Note 59 — Chapter XIII · THE MACEDONIAN AND SYRIAC WARS AND THE THIRD PUNIC WAR (200-131 B.C.)

[The great original authority for the Third Punic War was Polybius,d whose accounts of striking incidents in the Hannibalic Wars we have previously quoted. Polybius was the personal friend of Scipio the Younger and was present, as we shall see, at the destruction of Carthage. Unfortunately his first-hand description of that memorable event has not been preserved. But the accounts of Livyi and of Appiang were based largely, if not solely, upon Polybius. Appian’s account of the war as a whole is too long for insertion here; but Keightley’sc description is virtually an abridgment of Appian, paragraph by paragraph, at times the translation being almost literal. For the concluding scenes we shall turn to Appian himself.]