Aemilius Paulus

And when at last it was found hidden among great heaps of armour and fallen bodies, they were filled with exceeding joy, and raising songs of triumph fell yet more impetuously upon those of the enemy who still held together.

Finally, the three thousand picked men of the Macedonians, who remained in order and kept on fighting, were all cut to pieces; and of the rest, who took to flight, the slaughter was great, so that the plain and the lower slopes of the hills were covered with dead bodies, and the waters of the river Leucus were still mingled with blood when the Romans crossed it on the day after the battle.

For it is said that over twenty-five thousand of their enemies were slain; while of the Romans there fell, according to Poseidonius, a hundred, according to Nasica, eighty.

And this greatest of all struggles was most speedily decided; for the Romans began fighting at three o’clock in the afternoon, and were victorious within an hour; the rest of the day they spent in the pursuit, which they kept up for as many as a hundred and twenty furlongs, so that it was already late in the evening when they returned.

All the rest were met by their servants with torches and conducted with joyful shouts to their tents, which were ablaze with light and adorned with wreaths of ivy and laurel; but Aemilius their general was a prey to great sorrow.

For of the two sons who were serving under him, the younger was nowhere to be found, and Aemilius loved him especially, and saw that he was by nature more prone to excellence than any of his brothers.

But he was of a passionate and ambitious spirit, and was still hardly more than a boy in years, and his father concluded that he had certainly perished, when, for lack of experience, he had become entangled among the enemy as they fought.

The whole army learned of the distress and anguish of their general, and springing up from their suppers, ran about with torches, many to the tent of Aemilius, and many in front of the ramparts, searching among the numerous dead bodies.

Dejection reigned in the camp, and the plain was filled with the cries of men calling out the name of Scipio. For from the very outset he had been admired by everybody, since, beyond any other one of his family, he had a nature adapted for leadership in war and public service.

Well, then, when it was already late and he was almost despaired of, he came in from the pursuit with two or three comrades, covered with the blood of the enemies he had slain, having been, like a young hound of noble breed, carried away by the uncontrollable pleasure of the victory.

This was that Scipio who, in after times,[*](In 146 and 133 B.C.) destroyed Carthage and Numantia, and became by far the most noble and influential Roman of his day.