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The Moors and Numidians, seeing that even their means of defence had failed them, took to flight: but only to appear on another day with their army raised to ninety thousand and to repeat the attempt to surround the Roman host. This last effort ended in a signal victory for Marius. The forces of the two kings were not only defeated but almost destroyed.
Seeing the Numidians to be strong in numbers, and more effective and formidable to troops that had once been forced from their ground, he left the pursuit to them; while he himself hastened to the part of the field where the infantry were engaged, and brought his men up to support the Libyans.
It was almost an impracticable thing to do; and yet it must be achieved. No precedent existed as a guide. Hannibal with his elephants, Numidians, and Gauls; Charlemagne with his Franks, had no such obstacles to surmount. During the campaign in Italy in 1796, the army had not crossed the Alps, but turned them, descending from Nice to Cerasco by the Corniche road.
The appearance of Fabius scared and drove back the Numidians, who were slaughtering the fugitives in the plain; next he bore against those who were attacking the Roman rear, slaying all he met, though most of them, before they were cut off and treated as they had treated the Romans, betook themselves to flight.
Massinissa had sent back the men whom the Carthaginians had banished, under the escort of his son Gulussa, to the city. When the Carthaginians closed their gates against them and killed also some of the Numidians returning home, Massinissa put his troops in motion, and the patriot party in Carthage also prepared for the struggle.
A part of his infantry, with all the cavalry, having attacked them on their march on the first day of the Saturnalia, routed the Numidians with little opposition; and as every way by which they could escape in flight was blocked up, for the cavalry surrounded them on all sides, fifteen thousand men were slain, twelve hundred were taken alive, with fifteen hundred Numidian horses, and seventy-two military standards.
With these, after sending a messenger before him to his own and his father's friends, he arrived on the frontiers of the kingdom, when about five hundred Numidians came to join him.
Two richly armed riders parted from the group and dashed off: Maharbal, light and slender, bending far over his horse's neck, rode headlong in Numidian fashion to his Numidians; Hasdrubal, erect and dignified, galloped to head the Gaulish and Spanish horse upon the banks of Aufidus; trumpets, drums, cymbals, crashed out in mad, barbaric discords; and, with their horse-head standards tossing amid the forest of spears, the Carthaginian line drove forward to the attack.
He ordered the Numidians to be punished, but took no further thought about collecting or sending away the relics of Marcellus, concluding that some god had decreed the strange death and strange lack of burial which had befallen him.
The hope of accomplishing this object beamed forth from a very trifling circumstance. The war was carried on in Bruttium rather in a predatory than a regular manner, the Numidians having set the example, and the Bruttians falling in with that practice, not more in consequence of their connexion with the Carthaginians, than from their natural inclination.
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