History of Rome

​But as they made little progress for some time, now by pushing forward, now by holding back the column, and as night was already pressing, ​Scipio recalled his men from the battle and withdrew them, gathered together, onto a certain hill, which was indeed not safe enough, especially for a demoralized army, but yet higher than the other areas around it.

​There, at first, having received the baggage and the cavalry into the center, the infantry surrounding them warded off the attacks of the charging Numidians without difficulty;

​then, after three commanders with three regular armies arrived with their entire column, and it became apparent that they would have too little strength to defend the place by arms alone without a fortification, ​the commander began to look around and ponder if in any way he could throw up a rampart around them. But the hill was so bare and of such rough ground, that neither brushwood for cutting a rampart, nor earth suitable for making turf, or for digging a ditch, or for any other work, could be found;

​nor was there by nature anything sufficiently steep or abrupt to present a difficult approach or ascent to the enemy;

​all sides rose with a gentle slope. Nevertheless, so that they might present some appearance of a rampart, they placed packsaddles, bound to their loads, around them as if building to the usual height, throwing up a heap of baggage of every kind where packsaddles had been lacking for the construction.

​After the Carthaginian armies arrived, they marched their column up the hill very easily; at first, the strange appearance of the fortification held them in a kind of wonder, ​while the leaders shouted from all sides: why did they stand still and not tear down and plunder that mockery, which was scarcely strong enough to delay women or children? The captured enemy was held hiding behind the baggage. The leaders cast these reproaches in contempt;

​But it was not easy to leap over, nor to move the obstructing loads, nor to cut through the tightly packed packsaddles, which were buried under the baggage itself.

​When, pushing with stakes, they had cleared away the obstructing baggage and made a way for the armed men, and as the same was happening in several quarters, the camp was already captured on all sides.

​A few were slaughtered on all sides by the many, and the demoralized by the victors; yet when a large part of the soldiers had fled into the nearby woods, they escaped into the camp of Publius Scipio, which the legate Tiberius Fonteius commanded.

​Some relate that Gnaeus Scipio was slain on the hill at the first onset of the enemy; others, that he fled with a few to a tower near the camp; and that this, surrounded with fire, and its doors thus burned out, which they had been unable to force open by any strength, was captured, and all within, together with the commander himself, were slain.

​In the eighth year after he had come to Spain, Gnaeus Scipio was killed, on the twenty-ninth day after his brother’s death. The grief for their death was not greater at Rome than throughout the whole of Spain;

​indeed, among the citizens, the lost army, the alienated province, and the public disaster drew with them a share of the grief;

​the Spanish peoples themselves mourned and missed the leaders, Gnaeus more so, because he had commanded them longer, and had been the first both to win their favor and first to show an example of Roman justice and moderation.