ense rewards if he brought back the head of Masinissa,
or if, which would be a source of incalculable joy, he took him alive;
he unexpectedly attacked his party while dispersed and carelessly
employed, and after cutting off an immense quantity of cattle and men
from the troops which guarded them, drove Masinissa himself with
a small body of attendants to the summit of the mountain. On this,
considering the business as in a manner settled, he not only sent the
booty of cattle and the prisoners he had made to the king, but also
sent back a part of his forces, as being considerably more than were
necessary to accomplish what remained of the war; and then pursuing
Masinissa, who had come down from the top of the mountain with not
more than five hundred foot and two hundred horse, shut him up in a
narrow valley, both the entrances of which he blocked up. Here great
slaughter was made of the Massylians. Masinissa, with not more than
fifty horsemen, disengaged himself from the defile by passing through
steep descents of the mountains, which were not known to his pursuers.
Bocchar, however, followed close upon him, and overtaking him in the
open plains near Clupea, so effectually surrounded him, that he slew
every one of his attendants except four horsemen. These, together with
Masinissa himself, who was wounded, he let slip, in a manner, out of
his hands during the confusion. The fugitives were in sight, and
a body of horse, dispersed over the whole plain, pursued the five
horsemen of the enemy, some of them pushing off in an oblique
direction, in order to meet them. The fugitives met with a very broad
river, into which they unhesitatingly plunged their horses, as they
were pressed by greater danger from behind, and carried away by the
current were borne along obliquely. Two of them having sunk in the
rapid eddy in the sight of the enemy, Masinissa himself was supposed
to have perished; but he with the two remaining had emerged among the
bushes on the farther bank. Here Bocchar stopped his pursuit, as he
neither had courage to enter the river, nor believed that he now had
any one to pursue. Upon this he returned to the king, with the false
account of the death of Masinissa. Messengers were despatched to
Carthage to convey this most joyful event, and all Africa rang with
the news of Masinissa's death; but the minds of men were variously
affected by it. Masinissa, while curing his wound by the application
of herbs, was supported