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 that he was inferior to his adversary in war who was overcome by force of arms.  Such was the answer given to the ambassadors; and, after a few days, Hasdrubal and Syphax again united their forces.  This army consisted of about thirty-five thousand fighting men.

8.  Scipio, considering that Syphax and the Carthaginians could make no further efforts, gave his whole attention to the siege of Utica, and was now bringing up his engines to the walls, when he was diverted from his purpose by a report of the renewal of the war; and, leaving small forces merely to keep up the appearance of a siege by sea and land, he set out himself with the main strength of his army to meet the enemy.  At first he took up his position on an eminence about five miles distant from the king’s camp.  The next day, coming down with his cavalry into a