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With these the Romans fought successfully, not far from the city Clupea, and after taking eighteen and putting the rest to flight, returned to Lilybaeum with a great deal of booty gained both by land and sea. The same summer also Philip gave assistance to the suppliant Achaeans.
A storm arose, which wrecked one hundred and fifty ships—a disaster equal to the one which it suffered two years before, when two-thirds of the large fleet which was sent to relieve the two thousand troops at Clupea was destroyed by a similar storm.
When the terrible news reached Rome, the first care of the Romans was naturally directed to the saving of the force shut up in Clupea.
The same summer Marcus Valerius crossed over from Sicily into Africa with a fleet of a hundred ships, and making a descent near the city Clupea, devastated the country to a wide extent, scarcely meeting with a single person in arms.
Whether it was that he did not anticipate the storm which was gathering over his head, or that a sense of military honour prohibited him from doing what his position demanded instead of renouncing a siege which he was not in a condition even to attempt, and shutting himself up in the stronghold of Clupea, he remained with a handful of men before the walls of the hostile capital, neglecting even to secure his line of retreat to the naval camp, and neglecting to provide himself with what above all he wanted, and what might have been so easily obtained through negotiation with the revolted Numidian tribes a good light cavalry.
When the terrible news reached Rome, the first care of the Romans was naturally directed to the saving of the force shut up in Clupea.
The Romans also resumed the war in Sicily; the annihilation of their invading army had, as the voluntary evacuation of Clupea shows, at once restored ascendency in the senate to the party which was opposed to the war in Africa and was content with the gradual subjugation of the islands.
Lucius Caesar, the son, who was waiting his arrival near Clupea with ten ships which had been taken near Utica in a war with the pirates, and which Publius Attius had had repaired for this war, frightened at the number of our ships, fled the sea, and running his three-decked covered galley on the nearest shore, left her there and made his escape by land to Adrumetum.
The Romans also resumed the war in Sicily; the annihilation of their invading army had, as the voluntary evacuation of Clupea shows, at once restored ascendency in the senate to the party which was opposed to the war in Africa and was content with the gradual subjugation of the islands.
That the senate, according to the strength of the contending parties within it, should leap from one system of conducting the war to another, and perpetrate errors so incredible as the evacuation of Clupea and the repeated dismantling of the fleet; that the general of one year should lay siege to Sicilian towns, and his successor, instead of compelling them to surrender, should pillage the African coast or think proper to risk a naval battle; and that at any rate the supreme command should by law change hands every year all these anomalies could not be done away without stirring constitutional questions the solution of which was more difficult than the building of a fleet, but as little could their retention be reconciled with the requirements of such a war.
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