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In the coming campaigns against the Germans Sulla served first as legate and afterwards as military tribune in the army of his old commander. But his own conviction of the part which he had played in the Numidian war was expressed in a manner not the less irritating because it gave no reasonable ground for offence.
What! are we so degenerate from our ancestors as tamely to see that coast filled with Numidian and Moorish foes, along which our fathers considered it a disgrace to their government that the Carthaginian fleets should cruise? We, who erewhile, indignant at the storming of Saguntum, appealed not to men only, but to treaties and to gods, behold Hannibal scaling the walls of a Roman colony unmoved.
Young Scipio was then only seventeen years of age, and had gone to his first battle under the eagles of his father, the Consul, Publius Cornelius Scipio. It was an unfortunate battle; the Romans, when exhausted by long resistance to the Spanish horse in Hannibal's army, were taken in flank by the Numidian calvary, and entirely broken.
Certainly the mission with which Jugurtha was soon credited the mission which was perhaps to alter the whole tone of his mind and to concentrate its energies on an unlawful end was one which any Numidian king might have destined for the most favoured of his sons.
He then led three triumphs for Egypt, Pontus, and Africa, the last for the victory over, not Scipio, but king Juba, as it was professed, whose little son was then carried in the triumph, the happiest captive that ever was, who of a barbarian Numidian, came by this means to obtain a place among the most learned historians of Greece.
Not only had discipline ceased and the spoliation of Numidian townships and even of the Roman provincial territory become during the suspension of hostilities the chief business of the Roman soldiery, but not a few officers and soldiers had as well as their generals entered into secret understanding with the enemy.
But here the combat changed its aspect. Saburra was not, as they supposed, destitute of support; on the contrary he was not much more than five miles distant from the Numidian main force.
The consuls marched their army into the territory of Consentia, and devastating the country on all hands, when the troops were loaded with plunder, they were thrown into such confusion by some Bruttians and Numidian spearmen, who attacked them in a narrow defile, that not only the booty but the troops were in danger.
Hannibal now, according to his own statement, numbered not more than 20,000 infantry of whom three-fifths were Libyans and two-fifths Spaniards and 6000 cavalry, part of them doubtless dismounted: the comparatively small loss of the latter proclaimed the excellence of the Numidian cavalry no less than the consideration of the general in making a sparing use of troops so select.
For answer he bade the messengers 'confine their attention to other matters, and leave such things to him, for he would choose for himself the time of fighting, and without more ado he began collecting a number of elephants and all the Numidian horse that had not gone over to Rome with Massinissa.
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