45.  On this intelligence being received from men of such respectable authority, and who had, besides, examined into all the matters which were reported, the senate, although they deemed the business relating to Antiochus the more important, yet, as the king had, for some reason or other, gone home into Syria, they thought that the affair respecting the tyrant ought to be more promptly attended to.  After debating, for a long time, whether they should judge the grounds which they had at present sufficient whereon a declaration of war should be decreed, or whether they should empower Titus Quinctius to act, in the case respecting Nabis the Lacedaemonian, in such manner as he should judge conducive to the public interest; they left it in his hands.  For they thought the business of such a nature, that whether expedited or delayed, it could not very materially affect the general interest of the Roman people.  It was deemed more important to endeavour to discover what line of conduct Hannibal and the Carthaginians would pursue, in case of a war breaking out with Antiochus.  Persons of the faction which opposed Hannibal wrote continually to their several friends, among the principal men in Rome, that “messages and letters were sent by Hannibal to Antiochus, and that envoys came secretly from the king to him.  That, as some wild beasts can never be tamed, so the disposition of this man was irreclaimable and implacable.  That he sometimes complained, that the state was debilitated by ease and indolence, and lulled by sloth into a lethargy, from which nothing could rouse it but the sound of arms.”  These accounts were deemed probable, when people recollected the former war, which had not more been carried on than at first set on foot by the efforts of that single man.  Besides, he had by a recent act provoked the resentment of many men in power.

46.  The order of judges possessed, at that time, absolute power in Carthage; and this was owing chiefly to their holding the office during life.  The property, character, and life of every man was in their disposal.  He who incurred the displeasure of one of that order, found an enemy in every one of them; nor were accusers wanting in a court where the justices were disposed to condemn.  While they were in possession of this despotism, (for they did not exercise their exorbitant power constitutionally,) Hannibal was elected praetor and he summoned the quaestor before him.  The quaestor disregarded the summons, for he was of the opposite faction; and besides, as the practice was that, after the quaestorship men were advanced into the order of judges, the most powerful of all, he already assumed a spirit suited to the powers which he was shortly to possess.  Hannibal, highly offended Hereat, sent an officer to apprehend the quaestor; and, bringing him forth into an assembly of the people, he made heavy charges not against him alone, but on the whole order of judges; in consequence of whose arrogance and power neither the magistracy