Their
strictness and severity.--Danger of violating discipline.--An
illustration.--Plan of Nero.--A night march.--Livius and Nero attack
Hasdrubal.--Hasdrubal orders a retreat.--Butchery of Hasdrubal's
army.--Hasdrubal's death.--Progress of the Roman arms.--Successes of
Scipio.--Scipio in Africa.--Carthage threatened.--A truce.--Hannibal
recalled.--Hannibal raises a new army.--The Romans capture his
spies.--Negotiations.--Interview between Hannibal and Scipio.--The
last battle.--Defeat of the Carthaginians.

The true reason why Hannibal could not be arrested in his triumphant
career seems not to have been because the Romans did not pursue the
right kind of policy toward him, but because, thus far, they had no
general who was his equal. Whoever was sent against him soon proved to
be his inferior. Hannibal could out-maneuver them all in stratagem,
and could conquer them on the field. There was, however, now destined
to appear a man capable of coping with Hannibal. It was young Scipio,
the one who saved the life of his father at the battle of Ticinus.
This Scipio, though the son of Hannibal's first great antagonist of
that name, is commonly called, in history, the elder Scipio; for there
was another of his name after him, who was greatly celebrated for his
wars against the Carthaginians in Africa. These last two received from
the Roman people the surname of Africanus, in honor of their African
victories, and the one who now comes upon the stage was called Scipio
Africanus the elder, or sometimes simply the elder Scipio. The deeds
of the Scipio who attempted to stop Hannibal at the Rhone and upon the
Po were so wholly eclipsed by his son, and by the other Scipio who
followed him, that the former is left out of view and forgotten in
designating and distinguishing the others.

Our present Scipio first appears upon the stage, in the exercise of
military command, after the battle of Cannae. He was a subordinate
officer and on the day following the battle he found himself at a
place called Canusium, which was at a short distance from Cannae, on
the way toward Rome, with a number of other officers of his own rank,
and with broken masses and detachments of the army coming in from time
to time, faint, exhausted, and in despair. The rumor was that both
consuls were killed. These fragments of the army had, therefore, no
one to command them. The officers met together, and unanimously agreed
to make Scipio their commander in the em