nor the laws availed any thing.  Then perceiving that his discourse was with willing ears attended to, and that the conduct of those men was incompatible with the freedom of the lowest classes, he proposed a law, and procured it to be enacted, that the “judges should be elected annually; and that no person should hold the office two years successively.”  But, whatever degree of favour he acquired among the commons by this proceeding, he roused, in a great part of the nobility, an equal degree of resentment.  To this he added another act, which, while it was for the advantage of the people, provoked personal enmity against himself.  The public revenues were partly wasted through neglect, partly embezzled, and divided among some leading men and magistrates; insomuch, that there was not money sufficient for the regular annual payment of the tribute to the Romans, so that private persons seemed to be threatened with a heavy tax.

47.  When Hannibal had informed himself of the amount of the revenues arising from taxes and port duties, for what purposes they were issued from the treasury, what proportion of them was consumed by the ordinary expenses of the state, and how much was alienated by embezzlement; he asserted in an assembly of the people, that if payment were enforced of the residuary funds, the taxes might be remitted to the subjects; and that the state would still be rich enough to pay the tribute to the Romans:  which assertion he proved to be true.  But now those persons who, for several years past, had maintained themselves by plundering the public, were greatly enraged; as if this were ravishing from them their own property, and not as dragging out of their hands their ill-gotten spoil.  Accordingly, they instigated the Romans against Hannibal, who were seeking a pretext for indulging their hatred against him.  A strenuous opposition was, however, for a long time made to this by Scipio Africanus, who thought it highly unbecoming the dignity of the Roman people to make themselves a party in the animosities and charges against Hannibal; to interpose the public authority among factions of the Carthaginians, not deeming it sufficient to have conquered that commander in the field, but to become as it were his prosecutors[1] in a judicial process, and preferring an action against him.  Yet at length the point was carried, that an embassy should be sent to Carthage to represent to the senate there, that Hannibal, in concert with king Antiochus, was forming plans for kindling a war.  Three ambassadors were sent, Caius Servilius, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, and Quintus Terentius Culleo.  These, when they had arrived at Carthage, by the advice of Hannibal’s enemies, ordered, that any who inquired the cause of their coming should be told, that they came to determine the disputes subsisting between the Carthaginians and Masinissa, king of Numidia; and this was generally believed.  But Hannibal was not ignorant that he was the sole object aimed