A.M. 3857. A. Rom. 601.
About the same time, Masinissa, finding his end approach, sent to desire a visit from Scipio, in order that he might invest him with full powers to dispose, as he should see proper, of his kingdom and property, in behalf of his children.[885] But, on Scipio's arrival, he found that monarch dead. Masinissa had commanded them, with his dying breath, to follow implicitly the directions of Scipio, whom he appointed to be a kind of father and guardian to them. I shall give no farther account here of the family and posterity of Masinissa, because that would interrupt too much the history of Carthage.
The high esteem which Phamæas had entertained for Scipio induced him to forsake the Carthaginians, and go over to the Romans.[886] Accordingly, he joined them with above two thousand horse, and was afterwards of great service at the siege.
Calpurnius Piso, the consul, and L. Mancinus, his lieutenant, arrived in Africa in the beginning of the spring.[887] Nothing remarkable was transacted during this campaign. The Romans were even defeated on several occasions, and carried on the siege of Carthage but slowly. The besieged, on the contrary, had recovered their spirits. Their troops were considerably increased; they daily got new allies; and even sent an express as far as Macedonia, to the counterfeit Philip,[888] who pretended to be the son of Perseus, and was then engaged in a war with the Romans; to exhort him to carry it on with vigour, and promising to furnish him with money and ships.
This news occasioned some uneasiness at Rome.[889] The people began to doubt the success of a war, which grew daily more uncertain, and was more important, than had at first been imagined. As much as they were dissatisfied with the dilatoriness of the generals, and exclaimed against their conduct, so much did they unanimously agree in applauding young Scipio, and extolling his rare and uncommon virtues. He was come to Rome, in order to stand candidate for the edileship. The instant he appeared in the assembly, his name, his countenance, his reputation, a general persuasion that he was designed by the gods to end the third Punic war, as the first Scipio, his grandfather by adoption, had terminated the second; these several circumstances made a very strong impression on the people, and though it was contrary to law, and therefore opposed by the ancient men, instead of the edileship which
A.M. 3858. A. Rom. 602.
he sued for, the people, disregarding for once the laws, conferred the consulship upon him, and assigned him Africa for his province, without casting lots for the provinces, as usual, and as Drusus his colleague demanded.
As soon as Scipio had completed his recruits, he set out for Sicily, and arrived soon after in Utica.[890] He came very seasonably for Mancinus, Piso's lieutenant, who had rashly fixed himself in a post where he was surrounded by the enemy; and would have been cut to pieces that very morning, had not the new consul, who, on his arrival, heard of the danger he was in, reembarked his troops in the night, and sailed with the utmost speed to his assistance.
Scipio's first care, after his arrival, was to revive discipline among the troops, which he found had been entirely neglected.[891] There was not the least regularity, subordination, or obedience. Nothing was attended to but rapine, feasting, and diversions. He drove from the camp all useless persons, settled the quality of the provisions he would have brought in by the sutlers, and allowed of none but what were plain and fit for soldiers, studiously banishing all dainties and luxuries.
After he had made these regulations, which cost him but little time and pains, because he himself first set the example, he was persuaded that those under him were soldiers, and thereupon he prepared to carry on the siege with vigour. Having ordered his troops to provide themselves with axes, levers, and scaling-ladders, he led them in the dead of the night, and without the least noise, to a district of the city, called Megara; when ordering them to give a sudden and general shout, he attacked it with great vigour. The enemy, who did not expect to be attacked in the night, were at first in the utmost terror; however, they defended themselves so courageously, that Scipio could not scale the walls. But perceiving a tower that was forsaken, and which stood without the city, very near the walls, he detached thither a party of intrepid and resolute soldiers, who, by the help of pontons,[892] got from the tower on the walls, and from thence into Megara, the gates of which they broke down. Scipio entered it immediately after, and drove the enemies out of that post; who, terrified at this unexpected assault, and imagining that the whole city was taken, fled into the citadel, whither they were followed even by those forces that were encamped without the [pg 283] city, who abandoned their camp to the Romans, and thought it necessary for them to fly to a place of security.