having reached thither, the inhabitants had time to shut their gates, and place guards on the walls, that they might, at least, be besieged before they were taken, and send messengers to the Roman praetor.  Lucius Furius Purpureo, who had then the command of the province, had, in pursuance of the decree of the senate, disbanded the army, excepting five thousand of the allies and Latin confederacy; and had remained, with these troops, in the nearest district of the province about Ariminum.  He immediately informed the senate, by letter, in what confusion the province was.  That, “of the two colonies which had escaped in the dreadful storm of the Punic war, one was taken and sacked by the present enemy, and the other besieged.  Nor was his army capable of affording sufficient protection to the distressed colonists, unless he chose to expose five thousand allies to be slaughtered by forty thousand invaders (for so many there were in arms); and by such a loss, on his side, to augment the courage of the enemy, already elated on having destroyed one Roman colony.”

11.  This letter having been read they decreed, that the consul Aurelius should order the army which he had appointed to assemble on a certain day in Etruria, to attend him on the same day at Ariminum; and should either go in person, if the public business would permit, to suppress the tumult of the Gauls, or write to the praetor Lucius Furius, that, as soon as the legions from Etruria came to him, he should send five thousand of the allies to guard that place in the mean time, and should himself proceed to relieve the colony from the siege.  They also determined, that ambassadors should be sent to Carthage, and also into Numidia, to Masinissa:  to Carthage, to announce that “their countryman, Hamilcar, having been left in Gaul, (either with a part of the army formerly commanded by Hasdrubal, or with that of Mago—­they did not with certainty know which,) was waging war, contrary to the treaty.  That he had excited the armies of the Gauls and Ligurians to arms against the Roman people.  That, if they wished for peace, they must recall him, and give him up to the Roman people.”  They were ordered at the same time to tell them, that “all the deserters had not been sent back; that a great part of them were said to appear openly in Carthage, who ought to be sought after, and surrendered according to the treaty.”  Such was the message to the Carthaginians.  To Masinissa they were charged with congratulations, on his “having not only recovered the kingdom of his father, but enlarged it by the acquisition of the most flourishing parts of Syphax’s territories.”  They were ordered also to acquaint him, that “a war had been undertaken against Philip, because he had given aid to the Carthaginians, while, by the injuries which he offered to the allies of the Roman people, he had obliged them to send fleets and armies into Greece, while Italy was blazing with war; and that by thus making them separate their forces, had been the principal