asten
the declaration of war. After a further embassy of ten men had
confirmed the statement that Carthage was in reality arming (602),
the senate rejected the demand of Cato for an absolute declaration
of war, but resolved in a secret sitting that war should be declared
if the Carthaginians would not consent to dismiss their army and
to burn their materials for a fleet. Meanwhile the conflict had
already begun in Africa. Massinissa had sent back the men whom the
Carthaginians had banished, under the escort of his son Gulussa, to
the city. When the Carthaginians closed their gates against them and
killed also some of the Numidians returning home, Massinissa put his
troops in motion, and the patriot party in Carthage also prepared
for the struggle. But Hasdrubal, who was placed at the head of their
army, was one of the usual army-destroyers whom the Carthaginians
were in the habit of employing as generals; strutting about in his
general's purple like a theatrical king, and pampering his portly
person even in the camp, that vain and unwieldy man was little
fitted to render help in an exigency which perhaps even the genius
of Hamilcar and the arm of Hannibal could have no longer averted.
Before the eyes of Scipio Aemilanus, who at that time a military tribune
in the Spanish army, had been sent to Massinissa to bring over African
elephants for his commander, and who on this occasion looked down on
the conflict from a mountain "like Zeus from Ida," the Carthaginians
and Numidians fought a great battle, in which the former, though
reinforced by 6000 Numidian horsemen brought to them by discontented
captains of Massinissa, and superior in number to the enemy, were
worsted. After this defeat the Carthaginians offered to make
cessions of territory and payments of money to Massinissa, and
Scipio at their solicitation attempted to bring about an agreement;
but the project of peace was frustrated by the refusal of the
Carthaginian patriots to surrender the deserters. Hasdrubal,
however, closely hemmed in by the troops of his antagonist, was
compelled to grant to the latter all that he demanded--the surrender
of the deserters, the return of the exiles, the delivery of arms,
the marching off under the yoke, the payment of 100 talents (24,000
pounds) annually for the next fifty years. But even this agreement
was not kept by the Numidians; on the contrary the disarmed remnant
of the Carthaginian army was cut to pieces by them o