The number of the slain was terrible. Twenty thousand Carthaginians were said to have fallen, and almost as many to have been taken prisoner, while the Romans did not lose more than fifteen thousand men.
Hannibal escaped to Carthage, leaving his camp to be seized by the enemy.
CHAPTER LXXII
SCIPIO RECEIVES A TRIUMPH
After the battle of Zama, in 202 B.C., the war was at an end, for the Carthaginians had no longer any army.
They had, indeed, no choice now, save to accept the terms Rome might offer, unless they were prepared to see Carthage itself besieged.
Since submission was inevitable, the Carthaginians resolved to yield with as good a grace as possible. So they decked one of their ships with olive branches, and sent ambassadors on board to sail toward Utica. They hoped that the ambassadors would thus meet Scipio, who was on his way to the town of Tunes.
But the Roman general haughtily refused to receive them until he reached his destination. Then his interview with the suppliants was brief, his answer to their petition for merciful terms, proud.
‘You deserve nothing at our hand but condign punishment’, he told them, ‘yet Rome has determined to treat you with magnanimity, on condition that you receive the terms offered to you.’
The crestfallen ambassadors had no retort to such imperious words, for they knew that they were helpless to resist, however hard the terms might prove. But the conditions, although severe, yet at least still left Carthage a free nation.