off, and now began to make offers of peace, which, however, Masinissa haughtily rejected. The latter would not consent to let go the army thus hemmed in, which hunger and distress had driven to extremity, until the Carthaginians gave hostages as pledges for the peace being kept, undertook to pay five thousand talents within fifty years, and recognised his encroachments upon them. When the defenceless and disarmed soldiers were now marching off, Gulussa, Masinissa’s youngest son, fell upon them, and cut most of them to pieces. Masinissa had the hostages, and so he still demanded that the peace should be kept, and even complained to the Romans of the Carthaginians not being disposed to abide by it. The Romans had already for some time turned their attention again to Carthage, very likely on account of the flourishing state of its trade, and because they had been told that stores of timber for building ships were heaped up in the arsenals: for though indeed this had been by no means forbidden in the treaties, the Carthaginians were thus able at a moment’s warning to build a fleet. Rome now called for the surrender or the destruction of this timber; and while the debates on the subject were going on, old Cato incessantly urged in the senate, that Carthage should be destroyed. The government of the world had given the senate an importance which made up for the loss of power at home from the growth of the democratic principle, and the senators felt more and more like kings. Now the senate, with regard to Carthage, was divided between two opinions,--the one of blind dogged hatred, that Carthage should be destroyed, at the bottom of which was the consciousness that Rome was the object of universal hatred; the other, that of P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica, which held on the other hand that Carthage was a godsend, as nothing else could keep Rome well balanced. Nasica seems to have been fully aware of the actual condition of the state, and so were many others; but with regard to the remedy, opinions were divided. Some thought that there was no help for it, and that therefore one ought to go ahead, and make the most of a short life. Cato was one of these. Others, like Nasica, believed that the evil might at least be checked by superficial means, as a thorough reform could not perhaps be carried out. A small party, which afterwards came forward with Tib. Gracchus at its head, tried to root out the disease by desperate remedies. Whether this justice to Carthage in Nasica sprang indeed from a love of righteousness, is more than we can tell; yet it may be that the son of him who was called “the Best” wished to behave uprightly: certain it is that he was powerless, and the destruction of Carthage was decreed. When Masinissa had beaten the Carthaginians, and it was fancied that the end might be easily gained, the Romans began to reproach the Carthaginians for that war with Masinissa, as if it had been a breach of the treaty, when in