if I rejected you on your coming in person to solicit peace, before I crossed over into Africa, you voluntarily retiring from Italy, and after you had embarked your troops; so now, when I have dragged you into Africa almost by manual force, notwithstanding your resistance and evasions, I am not bound to treat you with any respect.  Wherefore, if in addition to those stipulations on which it was considered that a peace would at that time have been agreed upon, and what they are you are informed, a compensation is proposed for having seized our ships, together with their stores, during a truce, and for the violence offered to our ambassadors, I shall then have matter to lay before my council.  But if these things also appear oppressive, prepare for war, since you could not brook the conditions of peace.”  Thus, without effecting an accommodation, when they had returned from the conference to their armies, they informed them that words had been bandied to no purpose, that the question must be decided by arms, and that they must accept that fortune which the gods assigned them.

32.  When they had arrived at their camps, they both issued orders that their soldiers should get their arms in readiness, and prepare their minds for the final contest; in which, if fortune should favour them, they would continue victorious, not for a single day, but for ever.  “Before to-morrow night,” they said, “they would know whether Rome or Carthage should give laws to the world; and that neither Africa nor Italy, but the whole world, would be the prize of victory.  That the dangers which threatened those who had the misfortune to be defeated, were proportioned to the rewards of the victors.”  For the Romans had not any place of refuge in an unknown and foreign land, and immediate destruction seemed to await Carthage, if the troops which formed her last reliance were defeated.  To this important contest, the day following, two generals, by far the most renowned of any, and belonging to two of the most powerful nations in the world, advanced, either to crown or overthrow, on that day, the many honours they had previously acquired.  Their minds, therefore, were agitated with the opposite feelings of hope and fear; and while they contemplated at one time their own troops, at another those of their enemy, estimating their powers more by sight than by reason, they saw in them at once the grounds for joy and grief.  Those circumstances which did not occur to the troops themselves spontaneously, their generals suggested by their admonitions and exhortations.  The Carthaginian recounted his achievements in the land of Italy during sixteen years the many Roman generals and armies annihilated, reminding each individually of the honours he had acquired as he came to any soldier who had obtained distinction in any of his battles.  Scipio referred to Spain, the recent battles in Africa and the enemy’s own confession, that they could not through fear but solicit peace, nor could they, through their inveterate