After this, the levy commenced in the city and country, and ambassadors were despatched to Syphax, who was himself employing every effort to restore the war; for his wife had prevailed upon him, not, as heretofore, by caresses, powerful as they are in influencing the mind of a lover, but by prayers and appeals to his compassion, imploring him, with streaming eyes, not to betray her father and her country, nor suffer Carthage to be consumed by the same flames which had reduced the camps to ashes.

In addition to this, the ambassadors informed him of a circumstance which had occurred very seasonably to raise their hopes; that they had met with four thousand Celtiberians in the neighbourhood of a city named Abba, a fine body of young men who had been enlisted by their recruiting officers in Spain; and that Hasdrubal would very soon arrive with a body of troops by no means contemptible.

Accordingly, he not only returned a kind answer to the ambassadors, but also showed them a multitude of Numidian rustics, whom he had lately furnished with arms and horses; and at the same time assured them that he would call out all the youth in his kingdom.
He said, he well knew that the loss sustained had been occasioned by fire, and not by battle, and that he was inferior to his adversary in war who was overcome by force of arms.

Such was the answer given to the ambassadors; and, after a few days, Hasdrubal and Syphax again united their forces.

This army consisted of about thirty-five thousand fighting men.
8.