Then all the Senators,[236] uttering a cry of horror, remained as though paralysed by the shock.The popular fury. But the report having quickly spread among the people, the general indignation at once found expression. Some made an attack on the envoys, as the guilty authors of their misfortunes, while others wreaked their wrath upon all Italians caught within the city, and others rushed to the town gates....
The Carthaginians determine to resist, and the consuls, who had not hurried themselves, because they believed that resistance from an unarmed populace was impossible, found, when they approached Carthage, that it was prepared to offer a vigorous resistance. The scene which followed the announcement of the Consul’s orders, and the incidents of the siege, are chiefly known to us from Appian, Pun. 91 sq. Livy, Ep. 49. Scipio was serving as military Tribune, B.C. 149-148; consul, B.C. 147.
[8.] Hamilcar Phameas[237] was the general of the Carthaginians, a man in the very prime of lifeHamilcar Phameas, the commander of the Punic cavalry. Appian, Pun. 100. and of great physical strength. What is of the utmost importance too for service in the field, he was an excellent and bold horseman....
When he saw the advanced guard, Phameas, though not at all deficient in courage, avoided coming to close quarters with Scipio: and on one occasion when he had come near his reserves, he got behind the cover of the brow of a hill and halted there a considerable time....
The Roman maniples fled to the top of a hill; and when all had given their opinions, Scipio said, “When men are consulting what measures to take at first, their object should be to avoid disaster rather than to inflict it.”[238]...
It ought not to excite surprise that I am Polybius’s personal knowledge of Scipio. more minute than usual in my account of Scipio and that I give in detail everything which he said....
When Marcius Porcius Cato heard in Rome of the glorious achievements of Scipio he uttered a palinode to his criticisms of him: “What have you heard? He alone has the breath of wisdom in him: the rest are but flitting phantoms.”[239]