Hasdrubal on a charge of treason, for having involved his country in these difficulties, and the next was to send a solemn embassy to Rome, to
acknowledge the fault of which their nation had been guilty, to offer to surrender Hasdrubal into their hands, as the principal author of the deed, and to ask what further satisfaction the Romans demanded.
Their mission fruitless.
In the mean time, before these messengers arrived, the Romans had been deliberating what to do. The strongest party were in favor of urging on the
quarrel with Carthage and declaring war. They had not, however, come to any positive decision. They received the deputation, therefore, very coolly, and made them no direct reply. As to the satisfaction which the Carthaginians ought to render to the Romans for having made war upon their ally contrary to the solemn
covenants of the treaty, they said that that was a question for the Carthaginians themselves to consider. They had nothing at present to say upon the subject. The deputies returned to Carthage with this reply, which, of course, produced great uneasiness and anxiety.
Another embassy.
The Carthaginians were more and more desirous now to do every thing in their
power to avert the threatened danger of Roman hostility. They sent a new embassy to Rome, with still more humble professions than before. The embassy
set sail from Carthage with very little hope, however, of accomplishing the object of their mission. They were authorized, nevertheless, to make the most unlimited concessions, and to submit to any conditions whatever to avert the calamity of another war.
The Romans declare war.
But the Romans had been furnished with a pretext for commencing hostilities again, and there was a very strong party among them now who were determined
to avail themselves of this opportunity to extinguish entirely the Carthaginian power. War had, accordingly, been declared by the Roman senate very soon after
the first embassy had returned, a fleet and army had been raised and equipped,
and the expedition had sailed. When, therefore, the embassy arrived in Rome, they found that the war, which it was the object of their mission to avert, had been declared.
Negotiations for peace.
The Romans demand hostages.
The Romans, however, gave them audience. The embassadors expressed their willingness to submit to any terms that the senate might propose for arresting the war. The senate replied that they were willing to make a treaty with the Carthaginians, on condition that the latter were to surrender themselves entirely to the Roman power, and bind themselves to obey such orders as the consuls, on
their arrival in Africa with the army, should issue; the Romans, on their part, guarantying that they should continue in the enjoyment of their liberty, of their
territorial possessions, and of their laws. As proof, however, of the Carthaginian honesty of purpose in making the treaty, and security for their future submission, they were required to give up to the Romans three hundred hostages. These hostages were to be young persons from the first families in Carthage, the sons
of the men who were most prominent in society there, and whose influence might be supposed to control the action of the nation.
The embassadors could not but consider these as very onerous terms. They did
not know what orders the consuls would give them on their arrival in Africa, and they were required to put the commonwealth wholly into their power. Besides, in
the guarantee which the Romans offered them, their territories and their laws were to be protected, but nothing was said of their cities, their ships, or their arms and munitions of war. The agreement there, if executed, would put the Carthaginian commonwealth wholly at the mercy of their masters, in respect to
all those things which were in those days most valuable to a nation as elements
of power. Still, the embassadors had been instructed to make peace with the Romans on any terms, and they accordingly acceded to these, though with great
reluctance. They were especially averse to the agreement in respect to the hostages.
Cruelty of the hostage system.
This system, which prevailed universally in ancient times, of having the government of one nation surrender the children of the most distinguished citizens to that of another, as security for the fulfillment of its treaty stipulations, was a very cruel hardship to those who had to suffer the separation; but it would seem that there was no other security strong enough to hold such lawless powers
as governments were in those days, to their word. Stern and rough as the men of
those warlike nations often were, mothers were the same then as now, and they
suffered quite as keenly in seeing their children sent away from them, to pine in a foreign land, in hopeless exile, for many years; in danger, too, continually, of the most cruel treatment, and even of death itself, to revenge some alleged governmental wrong.
Return of the embassadors.
Consternation in Carthage.
Of course, the embassadors knew, when they returned to Carthage with these terms, that they were bringing heavy tidings. The news, in fact, when it came, threw the community into the most extreme distress. It is said that the whole city
was filled with cries and lamentations. The mothers, who felt that they were about to be bereaved, beat their breasts, and tore their hair, and manifested by every other sign their extreme and unmitigated woe. They begged and entreated
their husbands and fathers not to consent to such cruel and intolerable conditions. They could not, and they would not give up their children.
Its deplorable condition.
The husbands and the fathers, however, felt compelled to resist all these entreaties. They could not now undertake to resist the Roman will. Their army had been well-nigh destroyed in the battle with Masinissa; their city was consequently defenseless, and the Roman fleet had already reached its African port, and the troops were landed. There was no possible way, it appeared, of saving themselves and their city from absolute destruction, but entire submission to the terms which their stern conquerors had imposed upon them.
The hostages were required to be sent, within thirty days, to the island of Sicily, to a port on the western extremity of the island, called Lilybæum. Lilybæum was
