The ambassadors after making this speech took their departure.
There were but few among the Carthaginians who approved of adhering to the treaty. The majority both of their leading politicians and of those who took part in the deliberation objected to its harsh conditions, and with difficulty tolerated the bold language of the ambassadors. Besides this, they were not disposed to give up the ships they had brought into port and the supplies they contained.
But above all they had no slight hopes of conquering with the assistance of Hannibal, but were on the contrary most sanguine. The popular assembly decided simply to dismiss the ambassadors without a reply,
but those of the politicians who had determined by any and every means to stir up the war again held a meeting and contrived the following plan.
They declared that all due care should be taken to ensure the safe arrival of the ambassadors at their own camp and at once prepared two triremes to escort them. Then they sent to the admiral, Hasdrubal, begging him to have some ships ready not far from the Roman camp, so that when the Romans were left by the ships that escorted them they might bear down upon them and sink them.
For the Carthaginian fleet was now anchored off the coast close to Utica.
Having given these instructions to Hasdrubal they sent off the Romans. They had ordered the commanders of the triremes, as soon as they passed the river Macar, to leave the ambassadors in the strait and return,
this being a spot from which the enemy's camp could already be seen.
The escort acting on their orders, as soon as they had passed the river-mouth saluted the Romans and sailed back.
Lucius and his colleagues were unsuspicious of any danger but were somewhat put out, thinking it was due to negligence that the escort had left them too soon.
But as they were continuing their voyage alone three Carthaginian triremes bore down on them as they had been directed to do. When they came up to the Roman quinquereme they could not ram her as she avoided the strokes, nor could they board her as her crew made a gallant resistance.
But running alongside of her and circling round her they kept on shooting the men on board and killing a number of them, until the Romans, seeing that the men from their own camp who were foraging on the coast were running down to the beach to assist them, managed to run their ship ashore.
Most of the men on board had been killed in the action, but the ambassadors, wonderful to say, escaped.
Walbank Commentary