throw a rampart around; but the hill was so bare, and
the soil so rough, that neither could a bush be found
for cutting a palisade, nor earth for making a mound,
nor the requisites for making a trench or any other
work; nor was the place naturally steep or abrupt enough
to render the approach and ascent difficult to the
enemy, as it rose on every side with a gentle acclivity.
However, that they might raise up against them some
semblance of a rampart, they placed around them the
panniers tied to the burdens, building them up as it
were to the usual height, and when there was a deficiency
of panniers for raising it, they presented against
the enemy a heap of baggage of every kind. The
Carthaginian armies coming up, very easily marched
up the eminence, but were stopped by the novel appearance
of the fortification, as by something miraculous,
when their leaders called out from all sides, asking
“what they stopped at? and why they did not
tear down and demolish that mockery, which was scarcely
strong enough to impede the progress of women and
children; that the enemy, who were skulking behind
their baggage, were, in fact, captured and in their
hands.” Such were the contemptuous reproofs
of their leaders. But it was not an easy task
either to leap over or remove the burdens raised up
against them, or to cut through the panniers, closely
packed together and covered completely with baggage.
When the removal of the burdens had opened a way to
the troops, who were detained by them for a long time,
and the same had been done in several quarters, the
camp was now captured on all sides; the Romans were
cut to pieces on all hands, the few by the many, the
dispirited by the victorious. A great number
of the men, however, having fled for refuge into the
neighbouring woods, effected their escape to the camp
of Publius Scipio, which Titus Fonteius commanded.
Some authors relate that Cneius Scipio was slain on
the eminence on the first assault of the enemy; others
that he escaped with a few attendants to a castle near
the camp; this, they say, was surrounded with fire,
by which means the doors which they could not force
were consumed; that it was thus taken, and all within,
together with the general himself, put to death.
Cneius Scipio was slain in the eighth year after his
arrival in Spain, and on the twenty-ninth day after
the death of his brother. At Rome the grief occasioned
by their death was not more intense than that which
was felt throughout Spain. The sorrow of the citizens,
however, was partly distracted by the loss of the armies,
the alienation of the province, and the public disaster,
while in Spain they mourned and regretted the generals
themselves, Cneius, however, the more, because he
had been longer in command of them, had first engaged
their affections, and first exhibited a specimen of
Roman justice and forbearance.