with a view to ask aid at the hands of a protector, but as entitled
to command and require aid from a subject. In the present state
of the Roman forces in Africa, Juba could not avoid lowering
his claims to some extent; although he still carried the point
with the weak Scipio, that the pay of his troops should be charged
on the Roman treasury and the cession of the province of Africa
should be assured to him in the event of victory.

By the side of the new general-in-chief the senate of the "three hundred"
again emerged. It established its seat in Utica, and replenished
its thinned ranks by the admission of the most esteemed
and the wealthiest men of the equestrian order.

The warlike preparations were pushed forward, chiefly through
the zeal of Cato, with the greatest energy, and every man capable
of arms, even the freedman and Libyan, was enrolled in the legions;
by which course so many hands were withdrawn from agriculture
that a great part of the fields remained uncultivated, but an imposing
result was certainly attained. The heavy infantry numbered fourteen
legions, of which two were already raised by Varus, eight others
were formed partly from the refugees, partly from the conscripts
in the province, and four were legions of king Juba armed
in the Roman manner. The heavy cavalry, consisting of the Celts
and Germans who arrived with Labienus and sundry others incorporated
in their ranks, was, apart from Juba's squadron of cavalry equipped
in the Roman style, 1600 strong. The light troops consisted
of innumerable masses of Numidians riding without bridle or rein
and armed merely with javelins, of a number of mounted bowmen,
and a large host of archers on foot. To these fell to be added Juba's
120 elephants, and the fleet of 55 sail commanded by Publius Varus
and Marcus Octavius. The urgent want of money was in some measure
remedied by a self-taxation on the part of the senate, which was
the more productive as the richest African capitalists had been