onsul had ordered the chickens to be thrown overboard, because he was
warned by them not to fight. Under the consulship of Marcus Fabius
Buteo, they overthrew, near AEgimurus, in the African sea, a fleet of the
enemy which was just sailing for Italy. But, oh! how great materials for
a triumph were then lost by a storm, when the Roman fleet, richly laden
with spoil, and driven by contrary winds, covered with its wreck the
coasts of Africa and the Syrtes, and of all the islands lying amid those
seas! A great calamity! But not without some honor to this eminent
people, from the circumstance that their victory was intercepted only by
a storm, and that the matter for their triumph was lost only by a
shipwreck. Yet, though the Punic spoils were scattered abroad, and
thrown up by the waves on every promontory and island, the Romans still
celebrated a triumph. In the consulship of Lutatius Catulus, an end was
at last put to the war near the islands named AEgates. Nor was there any
greater fight during this war; for the fleet of the enemy was laden with
provisions, troops, towers, and arms; indeed, all Carthage, as it were,
was in it; a state of things which proved its destruction, as the Roman
fleet, on the contrary, being active, light, free from encumbrance, and
in some degree resembling a land-camp, was wheeled about by its oars
like cavalry in a battle by their reins; and the beaks of the vessels,
directed now against one part of the enemy and now against another,
presented the appearance of living creatures. In a very short time,
accordingly, the ships of the enemy were shattered to pieces, and filled
the whole sea between Sicily and Sardinia with their wrecks. So great,
indeed, was the victory that there was no thought of demolishing the
enemy's city; since it seemed superfluous to pour their fury on towers
and walls, when Carthage had already been destroyed at sea.

[Footnote 56: "A vast prey--not in war, but in hunting." The sense is,
it would have been a considerable capture if he had taken these hundred
elephants, not in battle, but in hunting, in which more are often
taken.]

THE SECOND PUNIC WAR

After the first Carthaginian war there was scarcely a rest of four
years, when there was another war, inferior, indeed, in length of time,
for it occupied but eighteen years, but so much more terrible, from the
direfulness of its havoc, that if anyone compares the losses on both
sides, the people that conquered was more