his fate. The Carthaginians came on, and, on seeing the wounded man, they thrust their spears into his body, one after another, as they passed, until his limbs ceased to quiver. As for the other consul, Varro, he escaped with his life.
Attended by about seventy horsemen, he made his way to a fortified town not very remote from the battle-field, where he halted with his horsemen, and determined that he would attempt to rally there the remains of the army.
Condition of the battle-field.
The Carthaginians, when they found the victory complete, abandoned the pursuit
of the enemy, returned to their camp, spent some hours in feasting and rejoicing, and then laid down to sleep. They were, of course, well exhausted by the intense exertions of the day. On the field where the battle had been fought, the wounded lay all night mingled with the dead, filling the air with cries and groans, and writhing in their agony.
The wounded and dying.
The Roman and Carthaginian soldier.
Early the next morning the Carthaginians came back to the field to plunder the
dead bodies of the Romans. The whole field presented a most shocking spectacle
to the view. The bodies of horses and men lay mingled in dreadful confusion, as
they had fallen, some dead, others still alive, the men moaning, crying for water, and feebly struggling from time to time to disentangle themselves from the heaps of carcasses under which they were buried. The deadly and inextinguishable hate
which the Carthaginians felt for their foes not having been appeased by the slaughter of forty thousand of them, they beat down and stabbed these wretched
lingerers wherever they found them, as a sort of morning pastime after the severer labors of the preceding day. This slaughter, however, could hardly be considered a cruelty to the wretched victims of it, for many of them bared their breasts to their assailants, and begged for the blow which was to put an end to
their pain. In exploring the field, one Carthaginian soldier was found still alive, but imprisoned by the dead body of his Roman enemy lying upon him. The Carthaginian's face and ears were shockingly mangled. The Roman, having fallen upon him when both were mortally wounded, had continued the combat with his teeth when he could no longer use his weapon, and had died at last, binding down his exhausted enemy with his own dead body.
Immense plunder.
The Carthaginians secured a vast amount of plunder. The Roman army was full
of officers and soldiers from the aristocratic ranks of society, and their arms and their dress were very valuable. The Carthaginians obtained some bushels of gold
rings from their fingers, which Hannibal sent to Carthage as a trophy of his victory.
CHAPTER X.
SCIPIO.
B.C. 215-201
Reason of Hannibal's success.
The Scipios.
The true reason why Hannibal could not be arrested in his triumphant career seems not to have been because the Romans did not pursue the right kind of policy toward him, but because, thus far, they had no general who was his equal.
Whoever was sent against him soon proved to be his inferior. Hannibal could out-maneuver them all in stratagem, and could conquer them on the field. There
was, however, now destined to appear a man capable of coping with Hannibal. It
was young Scipio, the one who saved the life of his father at the battle of Ticinus. This Scipio, though the son of Hannibal's first great antagonist of that name, is commonly called, in history, the elder Scipio; for there was another of his name after him, who was greatly celebrated for his wars against the Carthaginians in Africa. These last two received from the Roman people the surname of Africanus, in honor of their African victories, and the one who now
comes upon the stage was called Scipio Africanus the elder, or sometimes simply the elder Scipio. The deeds of the Scipio who attempted to stop Hannibal
at the Rhone and upon the Po were so wholly eclipsed by his son, and by the other Scipio who followed him, that the former is left out of view and forgotten in designating and distinguishing the others.
Fragments of the Roman army.
Scipio elected commander.
Our present Scipio first appears upon the stage, in the exercise of military command, after the battle of Cannæ. He was a subordinate officer and on the day
following the battle he found himself at a place called Canusium, which was at a short distance from Cannæ, on the way toward Rome, with a number of other officers of his own rank, and with broken masses and detachments of the army
coming in from time to time, faint, exhausted, and in despair. The rumor was that both consuls were killed. These fragments of the army had, therefore, no one to
command them. The officers met together, and unanimously agreed to make
Scipio their commander in the emergency, until some superior officer should arrive, or they should get orders from Rome.
Scipio's energy.
An incident here occurred which showed, in a striking point of view, the boldness and energy of the young Scipio's character. At the very meeting in which he was placed in command, and when they were overwhelmed with
perplexity and care, an officer came in, and reported that in another part of the camp there was an assembly of officers and young men of rank, headed by a certain Metellus, who had decided to give up the cause of their country in despair, and that they were making arrangements to proceed immediately to the
sea-coast, obtain ships, and sail away to seek a new home in some foreign lands, considering their cause in Italy as utterly lost and ruined. The officer proposed that they should call a council and deliberate what was best to do.
