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Marcellus also seeing that an army of Sicilians was assembling from every part of the island, and that the Carthaginian fleet was approaching with a great want of supplies, though inferior in the number of his ships, resolved to prevent Bomilcar from coming to Syracuse, lest, blocked up in the city of his enemies, he should be pressed both by sea and land.
It is not therefore inconsistent with the general control of the sea, or of a decisive part of it, by the Roman fleets, that the Carthaginian admiral Bomilcar in the fourth year of the war, after the stunning defeat of Cannæ, landed four thousand men and a body of elephants in south Italy; nor that in the seventh year, flying from the Roman fleet off Syracuse, he again appeared at Tarentum, then in Hannibal's hands; nor that Hannibal sent despatch vessels to Carthage; nor even that, at last, he withdrew in safety to Africa with his wasted army.
The Carthaginians made a further attempt to save the city from the sea side; but the admiral Bomilcar withdrew, when the Roman fleet offered him battle. Epicydes himself, who commanded in the city, now abandoned it as lost, and made his escape to Agrigentum. Syracuse would gladly have surrendered to the Romans; negotiations had already begun.
The line was continued by the forces which he had placed under the command of Bomilcar. These consisted of the heavier elements of the Numidian army, the elephants of war and the major part of the foot soldiers. It is, however, probable that there was a considerable interval between the end of Jugurtha's and the beginning of Bomilcar's line.
Accordingly, the east wind, which had blown violently for several days, now subsiding, Bomilcar got under sail first, his van seeming to make for the main sea, in order to double the promontory with greater ease; but seeing the Roman ships bearing down upon him, terrified by some unexpected occurrence, it is not known what, he sailed away into the main sea; and sending messengers to Heraclea, to order the transports to return to Africa, he passed along the coast of Sicily and made for Tarentum.
Bomilcar, after he had permitted the Roman force to pass him, slowly left the hill where he had been posted and brought his men into more level ground, while Rutilius was making all speed for the river. Quietly he changed his column into a line of battle stretching across the slope which at this point melted into the plain, while he learnt by constant scouting every movement of the enemy beyond.
This induced Massiva, a grandson of Massinissa living in Rome, to assert before the senate his claims to the vacant Numidian kingdom; upon which Bomilcar, one of the confidants of king Jugurtha, doubtless under his instructions made away with the rival of his master by assassination, and, when he was prosecuted on account of it, escaped with Jugurtha's aid from Rome.
But the danger was too great to permit Jugurtha to relax his efforts through the failure of his friends. He appealed to his own resources, which consisted of the passive obedience of his immediate attendants and the power of his purse. To Bomilcar his most trusted servant he gave the mission of making one final effort with the gold which had already done so much.
This man was Bomilcar, the most trusted general and adviser of Jugurtha trusted all the more perhaps in consequence of the delusion, into which even a Numidian king might fall, that the man who owes his life to another will owe him his life-long service as well.
Nearly about the same time, fifty-five ships of war of the Carthaginians, with Bomilcar as commander of the fleet, put into the great harbour of Syracuse from the sea, and a Roman fleet of thirty quinqueremes landed the first legion at Panormus; and so intent were both the contending powers upon Sicily, that the seat of war might seem to have been removed from Italy.
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