Scipio receives the Carthaginian ambassadors
Immediately after the fight, Scipio forced the enemy camp, plundered it and returned to the coast, to his ships, with immense booty. There he learned that Lentulus had landed at Utica with fifty spurred ships and a hundred transports, laden with provisions of every kind. Thinking that it was necessary to take advantage of the dejection of Carthage to strike it with a new terror, he sent Laelius to bring to Rome the news of his victory, charged Gnaeus Octavius to lead the legions overland on Carthage; and he himself, having united to his old fleet the new squadron of Lentulus, he sailed from Utica for the port of Carthage. He was not far from it when he saw a Carthaginian ship coming towards him, adorned with bandages and olive branches. It carried ten ambassadors, first of the city, who were sent on the advice of Hannibal to sue for peace. When they were near the flagship, they presented Scipio with the veils of the suppliants, begged him for mercy, and implored his clemency and mercy. In response, the general ordered them to go to Tunis, where he was going to transport his camp. Then, after having contemplated the situation of Carthage, less to reconnoitre it than to humiliate the enemy, he recalled Octavius to Utica and returned there himself.
From there he went to Tunis. On his way, he was told that Vermina, son of Syphax, at the head of an army corps stronger in cavalry than in infantry, was advancing to the aid of the Carthaginians. A portion of the army, including all the cavalry, attacked the Numidians on the first day of the Saturnalia, and routed them after an unserious engagement. The Roman cavalry surrounded the vanquished on all sides and closed all the exits to them; there were fifteen thousand men killed and twelve hundred prisoners:they seized fifteen hundred Numidian horses and seventy-two military ensigns. The young prince managed to escape in the midst of the disorder with a handful of men.
Then Scipio established his camp at Tunis, in the position he had already occupied, and there he received the deputies of Carthage to the number of thirty. They took on a much more humble tone than the previous embassy; Fortune imposed on them this hard necessity more than ever; but the very recent memory of their perfidy made them listen with less compassion. The council, animated by a just resentment, first concludes with the destruction of Carthage; but when one reflects on the magnitude of the enterprise and the time that the siege of a place so strong and so well defended would require; when Scipio himself thought that a successor would come to take advantage of his fatigues and his dangers and rob him of the glory of ending the war, all opinions turned to peace.
Scipio dictates the terms of peace to the Carthaginians
The next day he recalled the deputies, addressed them with severe reproaches for their bad faith, and urged them to take advantage of the lesson which so many defeats gave them, and finally to recognize the existence of the gods, the sanctity of oaths; then he dictated to them the conditions of peace:"They would live in freedom under the empire of the laws; the cities, the territories, the frontiers which they had possessed before the war, they preserved, and from that day the Romans would cease their devastations. They would restore to the Romans all the defectors, deserters, and prisoners; they would deliver up all the warships, with the exception of ten triremes and the tamed elephants that they had; they could not tame others. was forbidden to make war, either in Africa or out of Africa, without the permission of the Roman people. until their deputies had returned from Rome, they would pay in fifty years a tribute of ten thousand talents of silver divided in equal sums, and they would hand over to the choice of Scipio one hundred hostages of at least fourteen years of age and thirty years at most. They would obtain a truce from him, if the transport vessels captured during the first truce and their cargoes were restored:otherwise no truce, no peace to be hoped for."
Such were the conditions which the deputies had orders to postpone to Carthage. They had just exposed them in the assembly, and Gisgon, who had risen to speak against the peace, made himself heard by the multitude, as turbulent as they were cowardly, when Hannibal, indignant that, at such a moment, such words were pronounced and listened to, seized Gisgon by the arm and dragged him from the rostrum. This brand new violence in a republic excited the murmurs of the people, and the warrior, disconcerted by this demonstration to which life in the camps had not accustomed him:"I was nine years old, he said, when I left you , and it is after an absence of thirty-six years that I return among you. The practices of war, I learned them from childhood, fighting either for my own account or in the service of the state, and I believe I know them well enough; as for the laws, usages and customs of the city and the public square, it is up to you to teach them to me." (10) After having thus excused his haste, he spoke at length about peace to show that it was not too disadvantageous and that there was a need to accept it.
Which caused the greatest embarrassment, it was that of the vessels captured during the truce one found only the buildings themselves; an investigation was not easy, the presumed culprits being in the party which did not want peace. (12) It was agreed to surrender the ships and then search for the crews. What cargoes would be missing would be left to Scipio's estimate, and the Carthaginians would thus pay the value.
Some historians claim that Hannibal ran from the field of battle to the sea, embarked on a ship prepared beforehand, and came near Antiochus; that Scipio having asked first of all that Hannibal be handed over to him, he was told that this general was no longer in Africa.