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[2] Scipio took possession of the enemy's camp, and after giving up to the soldiers all the booty except free persons, in listing the captives found ten thousand foot-soldiers and two thousand horsemen. Of these he sent all
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the Spaniards to their homes without ransom; the Africans he ordered the quaestor to sell.
[3] Then the crowd of Spaniards, both those previously surrendered and those captured the day before, flocked round him and with great unanimity hailed him as king.
[4] Thereupon Scipio, after silence had been secured by a herald, said that his highest title was that of general-in-command; with that his soldiers had addressed him;
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the title of a king, elsewhere in high honour, was not to be endured at Rome.
[5] As for his having the spirit of a king, if they thought
that was the noblest thing in the nature of man, let it be their silent verdict; from the use of the word let them refrain.
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[6] Even the barbarians appreciated the magnanimity of a man who from so lofty a height scorned a title by whose fascination the rest of mortals were dazed.
[7] Then gifts were apportioned to the princes and chieftains of the Spaniards, and out of the large number of captured horses he ordered Indibilis to select three hundred of his own choosing.
[8] While the quaestor at the general's command was selling the Africans, and had heard that a well-grown boy of conspicuous beauty among them was of royal race, he sent him to Scipio.
[9] When Scipio asked him who he was and from what region, and why at that age he was in the camp, he said he was a Numidian; that his people called him Massiva; that, left an orphan by his father, he had been brought up in the house of his maternal grandfather Gala, king of the
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Numidians; that with his uncle Masinissa, who had recently come with his cavalry to the assistance of the Carthaginians, he had crossed over into Spain; forbidden by Masinissa on account of his age, he had never before gone into battle.
[10] On the day they had fought with the Romans, without his uncle's knowledge, he said, he had secretly taken arms and a horse and gone out into the battle-line; there, thrown headforemost by a fall of his horse, he had been captured by the Romans.
[11] Scipio, after ordering that the Numidian should be guarded, completed such duties as he had to perform from the platform; and then, having returned to headquarters, summoned him and asked whether he would like to return to Masinissa.
[12] When he shed tears of joy and said that he was indeed eager to do so, Scipio thereupon presented the boy with a gold ring, a tunic with a broad stripe, and a Spanish cloak, a golden brooch and a horse with his equipment; and ordering horsemen to escort him as far as he desired, Scipio sent him away.
Ab urbe condita. Titus Livius (Livy). Benjamin Oliver Foster, Ph.D. (Editor), Frank Gardener Moore (Editor), Evan T. Sage, Ph.D. (Editor), Alfred C. Schlesinger, Ph.D. (Editor). Medford, MA. .
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