When Golosses communicated the conversation to Scipio the latter laughed and said, "I suppose you were about to make this request, when you treated our prisoners in such an inhuman manner, and now you expect help from the gods after violating even the laws of men."
And when the king wished to submit some further reflections to Scipio and chiefly that he ought to bring matters to a conclusion;
for, apart from the uncertainty of things, the appointment of the new consuls was close at hand and he should take this into consideration, lest when he was overtaken by winter another commander should succeed him and without any trouble credit himself with the result of all his pains, the general paid careful attention to what he said, and told him to inform Hasdrubal that he answered for the safety of himself, his wife and children, and the families of ten of his friends, and that, in addition to this, he might keep ten talents out of his own fortune and carry off with him any slaves he chose to the number of a hundred.
Golosses conveying this kind offer met Hasdrubal again two days afterwards.
The Carthaginian again advanced slowly to meet him in great state, wearing his full armour and purple robe, leaving the tyrants of tragedy much to seek.
He was by nature corpulent, and he had now become pot-bellied and was unnaturally red in the face, so that it looked as if he were living like a fatted ox in the plenty of a festival, instead of being at the head of a people suffering from such extreme misery that it would be difficult to set it down in words.
However, when he met the king and listened to Scipio's offer, slapping his thigh often and calling upon the gods and Fortune, he said that the day would never come on which Hasdrubal would look at the same time on the sun and on his city being consumed by fire;
for the most noble funeral for right-minded men was to perish in their native city and amid her flames.
So that when we look at his utterances we admire the man and his high-souled words, but when we turn to his actual behaviour we are amazed by his ignobility and cowardice.
For, to begin with, when the rest of the citizens were utterly perishing from famine, he gave drinking-parties and offered his guests sumptuous second courses and by his own good cheer exposed the general distress.
For the number of deaths was incredibly large and so was the number of daily desertions due to famine.
And next by making mock of some and inflicting outrage and death on others he terrorized the populace and maintained his authority in his sorely stricken country by means to which a tyrant in a prosperous city would hardly resort.
Therefore I think I was exceedingly right in saying as I did that it would not be easy to find men more like each other than those who then swayed the destinies of Greece and <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Carthage&groupId=441&placeId=820">Carthage</a>.
This will become evident when I come to speak of the former and compare them with this man.
Walbank Commentary