A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

11. A Hasdrubal, who must be distinct from the preceding, is mentioned by Livy and Appian as commanding the Carthaginian fleet in Africa in B. C. 203. According to the Roman accounts he was guilty of a flagrant violation of the law of nations by attacking the quinquereme in which the ambassadors sent by Scipio were returning to his camp: they, however, made their escape to the land. He had previously been engaged in an attack upon the Roman squadron under Cn. Octavius, which, together with a large fleet of transports, had been wrecked on the coast near Carthage. (Liv. 30.24, 25; Appian, App. Pun. 34.) It is probable that he is the same who had been sent to Italy, at an earlier period of the same year, to urge the return of Hannibal to Africa. (Id. Annib. 58.)