the Roman fleet which lay near Sardinia.  Such were the transactions by sea and land in that part of Italy which is adjacent to the Alps.  The consul, Caius Servilius, without having performed any memorable achievement in Etruria, his province, and in Gaul, for he had advanced thither also, but having rescued from slavery, which they had endured for now the sixteenth year, his father, Caius Servilius, and his uncle, Caius Lutatius, who had been taken by the Boians at the village of Tanetum, returned to Rome with his father on one side of him and his uncle on the other, distinguished, by family, rather than by public, honours.  It was proposed to the people, that Caius Servilius should be indemnified for having filled the offices of plebeian tribune and plebeian aedile contrary to what was established by the laws, while his father, who had sat in the curule chair, was still alive, he being ignorant of that circumstance.  This proposition having been carried, he returned to his province.  The towns Consentia, Uffugum, Vergae, Besidiae, Hetriculum, Sypheum, Argentanum, Clampetia, and many other inconsiderable states, perceiving that the Carthaginian cause was declining, went over to Cneius Servilius the consul in Bruttium.  The same consul fought a battle with Hannibal, in the territory of Croto.  The accounts of this battle are not clear.  Valerius Antias states that five thousand men were slain.  But this is an event of such magnitude, that either it must be an impudent fiction, or negligently omitted.  It is certain that nothing further was done by Hannibal in Italy; for ambassadors from Carthage, recalling him into Africa, came to him, as it happened, at the same time that they came to Mago.

20.  It is said that when Hannibal heard the message of the ambassadors he gnashed with his teeth, groaned, and scarcely refrained from shedding tears.  After they had delivered the commands with which they were charged, he said:  “Those who have for a long time been endeavouring to drag me home, by forbidding the sending of supplies and money to me, now recall me, not indirectly, but openly.  Hannibal, therefore, hath been conquered, not by the Roman people, who have been so often slain and routed, but by the Carthaginian senate, through envy and detraction; nor will Publius Scipio exult and glory in this unseemly return so much as Hanno, who has crushed our family, since he could not effect it by any other means, by the ruins of Carthage.”  Already had his mind entertained a presentiment of this event, and he had accordingly prepared ships beforehand.  Having, therefore, sent a crowd of useless soldiers under pretence of garrisons into the towns in the Bruttian territory, a few of which continued their adherence to him, more through fear than attachment, he transported the strength of his army into Africa.  Many natives of Italy who, refusing to follow him into Africa had retired to the shrine of Juno Lacinia, which had never been violated up to that day, were barbarously massacred