When after the battle of Pharsalus he met with Marcus Cicero at Corcyra, he had offered to hand over the command in Corcyra to the latter--who was still from the time of his Cilician administration invested with the rank of general-- as the officer of higher standing according to the letter of the law, and by this readiness had driven the unfortunate advocate, who now cursed a thousand times his laurels from the Arnanus, almost to despair; but he had at the same time astonished all men of any tolerable discernment.

The same principles were applied now, when something more was at stake; Cato weighed the question to whom the place of commander-in-chief belonged, as if the matter had reference to a field at Tusculum, and adjudged it to Scipio.
By this sentence his own candidature and that of Varus were set aside.
But he it was also, and he alone, who confronted with energy the claims of king Juba, and made him feel that the Roman nobility came to him not suppliant, as to the great-prince of the Parthians, with a view to ask aid at the hands of a protector, but as entitled to command and require aid from a subject.

In the present state of the Roman forces in Africa, Juba could not avoid lowering his claims to some extent; although he still carried the point with the weak Scipio, that the pay of his troops should be charged on the Roman treasury and the cession of the province of Africa should be assured to him in the event of victory.
By the side of the new general-in-chief the senate of the "three hundred" again emerged.

It established its seat in Utica, and replenished its thinned ranks by the admission of the most esteemed and the wealthiest men of the equestrian order.
The warlike preparations were pushed forward, chiefly through the zeal of Cato, with the greatest energy, and every man capable of arms, even the freedman and Libyan, was enrolled in the legions; by which course so many hands were withdrawn from agriculture that a great part of the fields remained uncultivated, but an imposing result was certainly attained.

The heavy infantry numbered fourteen legions, of which two were already raised by Varus, eight others were formed partly from the refugees, partly from the conscripts in the province, and four were legions of king Juba armed in the Roman manner.