to treat you with any respect. Wherefore,
if in addition to those stipulations on which it was considered that a
peace would at that time have been agreed upon, and what they are you
are informed, a compensation is proposed for having seized our ships,
together with their stores, during a truce, and for the violence
offered to our ambassadors, I shall then have matter to lay before my
council. But if these things also appear oppressive, prepare for war,
since you could not brook the conditions of peace."

Thus, without effecting an accommodation, when they had returned from
the conference to their armies, they informed them that words had been
bandied to no purpose, that the question must be decided by arms, and
that they must accept that fortune which the gods assigned them.

When they had arrived at their camps, they both issued orders that
their soldiers should get their arms in readiness and prepare their
minds for the final contest; in which, if fortune should favor them,
they would continue victorious, not for a single day, but forever.
"Before tomorrow night," they said, "they would know whether Rome or
Carthage should give laws to the world; and that neither Africa nor
Italy, but the whole world, would be the prize of victory; that the
dangers which threatened those who had the misfortune to be defeated
were proportioned to the rewards of the victors." For the Romans had
not any place of refuge in an unknown and foreign land, and immediate
destruction seemed to await Carthage if the troops which formed her
last reliance were defeated. To this important contest, the day
following, two generals, by far the most renowned of any, and
belonging to two of the most powerful nations in the world, advanced
either to crown or overthrow, on that day, the many honors they had
previously acquired....

While the general was 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 turne