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There was, it seems, a certain oracle which ends with this verse: "Libyssa's earth shall cover Hannibal." Now Hannibal himself took this to mean Libya, and that he should be buried at Carthage; but in Bithynia there is a shingly tract by the seashore near which is a large village named Libyssa, in which Hannibal was living.
He interpreted this to be meant of the African Libya, and that he should be buried in Carthage; as if he might yet expect to return and end his life there. But there is a sandy place in Bithynia, bordering on the sea, and near it a little village called Libyssa.
Other crypts were discovered, but these had evidently been spoliated. Before quitting these mausoleums and their exquisite possessions of pleureuses, geniuses, Sibyls, and the rest, it may be worth while to remind the reader that, according to the most learned of the Romans, there were ten Sibyls, viz.: 1. Persica, 2. Libyssa, 3. Delphica, 4. Cumaea, 5. Erythraea, 6. Samia, 7.
At last, seeing that he was in danger of being delivered up to the Romans, in despair he took his own life at Libyssa, in the year 182 or 181.
Finding the avenues to his house secured by the king's guards, the great Carthaginian took poison, which he is said to have long carried with him in a ring, in readiness for such an emergency. He died at Libyssa, on the eastern shore of the sea of Marmora, in his sixty-fourth year, as closely as we know. In the same year, 183 B.C., died his great and successful antagonist, Scipio Africanus.