3. cum duōbus fīliīs: Q. Fabius Maximus and P. Scipio Africanus Minor, both of whom had been adopted into other families.
9. Bīthȳniae: supply rēx from rēgēs above.
Ch. 10.
15. tertium … Karthāginem: The Story of the Romans, p. 139; Creighton, p. 50; Rome and Carthage, Ch. XIX. The Romans encouraged their ally Masinissa to encroach on the territories of Carthage and to harass her in every way. They were seeking a pretext for war, having fully decided to utterly destroy their hated rival. The story is told that every speech that Cato the Censor made was concluded with the words ‘Dēlenda est Carthāgō,’ ‘Carthage must be destroyed.’
16. L. Mānliō Cēnsōrīnō et M. Mānīliō: they were utterly incompetent. On several occasions they were saved from destruction only by the skill of Scipio.
19. Karthāginem oppūgnāvērunt: the Carthaginians tried in every way to avert the war. Embassy after embassy was sent to Rome, offering everything that could be asked. When the Romans demanded the surrender of the arms of the city, they were given. But when it was demanded that they should leave their city and should settle somewhere else at a distance of ten miles from the sea, they refused and prepared for the struggle that was inevitable.
21. Scīpiō: “Publius Cornelius Scipio was the youngest son of Aemilius Paulus, the conqueror of Macedonia. When quite a youth he had fought at his father’s side at Pydna, and he was afterwards adopted into a still more illustrious family, that of the Scipios. Like his grandfather, the great Africanus, he had early shown a taste for other arts than that of war; and his fondness for literature was cemented by the friendship which he formed, while still a youth, with the historian Polybius. He was inferior in all respects to his grandfather by adoption, the elder Africanus.” He is chosen by Cicero in the De Amicitia as one whose friendship was worthy of immortality.
24. cōnsultissimus: ‘most fertile in council.’
per eum: cf. per Ancī fīliōs, Bk. I, 6.
27. committere: sc. proelium; the omission is late and rare.