This text is part of:
After making these arrangements he summoned a council of war and ordered the spies to report what they had discovered, and at the same time requested Masinissa who knew all about the enemy to give the council any information he could. [2] He then laid before them his own plan of operations for the coming night and directed the tribunes to lead the troops out of camp as soon as the trumpets sounded on the break-up of the council. [3] In obedience to his order the march out began at sunset. About the first watch the column of march was deployed into line of battle. [4] After advancing in this order at an easy pace for seven miles they reached the hostile camp about midnight. [5] Scipio assigned a portion of his force, including Masinissa and his Numidians, to Laelius with instructions to attack Syphax and fire his camp. Then he took Laelius and Masinissa apart and appealed to them each separately to [6??] make up by extra care and diligence for the confusion inseparable from a night attack. [7] He told them that he should attack Hasdrubal and the Carthaginian camp, but would wait until he saw the king's camp on fire. He had not to wait long, for when the fire was cast on the nearest huts it very soon caught the next ones and then running along in all directions spread over the whole camp. [8] Such an extensive fire breaking out at night naturally produced alarm and confusion, but Syphax's men thinking it was due to accident and not to the enemy rushed out without arms to try and extinguish it. [9] They found themselves at once confronted by an armed foe, mainly Numidians whom Masinissa, thoroughly acquainted with the arrangement of the camp, had posted in places where they could block all the avenues. [10] Some were caught by the flames, whilst half asleep in their beds, numbers who had fled precipitately, scrambling over one another were trampled to death in the camp gates.
Livy. History of Rome. English Translation by. Rev. Canon Roberts. New York, New York. E. P. Dutton and Co. 1912. 1. Livy. History of Rome. English Translation. Rev. Canon Roberts. New York, New York. E. P. Dutton and Co. 1912. 2.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.