BOOK Shipwreck of a able fury and blind passion.' It was thus in Carthage. The advocates of peace were now persecuted as traitors and foes of their country, and the government fell again entirely into the hands of the fanatical enemies of Rome. Hasdrubal, the son of Gisgo, according to all appearance a moderate man and by no means on principle an opponent of the family of Barcas, had till now conducted the war. After Hannibal he was the most distinguished general that Carthage possessed, and it was necessary that the negotiations for peace with Scipio should be conducted by him. The people, disappointed in their hope of peace, now turned their rage against this man. He was recalled from the command and condemned to death, on the charge of having mismanaged the war and of having had treacherous dealings with the enemy. The high-minded patriot suffered the iniquitous sentence to be passed, and continued, although condemned and outlawed, to serve his country. He collected an army of volunteers, and carried on the war on his own account. But after all he fell a victim to the unreasonable hatred of the populace. He ventured to show himself in the town, was recognised, pursued, and fled to the mausoleum of his own family, where he eluded his pursuers by taking poison. His body was dragged out into the street by the populace, and his head carried about in triumph on the top of a pole. After such an outbreak of fury against supposed in 1 An illustration in point is the murder of the brothers De Witt in Holland in 1672; and whilst these lines are written (September 8, 1870) we can witness the action of the same force in Paris: the defeat of Napoleon is followed by an internal revolution. 2 This combination, it must be confessed, rests on conjecture alone. According to Appian (viii. 24) Hasdrubal's trial took place earlier, viz., after the catastrophe which befell him in conjunction with Syphax, when his camp was burnt (p. 434 f.). But this statement is evidently false, for Polybius and Liry speak of Hasdrubal as commanding the Carthaginian army in the battle on the 'Large Plains' (p. 435, note 4), a battle which Appian does not refer to. Neither Polybius nor Livy relate the accusation and death of Hasdrubal, but their silence would not justify us in condemning the detailed narrative of Appian as entirely fictitious. Livy has passed over many interesting details, and the narrative of Polybius may be among the lost chapters. VIII. SEVENTHI PERIOD, 204-201 B.C. convoy in ternal enemies, it may easily be imagined that the populace CHAP. of Carthage were not very conscientious in the observance of the law of nations towards the Romans. The truce, as the Roman historians report, had not yet expired when a large Roman fleet, with provisions for Scipio's army, was driven against the coast in the Carthaginian bay, and Roman wrecked before the eyes of the people. The town was in the bay of a state of the greatest excitement. The senate consulted Carthage. as to what was to be done. The people pressed in among the senators and insisted on plundering the wrecked vessels. The government determined, either voluntarily or under compulsion, to send out ships to tow the stranded vessels to Carthage. Whether and how this resolution was carried out may be doubtful; but thus much is certain, that the Roman ships were plundered, perhaps by the licentious populace, without the authority or approval of the government. Scipio sent three ambassadors to Carthage, demanding satisfaction and compensation. The embassy received a negative answer, and the attempt was even made on the part of Carthage to detain them as hostages for the safety of the Carthaginian ambassadors who were still in Rome. This attempt failed. The three Romans escaped, with much difficulty. Scipio, instead of retaliating, allowed the Carthaginian ambassadors, who shortly afterwards fell into his hands on their return from Italy, to leave his camp unmolested. After all hopes of an immediate peace had vanished, he prepared for a renewal of the war, which now, since Hannibal was opposed to him, had assumed a far more serious character.2 Appian, viii. 34. No event in the war has been so thoroughly misrepresented as the socalled breach of the truce by the Carthaginians. Some Roman writers were anxious to show, by a striking example, that the charge of faithlessness, so universally brought against the Punians, was well founded, and in their patriotic zeal they vied with each other in making the most atrocious charges. Though Polybius (xv. 2, § 15) and Livy (xxx. 25, 8) admit that the Roman ambassadors returned safe to Scipio, Appian (viii. 34) relates that some of them were killed (καὶ τῶν πρέσβεών τινες ἐκ τοξευμάτων ἀπέθανον). As there were only three ambassadors, the expression some of the ambassadors' can hardly be justified, and the reading is probably corrupt. Perhaps péoßewv has to be BOOK IV. What has been said already with regard to our imperfect knowledge of the war in Africa applies especially to Operations the period between the landing of Hannibal and the battle of Hanni- at Zama.' Livy and Polybius say nothing at all about it, bal against Masinissa. so that we cannot understand how the hostile armies, at the distance of a five days' march, encounter each other to the west of Carthage. Fortunately we find some indications in Appian and Zonaras, derived from an independent source, which enable us to form a proximate notion of the course of the campaign. It appears from these indications that the war was brought to a close through the Numidians and in Numidia. From Leptis Hannibal had marched to Hadrumetum, where he spent the winter. But instead of marching from this place to Carthage, and against Scipio, he turned in a southerly direction, towards Numidia. He considered it his first duty to restore Carthaginian influence in this territory, to weaken Masinissa, and to draw off its forces to the Carthaginian side. Hannibal secured the support of some Numidian chiefs, especially of Vermina, the son of Syphax; he succeeded in defeating Masinissa, in taking several towns, and in laying waste the country. Hereupon Scipio marched from Tunes, where he had taken up his position for the second time, and came to relieve his ally, threatening Hannibal on the east, whilst the Numidians were changed into ißatŵv. It would take too long to point out all the contradictions in the several statements. They strike even the superficial reader. If we had the Carthaginian version, we should probably learn that the Romans were not so innocent as the lamb in the fable, and that the Carthaginians were not so demented as to give their overpowering enemies a pretext for renewing a war the termination of which they were prepared to purchase with great sacrifices. We surmise that the Carthaginians did not provoke hostilities until they knew the resolution of the Romans to continue the war; and we have no reason to doubt that a state like the Carthaginian respected the law of nations at least as much as the Romans, and that accordingly the alleged violation of it by the populace of Carthage was justified by acts on the part of the Romans. If we recollect the story of the Caudine Passes, we shall feel persuaded that Rome did not scruple to accept the benefits of an armistice without performing the conditions stipulated in it. 1 Compare U. Becker, Vorarbeiten zu einer Geschichte des zweiten punischen Krieges, p. 186 ff. advancing against him from the west. Hannibal was worsted in a cavalry engagement near Zama, one of his commissariat trains was cut off by the Romans under the legate Thermus, and, after fruitless negotiations for peace, the decisive battle at last was fought.' CHAP. VIII. SEVENTH 204-201 PERIOD, B.C. The socalled battle of The uncertainty of the history of this last year's campaign is strikingly characterised by the fact that neither the time nor the place of this battle is exactly known. One Zama. thing is certain. that the battle of Zama, as it is called in history, was fought, not at Zama, but several days' march to the west of it, on the river Bagradas, at a place the name of which is given differently by different authors, and which was perhaps called Naraggara. The date of the battle is also uncertain. Not one of the extant historians names even the season of the year. On the authority of a statement in Zonaras that the Carthaginians were terrified by an eclipse of the sun, the 19th of October has been fixed upon as the day of the battle, as, according to astronomical calculations, an eclipse of the sun, visible in North Africa, took place on that day in the year 202 B.O.* This calculation agrees perfectly with the course of events as it appears probable from the narratives of Appian and Zonaras; for the campaign in the wide deserts of Numidia may very well have lasted through the whole summer of that year. The battle of Naraggara, which, in order to avoid a The story of an interview of the two leaders is probably nothing but one of the idle inventions in which the history of the Punic war abounds, from the time that Scipio took a leading part in it. It is not taken from the contemporary annals, but from one of the poetical or rhetorical works on the subject. If more was preserved of the poems of Ennius than the few scanty fragments which were noted down by the later grammarians for the curious or antiquated words they contained, we should probably be able to trace back to him a great number of these fictions. They originated, for the most part, in the family circle and among the clients of the Scipios, and had already gained consistency when Polybius obtained in this quarter his materials for the history of the Hannibalian war. 2 Zonaras, ix. 14. This date agrees with the statement of Livy (xxx. 36), according to which the Numidian chief Vermina attacked the Romans after the battle, on the first day of the Saturnalia, i.e. in the month of October. BOOK Disposi forces. misunderstanding, we must call the battle of Zama, is described in detail by Polybius and by Livy. After what we have said above, of the inaccuracy of these authors as to the war in Africa, it would hardly be worth while to copy their battle-pieces here, however much we may desire to have a true picture of this battle, which, though it did not decide the issue of the seventeen years' warfor this had been long decided-yet brought the long struggle to a close. But the battles of the ancients, compared with those of modern times, were so easy to survey; their battle-fields, even when the greatest forces fought, were so small, and the battle array and tactics of their troops so uniform and simple, that it was not impossible to obtain a clear conception of the course of a battle; and where there was no intention to deceive, the accounts of eye-witnesses may be received as, on the whole, trustworthy. According to Appian' Hannibal brought into the field tion of the 50,000 men and eighty elephants, Scipio 34,500, without opposing counting the Numidians whom Masinissa and Dacamas, another Numidian chief, had brought to his aid. According to the account of Polybius, both armies were equally strong in infantry. Hannibal's army consisted of three different corps, drawn up one behind the other in a treble line of battle. In the first rank were placed the mercenaries, the Moors, the Gauls, the Ligurians, the Balearic contingent, and the Spaniards; then, in the second line, the Libyans and the Carthaginian militia; and in the third line the Italian veterans, mostly Bruttians. The eighty elephants, drawn up before the front, opened the attack on the Romans. In cavalry the Romans were superior to Hannibal, by the aid of their Numidian auxiliaries.3 It appears that Hannibal's Numidian ally Vermina had not arrived with his troops on the day of the battle. He did not attempt an attack on Polybius, xv. 14, § 6. Appian, viii. 41. The untrustworthiness of the Numidians, as of their allies in general, and of their mercenaries, was the principal element of the weakness of the Carthaginians. What strong reasons Hannibal had for mistrusting the Numidians |