37.
On the following day the envoys were recalled and with repeated upbraiding for their treachery
1 were advised that, being taught at last by so many disasters, they should believe that the gods and an oath mean something.
[
2]
Whereupon the peace terms were stated to them: they were to live as free men under their own laws; to hold the cities and territories
2 which they had held before the war, with the same boundaries; and the Roman was on that day to make an end of devastation.
[
3]
They were to deliver all deserters and runaway slaves and captives to the Romans, and to surrender their war-ships except ten triremes, and the trained elephants
3 in their possession, and not to train
[p. 507]others;
[
4]
to wage war neither in Africa nor outside of
4 Africa without consent of the Roman people.
[
5]
They were to make restitution to Masinissa and frame a treaty with him; to furnish grain and pay to the auxiliaries
5 until the envoys should return from Rome; to pay ten thousand silver talents,
6 divided into equal payments for fifty years; to give a hundred hostages selected by Scipio, not younger than fourteen nor older than thirty years.
[
6]
He would grant an armistice, he said, provided the transports captured during the previous armistice and whatever was on board the ships should be returned; otherwise there would be no armistice nor any hope of a peace.
[
7]
Such terms the envoys were bidden to carry home, and as they announced them in the assembly Gisgo
7 came forward to oppose the peace.
[
8]
While the multitude was listening, equally incapable of keeping a peace and of carrying on a war, Hannibal, indignant that such things should be said and heard at so critical a moment, seized Gisgo and with his own hand dragged him down from the platform.
[
9]
When this novelty for a free state called forth protests from the people, the man of arms, confounded by freedom in the city, said “At nine years of age I left you, and after thirty-six years I have returned. With the soldier's arts, in which from boyhood first my own lot, and then a public exigency gave me training, I may pass as well acquainted. In the rights, laws, usages of the city and the marketplace it is you who should train me.”
[
10]
Having apologized for his ignorance, he discoursed at length
[p. 509]upon the peace, showing how far from unjust it was
8 and how inevitable.
9
[
11]
The most troublesome point of all was that of the ships captured during the armistice nothing was to be seen except the ships themselves, and investigation was not easy since the accused were opponents of the peace.
[
12]
It was decided that the ships should be returned and the men at all costs traced; that appraisal of whatever else was lacking be committed to Scipio, and that thus the Carthaginians should pay the amount in cash.
[
13]
—There are some historians
10 who relate that Hannibal leaving the battle made his way to the sea and then on a ship prepared for him at once sailed to King Antiochus; and that when Scipio demanded above all things that Hannibal be surrendered to him, the answer was that Hannibal was not in Africa.