A warm debate ensued; some earnestly pressing, that he should be immediately seized as a spy, and kept in custody; while others insisted, that there were not sufficient grounds for such violent measures; that "putting strangers into confinement, without reason, was a step that afforded a bad precedent; for that the same would happen to the Carthaginians at Tyre, and other marts, where they frequently traded." The question was adjourned on that day.

Aristo practised on the Carthaginians a Carthaginian artifice; for having early in the evening hung up a written tablet, in the most frequented place of the city, over the tribunal where the magistrates daily sat, he went on board his ship at the third watch, and fled.

Next day, when the suffetes had taken their seats to administer justice, the tablet was observed, taken down, and read.

Its contents were, that "Aristo came not with a private commission to any person, but with a public one to the elders;" by this name they called the senate.

The imputation being thus thrown on the state, less pains were taken in searching into the suspicions harboured of a few individuals: however, it was determined, that ambassadors should be sent to Rome, to represent the affair to the consuls and the senate, and, at the same time, to complain of the injuries received from Masinissa.
62.