to proceed to their provinces.  Directions were given to the consuls, that before they left the city they should celebrate the great games which Titus Manlius Torquatus, when dictator, had vowed to exhibited in the fifth year, if the condition of the state remained unaltered.  Accounts of prodigies brought from several places excited fresh superstitious fears in the minds of men.  It was believed that crows had not only torn with their beaks some gold in the Capitol, but had even eaten it.  At Antium mice gnawed a golden crown.  An immense quantity of locusts filled the whole country around Capua, nor could it be made appear satisfactorily whence they came.  At Reate a foal was produced with five feet.  At Anagnia at first scattered fires appeared in the sky, afterwards a vast meteor blazed forth.  At Frusino a circle surrounded the sun with a thin line, which was itself afterwards included within the sun’s disc which extended beyond it.  At Arpinum the earth sank into an immense gulf, in a place where the ground was level.  When one of the consuls was immolating the first victim, the head of the liver was wanting.  These prodigies were expiated with victims of the larger kind.  The college of pontiffs gave out to what gods sacrifice was to be made.

3.  After these matters were finished, the consuls and praetors set out for their provinces.  All, however, made Africa the great object of their concern, as though it had been allotted to them; whether it was because they saw that the welfare of the state and the issue of the war turned upon the operations there, or that they might oblige Scipio, on whom the whole state was then intent.  Accordingly, not only from Sardinia, as has been before mentioned, but from Sicily also and Spain, clothing and corn, and from Sicily arms also, together with every kind of stores, were conveyed thither.  Nor did Scipio at any time during the winter relax in any of the various military operations in which he was engaged on all sides.  He continued the siege of Utica.  His camp was within sight of Hasdrubal.  The Carthaginians had launched their ships, and had a fleet prepared and equipped to intercept his supplies.  Amid these occupations he had not even lost sight of his endeavours to regain the friendship of Syphax, whose passion for his bride he thought might now perhaps have become satiated from unlimited enjoyment.  From Syphax he received terms of peace with the Carthaginians, with proposals that the Romans should evacuate Africa, and the Carthaginians Italy, rather than any ground of hope that he would desert their cause if the war proceeded.  For my part I am of opinion, and in this I am countenanced by the majority of writers, that these negotiations were carried on through messengers, rather than that Syphax himself came to the Roman camp to hold a conference, as Antias Valerius relates.  At first the Roman general scarcely allowed these terms to be mentioned, but afterwards, in order that there might exist a plausible pretext for his emissaries