AFRICA.
Thus in the spring of 204 B.C. Scipio embarked his army at Lilybæum
(modern Marsala), and sailed for Africa. His fleet is said to have
comprised forty warships and four hundred transports, and on board was
carried water and rations for fifty-five days, of which fifteen days’
supply was cooked. Complete dispositions were made for the protection of
the convoy by the warships, and each class of vessel was distinguished
by lights at night—the transports one, the warships two, and his own
flagship three. It is worth notice that he personally supervised the
embarkation of the troops.
A huge crowd gathered to witness the departure, not only the inhabitants
of Lilybæum, but all the deputies from Sicily—as a compliment to
Scipio,—and the troops who were being left behind. At daybreak Scipio
delivered a farewell oration and prayer, and then by a trumpet gave the
signal to weigh anchor. Favoured by a strong wind the fleet made a quick
passage, and next morning when the sun rose they were in sight of land,
and could discern the promontory of Mercury (now Cape Bon). Scipio
ordered the pilot to make for a landing farther west, but a dense fog
coming on later forced the fleet to cast anchor. Next morning, the wind
rising, dispelled the fog, and the army disembarked at the Fair
promontory (now Cape Farina), a few miles from the important city of
Utica. The security of the landing was at once ensured by entrenching a
camp on the nearest rising ground.
These two promontories formed the horns, pointing towards Sicily, of the
territory of Carthage, that bull’s head of land projecting into the
Mediterranean which is to-day known as Tunisia. The horns, some
thirty-five miles apart, enclosed a vast semicircular bay in the centre
of which stood Carthage, on a small peninsula pointing east. Utica lay
just below and inside the tip of the western horn, and a few miles east
of the city was the Bagradas river, whose rich and fertile valley was
the main source of supplies for Carthage. Another strategic point was
Tunis, at the junction of the Carthage peninsula with the
mainland—geographically south-west of Carthage but militarily east,
because it lay across the landward approaches from that flank.
Although the Carthaginians had long been expecting the blow, and had
watch-towers on every cape, the news created feverish excitement and
alarm, stimulated by the stream of fugitives from the country districts.
At Carthage, emergency defensive measures were taken as if Scipio was
already at the gates. The Roman’s first step was clearly to gain a
secure base of operations, and with this aim his preliminary move was
against Utica. His fleet was despatched there forthwith while the army
marched overland, his advanced guard cavalry encountering a body of five
hundred Carthaginian horse who had been sent to reconnoitre and
interrupt the landing. After a sharp engagement these were put to
flight. A still better omen was the arrival of Masinissa, true to his
word, to join Scipio. Livy states that the earlier sources from which he
compiled his history differed as to the strength of Masinissa’s
reinforcement, some saying that he brought two hundred horse, and some
two thousand. Livy accepts the smaller estimate, for the very sound
reason that Masinissa after his return from Spain had been driven out of
his father’s kingdom by the joint efforts of Syphax and the
Carthaginians, and for the past year and more had been eluding pursuit
by repeated changes of quarter. An exile, who had escaped from the last
battle with only sixty horsemen, it is unlikely that he could have
raised his band of followers to any large proportions.
Meanwhile, the Carthaginians despatched a further body of four thousand
horse, mainly Numidians, to oppose Scipio’s advance and gain time for
Syphax and Hasdrubal to come to their aid. To their ally and to their
chief general in Africa the most urgent messages had been sent. Hanno
with the four thousand cavalry occupied a town, Salæca, about fifteen
miles from the Roman camp near Utica, and it is said by Livy that
Scipio, on hearing of this, remarked, “What, cavalry lodging in houses
during the summer! Let there be even more in number while they have such
a leader.” “Concluding that the more dilatory they were in their
operations, the more active he ought to be, he sent Masinissa forward
with the cavalry, directing him to ride up to the gates of the enemy and
draw them out to battle, and when their whole force had poured out and
committed themselves thoroughly to the attack, then to retire by
degrees.” Scipio himself waited for what he judged sufficient time for
Masinissa’s advanced party to draw out the enemy, and then followed with
the Roman cavalry, “proceeding without being seen, under cover of some
rising ground.” He took up a position near the so-called Tower of
Agathocles, on the northern slope of a saddle between two ridges.
[Illustration: Battle of Utica.]
Masinissa, following Scipio’s plan, made repeated advances and
retirements. At first he drew out small skirmishing parties, then
counterattacked them so that Hanno was forced to reinforce them, lured
them on again by a simulated retreat and repeated the process. At last
Hanno, irritated by these tactical tricks—so typical of the Parthians
and the Mongols later,—sallied forth with his main body, whereupon
Masinissa retired slowly, drawing the Carthaginians along the southern
side of the ridges and past the saddle which concealed the Roman
cavalry. When the moment was ripe, Scipio’s cavalry emerged and
encircled the flank and rear of Hanno’s cavalry, while Masinissa,
turning about, attacked them in front. The first line of a thousand were
surrounded and slain, and of the remainder two thousand were captured or
killed in a vigorous pursuit.
Scipio followed up this success by a seven days’ circuit through the
countryside, clearing it of cattle and supplies, and creating a wide
devastated zone as a barrier against attack. Security, both in supply
and protection, thus effected, he concentrated his efforts on the siege
of Utica, which he wanted for his base of operations. Utica, however,
was not destined to be a second Cartagena. Although he combined attack
from the sea by the marines with the land assault, the fortress defied
all his efforts and ruses.
Hasdrubal by this time had collected a force of thirty thousand foot and
three thousand horse, but with painful recollections of the maulings he
had suffered in Spain, did not venture to move to Utica’s relief until
reinforced by Syphax. When the latter at last came, with an army stated
to have been fifty thousand foot and ten thousand horse, the menace
compelled Scipio to raise the siege—after forty days. Faced with such a
concentration of hostile force, Scipio’s situation must have been
hazardous, but he extricated himself without mishap and fortified a camp
for the winter on a small peninsula, connected to the mainland by a
narrow isthmus. This lay on the eastern, or Carthage, side of Utica,
thus lying on the flank of any relieving force, and was later known as
Castra Cornelia. The enemy then encamped some seven miles farther east,
covering the approaches to the River Bagradas.
If there is a parallel between Scipio’s landing in Africa and Gustavus’s
landing in Germany, there is a still more striking parallel between
their action during the first season on hostile soil. Both campaigns to
the unmilitary critic appear limited in scope compared with the avowed
object with which they had set forth. Both generals have been criticised
for over-caution, if not hesitation. And both were justified not only by
the result, but by the science of war. Scipio and Gustavus alike, unable
for reasons outside their control to adjust the means to the end,
displayed that rare strategical quality—of adjusting the end to the
means. Their strategy foreshadowed Napoleon’s maxim that “the whole art
of war consists in a well ordered and prudent defensive, followed by a
bold and rapid offensive.” Both sought first to lay the foundations for
the offensive which followed by gaining a secure base of operations
where they could build up their means to a strength adequate to ensure
the attainment of the end.
Gustavus is known to have been a great student of the classics: was his
strategy in 1630 perhaps a conscious application of Scipio’s method? Nor
is this campaign of Gustavus’s the only military parallel with Scipio’s
that history records. For the action of Wellington in fortifying and
retiring behind the lines of Torres Vedras in 1810 to checkmate the
French superior concentration of force has a vivid reminder, both
topographical and strategical, of Scipio’s action in face of the
concentration of Syphax and Hasdrubal.
In this secure retreat Scipio devoted the winter to build up his
strength and supplies for the next spring’s campaign. Besides the corn
he had collected in his preliminary foraging march, he obtained a vast
quantity from Sardinia, and also fresh stores of clothing and arms from
Sicily. The success of his landing, his sharp punishment of the
Carthaginian attempts to meet him in battle, and, above all, the fact
that he had dissipated the terrors of the unknown, had falsified all the
fears of the wiseacres, by holding his own, small though his force, on
the dreaded soil of Africa, almost at the gates of Carthage—all these
factors combined to turn the current of opinion and arouse the State to
give him adequate support. Reliefs were sent to Sicily so that he could
reinforce his strength with the troops at first left behind for local
defence.
But, as usual, while seeking to develop his own strength, he did not
overlook the value of subtracting from the enemy’s. He reopened
negotiations with Syphax, “whose passion for his bride he thought might
now perhaps have become satiated from unlimited enjoyment.” In these he
was disappointed, for while Syphax went so far as to suggest terms of
peace by which the Carthaginians should quit Italy in return for a Roman
evacuation of Africa, he did not hold out any hope that he would abandon
the Carthaginian cause if the war continued. For such terms Scipio had
no use, but he only rejected them in a qualified manner, in order to
maintain a pretext for his emissaries to visit the hostile camp. The
reason was that he had conceived a plan whereby to weaken the enemy and
anticipate the attack that he feared owing to the enemy’s heavy
superiority of numbers. Some of his earlier messengers to Syphax had
reported that the Carthaginians’ winter huts were built almost entirely
of wood, and those of the Numidians of interwoven reeds and matting,
disposed without order or proper intervals, and that a number even lay
outside the ramparts of the camps. This news suggested to Scipio the
idea of setting fire to the enemy’s camp and striking a surprise blow in
the confusion.
Therefore in his later embassies Scipio sent certain expert scouts and
picked centurions dressed as officers’ servants. While the conferences
were in progress, these rambled through the camps, both that of Syphax
and of Hasdrubal, noting their approaches and entrances and studying the
general plan of the camps, the distance between them, the times and
methods of stationing guards and outposts. With each embassy, too, a
different lot of observers were sent, so that as large a number as
possible should familiarise themselves with the lie of the enemy camps.
As a result of their reports Scipio ascertained that Syphax’s camp was
the more inflammable and the easier to attack.
He then sent further envoys to Syphax, who was hoping for peace, with
instructions not to return until they received a decisive answer on the
proposed terms, saying that it was time that either an agreement was
settled or the war vigorously prosecuted. After consultation between
Syphax and Hasdrubal, they apparently decided to accept, whereupon
Scipio made further stipulations, as a suitable way of terminating the
truce, which he did next day, informing Syphax that while he himself
desired peace, the rest of his council were opposed to it. By this means
he gained freedom to carry out his plan without breaking his faith,
though he undoubtedly went as close to the border between strategical
ruse and deliberate craft as was possible without overstepping it.
Syphax, much vexed at this breakdown of negotiations, at once conferred
with Hasdrubal, and it was decided to take the offensive and challenge
Scipio to battle, on level ground if possible. But Scipio was ready to
strike, his preparations complete. Even in his final preparations, he
sought to mystify and mislead the enemy in order to make his surprise
more effective. The orders issued to the troops spoke of the surprise
being aimed at Utica; he launched his ships and mounted on board siege
machines as if he was about to assault Utica from the sea, and he
despatched two thousand infantry to seize a hill which commanded the
town. This move had a dual purpose—to convince the enemy that his plan
was directed against Utica, and to occupy the city garrison to prevent
them making a sortie against his camp when he marched out to attack the
hostile camps. Thus he was able to achieve economy of force, by
concentrating the bulk of his troops for the decisive blow, and leaving
only a slight force to guard the camp, and thus once more he did not
lose sight of the principle of security in carrying out that of
surprise. He had fixed the enemy’s attention in the wrong direction.
About mid-day he summoned a conference of his ablest and most trusted
tribunes and disclosed his plan. To this conference he summoned the
officers who had been to the enemy’s camp. “He questioned them closely
and compared the accounts they gave of the approaches and entrances of
the camp, letting Masinissa decide, and following his advice owing to
his personal knowledge of the ground.” Then he ordered the tribunes to
give the troops their evening meal early, and lead the legions out of
the camp after “Retreat” had been sounded as usual. On this point
Polybius adds the interesting note that “it is the custom among the
Romans at supper-time for the trumpeters to sound their instruments
outside the general’s tent as a signal that it is time to set the
night-watches at their several posts.”
About the first watch the troops were formed up in march order and moved
off on their seven-mile march, and about midnight arrived in the
vicinity of the hostile camps, which were just over a mile apart.
Thereupon Scipio divided his force, placing all the Numidians and half
his legionaries under Lælius and Masinissa with orders to attack
Syphax’s camp. The two commanders he first took aside and urged on them
the need for caution, emphasising that “the more the darkness in night
attacks hinders and impedes the sight, the more must one supply the
place of actual vision by skill and care.” He further instructed them
that he would wait to launch his attack on Hasdrubal’s camp until Lælius
had set fire to the other camp, and with this purpose marched his own
men at a slow pace.
Lælius and Masinissa, dividing their force, attacked the camp from two
directions simultaneously—a convergent manœuvre,—and Masinissa also
posted his Numidians, because of their knowledge of the camp, to cut off
the various exits of escape. As had been foreseen, once the leading
Romans had set the fire alight, it spread rapidly along the first row of
huts, and in a brief while the whole camp was aflame, because of the
closeness of the huts and the lack of proper intervals between rows.
Fully imagining that it was an accidental conflagration, Syphax’s men
rushed out of their huts unarmed, and in a disorderly flight. Many
perished in their huts while half asleep, many were trampled to death in
the frenzied rush for the exits, while those who escaped the flames were
cut down unawares by the Numidians posted at the gates of the camp.
Meanwhile in the Carthaginian camp the soldiers, aroused by the
sentries’ report of the fire in the other camp, and seeing how vast was
the volume of flame, rushed out of their own camp to assist in
extinguishing the fire, they also imagining it an accident and Scipio
seven miles distant. This was as Scipio had hoped and anticipated, and
he at once fell on the rabble, giving orders not to let a man escape to
give warning to the troops still in the camp. Instantly he followed up
this by launching his attack on the gates of the camp, which were
unguarded as a result of the confusion.
By the cleverness of his plan in attacking Syphax’s camp first, he had
turned to advantage the fact that a number of the latter’s huts were
outside the ramparts and so easily accessible, and had created the
opportunity to force the gates of the better protected Carthaginian
camp.
The first troops inside set fire to the nearest huts, and soon the whole
camp was aflame, the same scenes of confusion and destruction being here
repeated, and those who escaped through the gates meeting their fate at
the hands of Roman parties posted for the purpose. “Hasdrubal at once
desisted from any attempt to extinguish the fire, as he knew now from
what had befallen him that the calamity which had overtaken the
Numidians also was not, as they had supposed, the result of chance, but
was due to the initiative and daring of the enemy.” He therefore forced
his way out and escaped, along with only two thousand foot and five
hundred horsemen, half-armed and many wounded or scorched. With this
small force he took refuge in a near-by town, but when Scipio’s pursuing
troops came up, and seeing that the inhabitants were disaffected, he
resumed his flight to Carthage. Syphax who had also escaped, probably
with a larger proportion, retired to a fortified position at Abba, a
town quite close.
The armies of Sennacherib had not suffered a swifter, more unexpected,
or more complete fate than those of Hasdrubal and Syphax. According to
Livy forty thousand men were either slain or destroyed by the flames,
and about five thousand were captured, including many Carthaginian
nobles. As a spectacle of disaster it surpasses any in history.
Polybius, who presumably got his information from Lælius and other
eye-witnesses, thus describes it: “The whole place was filled with
wailing and confused cries, panic, fear, strange noises, and above all
raging fire and flames that overbore all resistance, things any one of
which would be sufficient to strike terror into a human heart, and how
much more this extraordinary combination of them all. It is not possible
to find any other disaster which however magnified could be compared
with this, so much did it exceed in horror all previous events.
Therefore of all the brilliant exploits performed by Scipio this seems
to me the most brilliant and most adventurous....”
In Carthage the news caused great alarm and anxiety—Hasdrubal’s purpose
in retreating there had been to allay the panic and forestall any
capitulation. His presence and his resolute spirit was needed. The
Carthaginians had expected with the spring campaign to find their armies
shutting in Scipio on the cape near Utica, cutting him off by land and
sea. Finding the tables so dramatically turned, they swung from
confidence to extreme despondency. At an emergency debate in the Senate
three different opinions were put forward: to send envoys to Scipio to
treat for peace; to recall Hannibal; to raise fresh levies and urge
Syphax to renew the struggle in co-operation with them. The influence of
Hasdrubal, combined with that of all the Barcine party, carried the day,
and the last policy was adopted. It is worth a passing note, in view of
the charge of ultra-Roman prejudice often made against Livy, that he
speaks with obvious admiration of this third motion which “breathed the
spirit of Roman constancy in adversity.”
Syphax and his Numidians had at first decided to continue their retreat
and, abandoning the war, retire to their own country, but three
influences caused them to change their minds. These were the pleadings
of Sophonisba to Syphax not to desert her father and his people, the
prompt arrival of the envoys from Carthage, and the arrival of a body of
over four thousand Celtiberian mercenaries from Spain—whose numbers were
exaggerated by popular rumour, doubtless inspired by the war party, to
ten thousand. Accordingly Syphax gave the envoys a message that he would
co-operate with Hasdrubal, and showed them the first reinforcement of
fresh Numidian levies who had arrived. By energetic recruiting Hasdrubal
and Syphax were able to take the field again within thirty days, joining
forces, and entrenched a camp on the Great Plain. Their strength is put
as between thirty and thirty-five thousand fighting men.
Scipio, after his dispersion of the enemy’s field forces in the recent
surprise, had turned his attention to the siege of Utica, in order to
gain the secure base which he wanted as a prelude to further operations.
It is evident that he intentionally refrained from pressing the retreat
of Syphax, for such pressure by forcing the latter to fight would tend
to pour fresh fuel on a fire that was flickering out of itself. The
ground for such a hope we have already shown, as also the factors which
caused its disappointment. Polybius gives us a valuable sidelight at
this juncture on Scipio’s care and forethought for his troops—“He also
at the same time distributed the booty, but expelled the merchants who
were making too good an affair of it; for as their recent success had
made them form a rosy picture of the future, the soldiers attached no
value to their actual booty, and were very ready to dispose of it for a
song to the merchants.”
When the news reached Scipio of the junction of the Carthaginian and
Numidian forces and of their approach, he acted promptly. Leaving only a
small detachment to keep up the appearance of a siege by land and sea,
he set out to meet the enemy, his whole force being in light marching
order—he evidently judged that rapidity was the key to this fresh
menace, to strike before they could weld their new force into a strong
weapon. On the fifth day he reached the Great Plain, and fortified a
camp on a hill some three and a half miles distant from the enemy’s
camp. The two following days he advanced his forces, harassing the
enemy’s outposts, in order to tempt them out to battle. The bait
succeeded on the third day, and the enemy’s combined army came out of
their camp and drew up in order of battle. They placed the Celtiberians,
their picked troops, in the centre, the Numidians on the left, and the
Carthaginians on the right. “Scipio simply followed the usual Roman
practice of placing the maniples of _hastati_ in front, behind them the
_principes_, and hindmost of all the _triarii_.” He disposed his Italian
cavalry on his right, facing Syphax’s Numidians, and Masinissa’s
Numidians on his left, facing the Carthaginian horse. At the first
encounter the enemy’s wings were broken by the Italian and Masinissa’s
cavalry. Scipio’s rapidity of march and foresight in striking before
Hasdrubal and Syphax had consolidated their raw levies was abundantly
justified. Moreover, on one side moral was heightened by recent success,
and on the other lowered by recent disaster.
In the centre the Celtiberians fought staunchly, knowing that flight was
useless, because of their ignorance of the country, and that surrender
was futile, because of their treason in coming from Spain to take
service against the Romans. It would appear that Scipio used his second
and third lines—the _principes_ and _triarii_—as a mobile reserve to
attack the Celtiberians’ flanks, instead of to reinforce the _hastati_
directly, as was the normal custom. Thus surrounded on all sides the
Celtiberians were cut to pieces where they stood, though only after an
obstinate resistance, which enabled the commanders, Hasdrubal and
Syphax, as well as a good number of the fugitives, to make their escape.
Hasdrubal with his Carthaginian survivors found shelter in Carthage, and
Syphax with his cavalry retreated home to his own capital, Cirta.
Night had put a stop to the scene of carnage, and next day Scipio sent
Masinissa and Lælius in pursuit of Syphax, while he himself cleared the
surrounding country, and occupied its strong places, as a preliminary to
a move on Carthage. Here fresh alarm had been caused, but the people
were more staunch in the hour of trial than is the tendency to regard
them. Few voices were raised in favour of peace, and energetic measures
were taken for resistance. The city was provisioned for a long siege,
and the work of strengthening and enlarging the fortifications was
pushed on. At the same time the Senate decided to send the fleet to
attack the Roman ships at Utica and attempt to raise the siege, and as a
further step the recall of Hannibal was decided on.
Scipio, lightening his transport by the despatch of the booty to his
camp near Utica, had already reached and occupied Tunis, with little
opposition despite the strength of the place. Tunis was only some
fifteen miles from Carthage and could be clearly seen, and as Polybius
tells us of Scipio, “this he thought would be a most effective means of
striking the Carthaginians with terror and dismay”—the moral objective
again.
Hardly had he completed this “bound,” however, before his sentries
sighted the Carthaginian fleet sailing past the place. He realised what
their plan was and also the danger, knowing that his own ships, burdened
with siege machines or converted into transports, were unprepared for a
naval battle. Unhesitatingly, he made his decision to stave off the
threat, and made a forced march back to Utica. There was no time to
clear his ships for action, and so he hit on the plan of anchoring the
warships close inshore, and protecting them by a four-deep row of
transports lashed together as a floating wall. He also laid planks from
one to the other, to enable the free movement of troops, leaving narrow
intervals for small patrol-boats to pass in and out under these bridges.
He then put on board the transports a thousand picked men with a very
high proportion of weapons, particularly missiles—an interesting point
in foreshadowing the modern doctrine of using increased fire-power in
defence to replace man-power.
These emergency measures were completed before the enemy’s attack came,
thanks first to the slow sailing of the Carthaginian fleet, and their
further delay in offering battle in the open sea. Thus they were forced
to sail in against the Romans’ unexpected type of formation, like ships
attacking a wall. Their weight of numbers, too, was partly discounted by
the fact of the transports being higher out of the water, so that the
Carthaginians had to throw their weapons upwards, and the Romans,
conversely, gained additional impetus and better aim through casting
their missiles from a superior height. But the device of sending
patrol-boats and light craft out through the intervals to harass the
Carthaginian ships—a device obviously adapted by Scipio from military
tactics—failed of its effect, and proved an actual handicap to the
defence. For when they went out to harass the approaching warships they
were run down by the mere momentum and bulk of the latter, and in the
later stages became so intermingled with the Carthaginian ships as to
mask the fire of the troops on the transports.
Beaten off in their direct assaults, the Carthaginians tried a new
measure, throwing long beams with iron hooks at the end on to the Roman
transports, these beams being secured by chains to their own vessels. By
this means the fastenings were broken, and a number of transports
dragged away, the troops manning them having barely time to leap on to
the second line of ships. Only one line had been broken, and the
opposition had been so severe that the Carthaginians contented
themselves with this limited success, and sailed back to Carthage. They
towed away six captured transports, though doubtless more were broken
adrift and lost by the Romans.
[Illustration: Africa: The Territory of Carthage.]
Baulked in this quarter, the Carthaginians’ hopes were shattered in
another, for the pursuing force sent by Scipio after Syphax had
fulfilled its object and finally cut away this prop of Carthaginian
power in Africa. The success went still further, as it gained for Scipio
that Numidian source of man-power which he had so long schemed for, and
which he needed to build up his forces to an adequate strength for his
decisive blow.
Following up Syphax, Lælius and Masinissa arrived in Massylia
(Masinissa’s hereditary kingdom from which he had been driven) after a
fifteen days’ march, and there expelled the garrisons left by Syphax.
The latter had fallen back farther east to his own dominions,
Massæsylia—modern Algeria,—and there, spurred on by his wife, raised a
fresh force from the abundant resources of his kingdom. He proceeded to
organise them on the Roman model, imagining, like so many military
copyists in history, that imitation of externals gave him the secret of
the Roman success. His force was large enough—as large, in fact, as his
original strength,—but it was utterly raw and undisciplined. With this
he advanced to meet Lælius and Masinissa. At the first encounter between
the opposing cavalry, numerical superiority told, but the advantage was
lost when the Roman infantry reinforced the intervals of their cavalry,
and before long the raw troops broke and fled. The victory was
essentially one due to superior training and discipline, and not to any
subtle manœuvre such as appears in all Scipio’s battles. This is worth
note in view of the fact that some historians lose no opportunity of
hinting that Scipio’s success was due more to his able lieutenants than
to himself.
Syphax, seeing his force crumbling, sought to shame his men into
resistance by riding forward and exposing himself to danger. In this
gallant attempt he was unhorsed, made prisoner, and dragged into the
presence of Lælius. As Livy remarks, this was “a spectacle calculated to
afford peculiar satisfaction to Masinissa.” The latter showed fine
military spirit as well as judgment after the battle, when he declared
to Lælius that, much as he would like to visit his regained kingdom, “it
was not proper in prosperity any more than in adversity to lose time.”
He therefore asked permission to push on with the cavalry to Cirta,
Syphax’s capital, while Lælius followed with the infantry. Having won
Lælius’s assent, Masinissa advanced, taking Syphax with him. On arrival
in front of Cirta, he summoned the principal inhabitants to appear, but
they refused until he showed them Syphax in chains, whereupon the
faint-hearted threw open the gates. Masinissa, posting guards, galloped
off to seize the palace, and was met by Sophonisba. This woman, almost
as famous as Helen or Cleopatra for her beauty and for her disastrous
influence, made such a clever appeal to his pride, his pity, and his
passion, that she not only won his pledge not to hand her over to the
Romans, but “as the Numidians are an excessively amorous race, he became
the slave of his captive.” When she had withdrawn, and he had to face
the problem of how to reconcile his duty with his pledge, his passion
suggested to him a loophole—to marry her himself that very day. When
Lælius came up he was so annoyed that at first he was on the point of
having her dragged from the marriage-bed and sent with the other
captives to the Utica camp, but afterwards relented, agreeing to leave
the decision to Scipio. The two then set to work on the reduction of the
remaining towns in Numidia, which were still garrisoned by the troops of
Syphax.
When the captives arrived at Scipio’s camp, Syphax himself in chains at
their head, the troops poured out to see the spectacle. What a contrast
with a few years back! Now, a captive in chains; then, a powerful ruler
who held the balance of power, for whose friendship Scipio and Hasdrubal
vied on their simultaneous visits, both placing themselves in his power,
so highly did they assess the prize at stake.
This thought evidently passed through Scipio’s mind, the recollection,
too, of their quondam friendship, and moved him to sympathy. He
questioned Syphax as to the motives that had led him to break his pledge
of alliance with the Romans and make war on them unprovoked. Syphax,
gaining confidence from Scipio’s manner, replied that he had been mad to
do so, but that taking up arms was only the consummation of his frenzy,
and not its beginning, which dated from his marriage to Sophonisba.
“That fury and pest” had fascinated and blinded him to his undoing. But
ruined and fallen as he was, he declared that he gained some consolation
from seeing her fatal lures transferred to his greatest enemy.
These words caused Scipio great anxiety, for he appreciated both her
influence and the menace to the Roman plans from Masinissa’s hasty
wedding. She had detached one passionate Numidian; she might well lead
astray another. When Lælius and Masinissa arrived shortly after, Scipio
showed no signs of his feelings in his public greeting, praising both in
the highest terms for their work. But as soon as possible he took
Masinissa aside privately. His talk with the delinquent was a
masterpiece of tact and psychological appeal. “I suppose, Masinissa,
that it was because you saw in me some good qualities that you first
came to me when in Spain for the purpose of forming a friendship with
me, and that afterwards in Africa you committed yourself and all your
hopes to my protection. But of all those virtues, which made me seem
worthy of your regard, there is none of which I am so proud as
temperance and control of my passions.” Then pointing out the dangers
caused by want of self-control, he continued: “I have mentioned with
delight, and I remember with pleasure, the instances of fortitude and
courage you displayed in my absence. As to other matters, I would rather
that you should reflect on them in private, than that I should cause you
to blush by reciting them.” Then, with a final call to Masinissa’s sense
of duty, he dismissed him. Where reproaches might have stiffened
Masinissa, such a friendly appeal broke him down, and bursting into
tears, he retired to his own tent. Here, after a prolonged inward
struggle, he sent for a confidential servant, and ordered him to mix
some poison in a cup and carry it to Sophonisba, with the message that
“Masinissa would gladly have fulfilled the first obligation which as a
husband he owed to her, his wife; but as those who had the power had
deprived him of the exercise of those rights, he now performed his
second promise—that she should not come alive into the power of the
Romans.” When the servant came to Sophonisba she said, “I accept this
nuptial present; nor is it an unwelcome one, if my husband can render me
no better service. Tell him, however, that I should have died with
greater satisfaction had I not married so near on my death.” Then,
calmly and without a quiver, she took and drained the cup.
As soon as Scipio heard the news, fearing that the high-spirited young
man, when so distraught, might take some desperate step, “he immediately
sent for him, and at one time endeavoured to solace him, at another
gently rebuked him for trying to expiate one rash act with another, and
making the affair more tragical than was necessary.”
Next day Scipio sought to erase this grief from Masinissa’s mind by a
well-calculated appeal to his ambition and pride. Summoning an assembly,
he first saluted Masinissa by the title of king, speaking in the highest
terms of his achievements, and then presented him with a golden goblet,
an ivory sceptre, a curule chair, and other symbols of honour. “He
increased the honour by observing that among the Romans there was
nothing more magnificent than a ‘triumph,’ and that those who received
the reward of a ‘triumph’ were not invested with more splendid ornaments
than those of which the Roman people considered Masinissa alone, of all
foreigners, worthy.” This action, and the encouragement to his dreams of
becoming master of all Numidia, had the desired effect, and Masinissa
speedily forgot his private sorrows in his public distinction. Lælius,
whom Scipio had been careful to praise similarly and reward, was then
sent with Syphax and the other captives back to Rome.