been rescued from the camps when burning, and from the
flames, was given up to the soldiers. Syphax took up a position in a
fortified place about eight miles off. Hasdrubal hastened to Carthage,
lest the apprehensions occasioned by the recent disaster should lead
to any timorous measures. So great was the consternation created there
on the first receipt of the news, that it was fully anticipated that
Scipio, suspending his operations against Utica, would immediately
lay siege to Carthage. The suffetes, therefore, who form with them an
authority similar to the consular, summoned the senate, when the
three following opinions were given. The first proposed, that a decree
should be passed to the effect, that ambassadors should be sent to
Scipio to treat of peace; the second, that Hannibal should be recalled
to defend his country from a war which threatened its annihilation;
the third breathed the spirit of Roman constancy under adversity; it
recommended that the losses of the army should be repaired, and that
Syphax should be exhorted not to abandon the war. The latter opinion
prevailed, because it was that which Hasdrubal, who was present, and
all the members of the Barcine faction, preferred. After this,
the levy commenced in the city and country, and ambassadors were
despatched to Syphax, who was himself employing every effort to
restore the war; for his wife had prevailed upon him, not, as
heretofore, by caresses, powerful as they are in influencing the mind
of a lover, but by prayers and appeals to his compassion, imploring
him, with streaming eyes, not to betray her father and her country,
nor suffer Carthage to be consumed by the same flames which had
reduced the camps to ashes. In addition to this, the ambassadors
informed him of a circumstance which had occurred very seasonably to
raise their hopes; that they had met with four thousand Celtiberians
in the neighbourhood of a city named Abba, a fine body of young men
who had been enlisted by their recruiting officers in Spain; and that
Hasdrubal would very soon arrive with a body of troops by no means
contemptible. Accordingly, he not only returned a kind answer to the
ambassadors, but also showed them a multitude of Numidian rustics,
whom he had lately furnished with arms and horses; and at the same
time assured them that he would call out all the youth in his kingdom.
He said, he well knew that the loss sustained had been occasioned by
fire, and not by battle, and