enemy planned to attack these legions, he called an assembly of the soldiers and ordered them to get ready for battle, and purposely to exercise a careless supervision over their prisoners. As a result, a few of the latter escaped and reported to their people that battle was imminent. The enemy, to avoid dividing their strength when expecting battle, abandoned their plan of attacking those for whom they were lying in wait, so that the legions arrived without hindrance and in perfect safety at the camp of Didius.[1]
In the Punic War certain cities had resolved to revolt from the Romans to the Carthaginians, but wishing, before they revolted, to recover the hostages they had given, they pretended that an uprising had broken out among their neighbours which Roman commissioners ought to come and suppress. When the Romans sent these envoys, the cities detained them as counter-pledges, and refused to restore them until they themselves recovered their own hostages.
After the defeat of the Carthaginians, King Antiochus sheltered Hannibal and utilized his counsel against the Romans. When Roman envoys were sent to Antiochus, they held frequent conferences with Hannibal, and thus, caused him to become an object of suspicion to the king, to whom he was otherwise most agreeable and useful, in consequence of his cleverness and experience in war.[2]
When Quintus Metellus was waging war against Jugurtha, he bribed the envoys sent him to betray the king into his hands. When other envoys came, he did the same; and with a third embassy he adopted the same policy. But his efforts to take
- ↑ 98–93 B.C. In Spain.
- ↑ 192 B.C. Cf. Livy xxxv. 14; Nep. Hann. 2.
