If the resources of the emigrants had diminished, their fanaticism had, if possible, even increased. Not only did they continue to murder their prisoners and even the officers of Caesar under flag of truce, but king Juba, in whom the exasperation of the partisan mingled with the fury of the half-barbarous African, laid down the maxim that in every community suspected of sympathizing with the enemy the burgesses ought to be extirpated and the town burnt down, and even practically carried out this theory against some townships, such as the unfortunate Vaga near Hadrumetum. In fact it was solely owing to the energetic intervention of Cato that the capital of the province itself the flourishing Utica--which, just like Carthage formerly, had been long regarded with a jealous eye by the Numidian kings-- did not experience the same treatment from Juba, and that measures of precaution merely were taken against its citizens, who certainly were not unjustly accused of leaning towards Caesar.
As neither Caesar himself nor any of his lieutenants undertook the smallest movement against Africa, the coalition had full time to acquire political and military reorganization there. First of all, it was necessary to fill up anew the place of commander-in-chief vacant by the death of Pompeius. King Juba was not disinclined still to maintain the position which he had held in Africa up to the battle of Pharsalus; indeed he bore himself no longer as a client of the Romans but as an equal ally or even as a protector, and took it upon him, for example, to coin Roman silver money with his name and device; nay, he even raised a claim to be the sole wearer of purple in the camp, and suggested to the Roman commanders that they should lay aside their purple mantle of office. Further Metellus Scipio demanded the supreme command for himself, because Pompeius had recognized him in the Thessalian campaign as on a footing of equality, more from the consideration that he was his son-in-law than on military grounds. The like demand was raised by Varus as the governor--self-nominated, it is true--of Africa, seeing that the war was to be waged in his province. Lastly the army desired for its leader the propraetor Marcus Cato. Obviously it was right. Cato was the only man who possessed the requisite devotedness, energy, and authority for the difficult office; if he was no military man, it was infinitely better to appoint as commander-in-chief a non-military man who understood how to listen to reason and make his subordinates act, than an officer of untried capacity like Varus, or even one of tried incapacity like Metellus Scipio. But the decision fell at length on this same Scipio, and it was Cato himself who mainly determined that decision. He did so, not because he felt himself unequal to such a task, or because his vanity found its account rather in declining than in accepting; still less because he loved or respected Scipio, with whom he on the contrary was personally at variance, and who with his notorious inefficiency had attained a certain importance merely in virtue of his position as father-in-law to Pompeius; but simply and solely because his obstinate legal formalism chose rather to let the republic go to ruin in due course of law than to save it in an irregular way. 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. The heavy cavalry, consisting of the Celts and Germans who arrived with Labienus and sundry others incorporated in their ranks, was, apart from Juba's squadron of cavalry equipped in the Roman style, 1600 strong. The light troops consisted of innumerable masses of Numidians riding without bridle or rein and armed merely with javelins, of a number of mounted bowmen, and a large host of archers on foot. To these fell to be added Juba's 120 elephants, and the fleet of 55 sail commanded by Publius Varus and Marcus Octavius.