After some difficulty and opposition in the Carthaginian senate, peace was agreed upon. The terms were exceedingly hard. They were these:--that the Carthaginians should continue free and preserve their laws, territories, and the cities they possessed in Africa during the war. That they should deliver up to the Romans all deserters, slaves, and captives belonging to them; all their ships, except ten triremes; all their tame elephants; and that they should not train up any more for war. That they should not make war out of Africa, nor even in that country, without obtaining leave for that purpose of the Roman people; should restore to Masinissa all they had dispossessed either him or his ancestors of; should furnish money and corn to the Roman auxiliaries, till their ambassadors should be returned from Rome; should pay to the Romans ten thousand Euboic talents[177] of silver in fifty annual payments, and give one hundred hostages, who should be nominated by Scipio. These were hard terms indeed; and when Scipio burnt all the ships, to the amount of five hundred in the harbour of Carthage, these ships which had been the cause of all the power of Carthage, Carthage appeared to its inhabitants as if it never could recover; nor, indeed, did it ever do so. The blow was fatal. This war lasted seventeen years: the peace which succeeded, fifty[178]. Twenty-five years after it was concluded, Hannibal poisoned himself at the court of Prusias. We must now pass to the war, which soon after occurred between the Carthaginians and Masinissa, king of Numidia. In this war the Carthaginians were, in the end, worsted. Scipio the younger, who afterwards destroyed Carthage, was present at the battle. He had been sent by Lucullus, who commanded in Spain, to Masinissa to desire some elephants. During the whole engagement, he is represented as standing upon a neighbouring hill; and was greatly surprised to see Masinissa, then eighty-eight years of age, mounted, agreeably to the custom of his country, on a horse without a saddle, flying from rank to rank like a young officer, and sustaining the most arduous toils. The fight was very obstinate, and continued all day; but at last the Carthaginians gave way, and Masinissa afterwards turned their camp into a blockade, so that no provisions could reach them. A famine ensued, and then the plague. They were, in consequence, reduced to agreeing to the king's terms, which were no other than these:--to deliver up all deserters; to pay five thousands talents of silver in fifty years, and restore all exiles. They were, also, made to suffer the ignominy of passing under the yoke; and dismissed with only one suit of clothes for each. Nor did their misfortunes terminate here. Gulussa, the son of Masinissa, whom the Carthaginians had treated in a disrespectful manner, intercepted them with a body of cavalry. They could neither resist nor escape. The consequence of which was, that out of fifty-eight thousand men only a