Tunes, to which place he would move his camp.  After taking a view of the site of Carthage, not so much for the sake of acquainting himself with it for any present object, as to dispirit the enemy, he returned to Utica, having recalled Octavius to the same place.  As they were proceeding thence to Tunes, they received intelligence that Vermina, the son of Syphax, with a greater number of horse than foot, was coming to the assistance of the Carthaginians.  A part of his infantry, with all the cavalry, having attacked them on their march on the first day of the Saturnalia, routed the Numidians with little opposition; and as every way by which they could escape in flight was blocked up, for the cavalry surrounded them on all sides, fifteen thousand men were slain, twelve hundred were taken alive, with fifteen hundred Numidian horses, and seventy-two military standards.  The prince himself fled from the field with a few attendants during the confusion.  The camp was then pitched near Tunes in the same place as before, and thirty ambassadors came to Scipio from Carthage.  These behaved in a manner even more calculated to excite compassion than the former, in proportion as their situation was more pressing; but from the recollection of their recent perfidy, they were heard with considerably less pity.  In the council, though all were impelled by just resentment to demolish Carthage, yet, when they reflected upon the magnitude of the undertaking, and the length of time which would be consumed in the siege of so well fortified and strong a city, while Scipio himself was uneasy in consequence of the expectation of a successor, who would come in for the glory of having terminated the war, though it was accomplished already by the exertions and danger of another, the minds of all were inclined to peace.

37.  The next day the ambassadors being called in again, and with many rebukes for their perfidy, warned that, instructed by so many disasters, they would at length believe in the existence of the gods, and the obligation of an oath, these conditions of the peace were stated to them:  “That they should enjoy their liberty and live under their own laws; that they should possess such cities and territories as they had enjoyed before the war, and with the same boundaries, and that the Romans should on that day desist from devastation.  That they should restore to the Romans all deserters and fugitives, giving up all their ships of war except ten triremes, with such tamed elephants as they had, and that they should not tame any more.  That they should not carry on war in or out of Africa without the permission of the Roman people.  That they should make restitution to Masinissa, and form a league with him.  That they should furnish corn, and pay for the auxiliaries until the ambassadors had returned from Rome.  That they should pay ten thousand talents of silver, in equal annual instalments distributed over fifty years.  That they should give a hundred hostages,