When all was in readiness for his present enterprise, he left a sufficient body of troops suitable for the purpose to guard the camp and advanced with the rest of his army just at the end of the first watch, the enemy being at a distance of sixty stades.
When towards the end of the third watch he approached them he placed half of his legionaries and all the Numidians under the command of Gaius Laelius and Massanissa with orders to attack the camp of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Syphax&groupId=993&placeId=1751">Syphax</a>, exhorting them to behave like brave men and to do nothing rashly, as they well knew that the more the darkness in night attacks hinders and impedes the sight, the more must one supply the place of actual vision by skill and daring.
He himself, with the rest of his army, advanced to attack Hasdrubal. He had made up his mind not to deliver his attack before Laelius had set fire to the other hostile camp, and, therefore, this being his purpose, marched at a slow pace.
Laelius and Massanissa dividing their forces into two attacked the enemy simultaneously.The huts having been, as I stated above, almost specially constructed for the purpose of catching fire, once the front ranks of the Romans had set the fire alight it spread at once over the first row, and made the evil irremediable owing to the closeness of the huts to each other and the quantity of the fuel it fed on .
Laelius remained to cover the operation, and Massanissa, knowing the places by which those who were trying to escape from the flames would have to pass, stationed his own men at those posts.
Absolutely none of the Numidians had any suspicion of the actual fact, not even <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Syphax&groupId=993&placeId=1751">Syphax</a>, but they all supposed that the camp had caught fire by accident.
So that suspecting nothing, some of them aroused from sleep and others surprised while still drinking and carousing, they rushed out of their huts.
Many were trampled to death in the passages that led out of the camp, and many others were caught by the flames and consumed, while all those who escaped from the fire fell into the midst of the enemy and perished without knowing what was happening to them or what they were doing.
Walbank Commentary