Page:Frontinus - The stratagems, and, the aqueducts of Rome (Bennet et al 1925).djvu/181

 STRATAGEMS, II. v. 3-6

Semproniiis Gracchus, when waging war against tl)e Ccltiberians, feigned fear and kept his army in camp. Then, by sending out light-armed troops to liarass the enemy and retreat forthwith, lie caused the enemy to come out ; whereupon he attacked them before they could form, and crushed them so completely that he also captured their camp.^

When the consul Lucius Metellus was waging war in Sicily against Hasdrubal — and with all the more alertness because of Hasdrubal's immense army and his one hundred and thirty elephants — he withdrew his troops, under pretence of fear, inside Panormus^ and constructed in front a trench of huge pro- portions. Then, observing Hasdrubal's army, with the elephants in the front rank, he ordered the haslali to hurl their javelins at the beasts and straightway to retire within their defences. The drivers of the elephants, enraged at such derisive treatment, drove the elephants straight towards the trench. As soon as the beasts were brought up to this, part were dispatched by a shower of darts, part were driven back to their own side, and threw the entire host into confusion. Then Metellus, who was biding his time, bui'st forth with his M'hole force, attacked the Carthaginians on the flank, and cut them to pieces. Besides this, he captured the elephants themselves.^

When Thamyris, queen of the Scythians, and Cyrus, king of the Persians, became engaged in an indecisive combat, the queen, feigning fear, lured Cyrus into a defile well-known to her own troops, and there, suddenly facing about, and aided by the nature of the locality, won a complete victorv.*

The Egyptians, when about to engage in battle on

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