Chapter 57

It was just about this time, after Scipio and his colleagues had come to learn of this disconcerting setback, that they saw M. Aquinus holding a conversation with C. Saserna. Scipio sent word to Aquinus saying that he had no business to be holding a conversation with the enemy. When none the less the messenger brought back to Scipio the other’s answer, namely that on the contrary it remained for him to complete the rest of his business, Juba also sent him a courier, to say, in the hearing of Saserna: The king forbids you to hold this conversation. Alarmed by this message, Aquinus withdrew in deference to the king’s injunction. To think that it had come to this, that a Roman citizen, one, moreover, who had received office at the hands of the Roman people, at a time when his country and all his fortunes stood secure, should rather have obeyed Juba, a foreigner, than deferred to Scipio’s instructions or else, if he preferred, let his own partisans be massacred, while he himself returned home safe and sound! Still more arrogant even was Juba’s behaviour, not towards M. Aquinus, a mere upstart and junior member of the Senate, but towards Scipio, whose family, rank and magistracies were such as to make him an outstanding man. For Scipio had been in the habit of wearing a purple cloak before the king arrived and Juba—so it is said—took the matter up with him, saying that Scipio ought not to wear the same dress as he himself wore. And so it came about that Scipio changed to white dress in deference to Juba—that by-word of arrogance and indolence.