Jugurtha prisoner met with small success, for Metellus wished the king to be delivered into his hands alive. And yet he accomplished a great deal, for when his letters addressed to the friends of the king were intercepted, the king punished all these men, and, being thus deprived of advisers, was unable to secure any friends for the future.[1]
Gaius Caesar on one occasion caught a soldier who had gone to procure water, and learned from him that Afranius and Petreius planned to break camp that night. In order to hamper the plans of the enemy, and yet not cause alarm to his own troops, Caesar early in the evening gave orders to sound the signal for breaking camp, and commanded mules to be driven past the camp of the enemy with noise and shouting. Thinking that Caesar was breaking camp, his adversaries stayed where they were, precisely as Caesar desired.[2]
When, on one occasion, reinforcements and provisions were on the way to Hannibal, Scipio, wishing to intercept these, sent ahead Minucius Thermus, and arranged to come himself to lend his support.[3]
When the Africans were planning to cross over to Sicily in vast numbers in order to attack Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, the latter constructed strongholds in many places and commanded their defenders to surrender them at the coming of the enemy, and then, when they retired, to return secretly to Syracuse. The Africans were forced to occupy the captured strongholds with garrisons, whereupon Dionysius, having reduced the army of his opponents to the scanty number which he desired, and being now approximately on an equality, attacked and
