quarrelled with a neighbour, Eumenes, King of Pergamum, and Eumenes was a friend of Rome. Rome sent to Prusias to demand the person of his guest, and the veteran--he was now in his sixty-fifth year--took poison. He carried the drug about with him in a ring, so the story runs, to be used in such an emergency. X THE BLOTTING OUT OF CARTHAGE For fifty years after the conclusion of the Peace of Hannibal, as the treaty described in my last chapter came to be called, Carthage and Rome continued to live on uneasy terms of mutual suspicion. Rome dreaded the rapid recovery in power and wealth of her old enemy; Carthage feared, and doubtless with more reason, the inextinguishable hatred of the State which she had once brought so near to destruction. The conditions imposed after Zama had not prevented the accumulation of wealth in the vanquished city. Her commerce had been left her untouched; commerce meant a full treasury, and it was with her treasury that Carthage had always made war. There were two men who had much to do with embittering this quarrel, though neither of them lived to see the end which they desired. Of one of these two, Masinissa, I have already had occasion to speak. He was the son of a Numidian king, and in early life had been an energetic ally of Carthage. He served in the Spanish campaigns of Hasdrubal (brother of Hannibal) with a strong contingent of Numidian horsemen. Even the defeat of the Metaurus did not shake his loyalty. In the following year, however, he began to think of changing sides, and he finally came to an agreement with Scipio that he would do his best to help the Roman cause, when the war should have been transferred to Africa. He had strong personal motives for this change. He had been deprived of the succession to his father's kingdom by the action of Syphax, a neighbouring potentate who was in close alliance with Carthage, and he had also seen his promised wife, Sophonisba (daughter of Hasdrubal Gisco), given to the same rival. Such then were the causes which made him a prominent actor in the battle of Zama. The Peace of Hannibal left Masinissa in undisputed possession of his hereditary dominions, increased by the kingdom of Syphax. For the next fifty years he was perpetually on the watch to aggrandise himself at the expense of Carthage. Again and again he seized some desirable region belonging to that State, was met with protests which he uniformly disregarded, and was sustained in his usurpation by Rome, whose commissioners were secretly instructed, we are told, to favour so useful an ally. In 150 B.C. these continual feuds ended in open war. Masinissa, who was still vigorous and active, though he had reached his eighty-eighth year, defeated the Carthaginians in a pitched battle. Two years afterwards he died.