Massiva
1. A Numidian, grandson of Gala, king of the Massylians, and nephew of Masinissa, whom he accompanied while yet a mere boy into Spain. At the battle of Baecula (B. C. 209), on which occasion he had for the first time been allowed to bear arms, he was taken prisoner; but Scipio, on learning who he was, treated him with the utmost distinction, and sent him back without ransom to his uncle. This generous conduct of the Roman general is said to have had a great share in gaining over Masinissa to the Roman alliance. (Liv. 27.19, 28.35; V. Max. 5.1.7.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.