[96] Not long afterward it was reported that Scipio himself was advancing with eight legions of foot, 20,000 horse (of which most were Africans), and a large number of light-armed troops, and thirty elephants; together with King Juba, who had some 30,000 foot-soldiers in addition, raised for this war, and 20,000 Numidian cavalry, besides a large number of spearmen and sixty elephants. Cæsar's army began to be alarmed and a tumult broke out among them on account of the disaster they had already experienced and of the reputation of the forces advancing against them, and especially of the numbers and bravery of the Numidian cavalry. War with elephants, to which they were unaccustomed, also frightened them.1 But Bocchus, another Mauritanian prince, seized Cirta, which was the capital of Juba's kingdom. When this news reached Juba he started for home at once with his army, leaving thirty of his elephants only with Scipio. Thereupon Cæsar's men plucked up courage to such a degree that the fifth legion begged to be pitted against the elephants, and it overcame them valiantly. From that day to the present this legion has borne the figure of an elephant on its standards.
1 "Whenever," says Suetonius, " his (Cæsar's) troops were dispirited by reports of the great force of the enemy, he rallied their courage not by denying the truth of what was said or minimizing the facts but on the contrary by exaggerating every particular. Accordingly, when his troops were in great alarm at the expected arrival of King Juba, he called them together and said, 'I have to inform you that in a very few days the king will be here with ten legions, 30,000 horse, 100,000 light-armed foot, and 300 elephants. Let none of you therefore presume to make any further inquiry or indulge in conjectures, but take my word for what I tell you, which I have from undoubted intelligence; otherwise I shall put them aboard an old crazy vessel and leave them exposed to the mercy of the winds to be transported to some other country.' " (Jul. 66.)
The Civil Wars. Appian. Horace White. London. MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. 1899.
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