CHAPTER VI HANNO
“I ought to have carried her off!” Matho said in the evening toSpendius. “I should have seized her, and torn her from her house! Noone would have dared to touch me!”
Spendius was not listening to him. Stretched on his back he was takingdelicious rest beside a large jar filled with honey-coloured water, intowhich he would dip his head from time to time in order to drink morecopiously.
Matho resumed:
“What is to be done? How can we re-enter Carthage?”
“I do not know,” said Spendius.
Such impassibility exasperated Matho and he exclaimed:
“Why! the fault is yours! You carry me away, and then you forsake me,coward that you are! Why, pray, should I obey you? Do you think that youare my master? Ah! you prostituter, you slave, you son of a slave!” Heground his teeth and raised his broad hand above Spendius.
The Greek did not reply. An earthen lamp was burning gently against thetent-pole, where the zaïmph shone amid the hanging panoply. SuddenlyMatho put on his cothurni, buckled on his brazen jacket of mail, andtook his helmet.
“Where are you going?” asked Spendius.
“I am returning! Let me alone! I will bring her back! And if theyshow themselves I will crush them like vipers! I will put her to death,Spendius! Yes,” he repeated, “I will kill her! You shall see, I willkill her!”
But Spendius, who was listening eagerly, snatched up the zaïmphabruptly and threw it into a corner, heaping up fleeces above it.A murmuring of voices was heard, torches gleamed, and Narr’ Havasentered, followed by about twenty men.
They wore white woollen cloaks, long daggers, copper necklaces, woodenearrings, and boots of hyena skin; and standing on the threshold theyleaned upon their lances like herdsmen resting themselves. Narr’Havas was the handsomest of all; his slender arms were bound with strapsornamented with pearls. The golden circlet which fastened his amplegarment about his head held an ostrich feather which hung down behindhis shoulder; his teeth were displayed in a continual smile; his eyesseemed sharpened like arrows, and there was something observant and airyabout his whole demeanour.
He declared that he had come to join the Mercenaries, for the Republichad long been threatening his kingdom. Accordingly he was interested inassisting the Barbarians, and he might also be of service to them.
“I will provide you with elephants (my forests are full of them),wine, oil, barley, dates, pitch and sulphur for sieges, twenty thousandfoot-soldiers and ten thousand horses. If I address myself to you,Matho, it is because the possession of the zaïmph has made you chiefman in the army. Moreover,” he added, “we are old friends.”
Matho, however, was looking at Spendius, who, seated on the sheep-skins,was listening, and giving little nods of assent the while. Narr’ Havascontinued speaking. He called the gods to witness he cursed Carthage. Inhis imprecations he broke a javelin. All his men uttered simultaneouslya loud howl, and Matho, carried away by so much passion, exclaimed thathe accepted the alliance.
A white bull and a black sheep, the symbols of day and night, were thenbrought, and their throats were cut on the edge of a ditch. When thelatter was full of blood they dipped their arms into it. Then Narr’Havas spread out his hand upon Matho’s breast, and Matho did thesame to Narr’ Havas. They repeated the stain upon the canvas of theirtents. Afterwards they passed the night in eating, and the remainingportions of the meat were burnt together with the skin, bones, horns,and hoofs.
Matho had been greeted with great shouting when he had come back bearingthe veil of the goddess; even those who were not of the Chanaanitishreligion were made by their vague enthusiasm to feel the arrival ofa genius. As to seizing the zaïmph, no one thought of it, for themysterious manner in which he had acquired it was sufficient in theminds of the Barbarians to justify its possession; such were thethoughts of the soldiers of the African race. The others, whose hatredwas not of such long standing, did not know how to make up their minds.If they had had ships they would immediately have departed.
Spendius, Narr’ Havas, and Matho despatched men to all the tribes onPunic soil.
Carthage was sapping the strength of these nations. She wrung exorbitanttaxes from them, and arrears or even murmurings were punished withfetters, the axe, or the cross. It was necessary to cultivate whateversuited the Republic, and to furnish what she demanded; no one had theright of possessing a weapon; when villages rebelled the inhabitantswere sold; governors were esteemed like wine-presses, according to thequantity which they succeeded in extracting. Then beyond the regionsimmediately subject to Carthage extended the allies roamed the Nomads,who might be let loose upon them. By this system the crops were alwaysabundant, the studs skilfully managed, and the plantations superb.
The elder Cato, a master in the matters of tillage and slaves, wasamazed at it ninety-two years later, and the death-cry which he repeatedcontinually at Rome was but the exclamation of jealous greed.
During the last war the exactions had been increased, so that nearlyall the towns of Libya had surrendered to Regulus. To punish them, athousand talents, twenty thousand oxen, three hundred bags of gold dust,and considerable advances of grain had been exacted from them, and thechiefs of the tribes had been crucified or thrown to the lions.
Tunis especially execrated Carthage! Older than the metropolis, it couldnot forgive her her greatness, and it fronted her walls crouching inthe mire on the water’s edge like a venomous beast watching her.Transportation, massacres, and epidemics did not weaken it. Ithad assisted Archagathas, the son of Agathocles, and the Eaters ofUncleanness found arms there at once.
The couriers had not yet set out when universal rejoicing broke outin the provinces. Without waiting for anything they strangled thecomptrollers of the houses and the functionaries of the Republic inthe baths; they took the old weapons that had been concealed out of thecaves; they forged swords with the iron of the ploughs; the childrensharpened javelins at the doors, and the women gave their necklaces,rings, earrings, and everything that could be employed for thedestruction of Carthage. Piles of lances were heaped up in the countrytowns like sheaves of maize. Cattle and money were sent off. Mathospeedily paid the Mercenaries their arrears, and owing to this, whichwas Spendius’s idea, he was appointed commander-in-chief—theschalishim of the Barbarians.
Reinforcements of men poured in at the same time. The aboriginesappeared first, and were followed by the slaves from the country;caravans of Negroes were seized and armed, and merchants on their wayto Carthage, despairing of any more certain profit, mingled with theBarbarians. Numerous bands were continually arriving. From the heightsof the Acropolis the growing army might be seen.
But the guards of the Legion were posted as sentries on the platformof the aqueduct, and near them rose at intervals brazen vats, in whichfloods of asphalt were boiling. Below in the plain the great crowdstirred tumultuously. They were in a state of uncertainty, feeling theembarrassment with which Barbarians are always inspired when they meetwith walls.
Utica and Hippo-Zarytus refused their alliance. Phonician colonies likeCarthage, they were self-governing, and always had clauses insertedin the treaties concluded by the Republic to distinguish them from thelatter. Nevertheless they respected this strong sister of theirs whoprotected them, and they did not think that she could be vanquished bya mass of Barbarians; these would on the contrary be themselvesexterminated. They desired to remain neutral and to live at peace.
But their position rendered them indispensable. Utica, at the footof the gulf, was convenient for bringing assistance to Carthage fromwithout. If Utica alone were taken, Hippo-Zarytus, six hours furtherdistant along the coast, would take its place, and the metropolis, beingrevictualled in this way, would be impregnable.
Spendius wished the siege to be undertaken immediately. Narr’ Havaswas opposed to this: an advance should first be made upon the frontier.This was the opinion of the veterans, and of Matho himself, and itwas decided that Spendius should go to attack Utica, and MathoHipp
o-Zarytus, while in the third place the main body should rest onTunis and occupy the plain of Carthage, Autaritus being in command.As to Narr’ Havas, he was to return to his own kingdom to procureelephants and to scour the roads with his cavalry.
The women cried out loudly against this decision; they coveted thejewels of the Punic ladies. The Libyans also protested. They had beensummoned against Carthage, and now they were going away from it! Thesoldiers departed almost alone. Matho commanded his own companions,together with the Iberians, Lusitanians, and the men of the West, and ofthe islands; all those who spoke Greek had asked for Spendius on accountof his cleverness.
Great was the stupefaction when the army was seen suddenly in motion;it stretched along beneath the mountain of Ariana on the road to Uticabeside the sea. A fragment remained before Tunis, the rest disappearedto re-appear on the other shore of the gulf on the outskirts of thewoods in which they were lost.
They were perhaps eighty thousand men. The two Tyrian cities would offerno resistance, and they would return against Carthage. Already there wasa considerable army attacking it from the base of the isthmus, and itwould soon perish from famine, for it was impossible to live without theaid of the provinces, the citizens not paying contributions as they didat Rome. Carthage was wanting in political genius. Her eternal anxietyfor gain prevented her from having the prudence which results fromloftier ambitions. A galley anchored on the Libyan sands, it was withtoil that she maintained her position. The nations roared like billowsaround her, and the slightest storm shook this formidable machine.
The treasury was exhausted by the Roman war and by all that had beensquandered and lost in the bargaining with the Barbarians. Neverthelesssoldiers must be had, and not a government would trust the Republic!Ptolemæus had lately refused it two thousand talents. Moreover the rapeof the veil disheartened them. Spendius had clearly foreseen this.
But the nation, feeling that it was hated, clasped its money andits gods to its heart, and its patriotism was sustained by the veryconstitution of its government.
First, the power rested with all, without any one being strong enoughto engross it. Private debts were considered as public debts, men ofChanaanitish race had a monopoly of commerce, and by multiplying theprofits of piracy with those of usury, by hard dealings in lands andslaves and with the poor, fortunes were sometimes made. These aloneopened up all the magistracies, and although authority and money wereperpetuated in the same families, people tolerated the oligarchy becausethey hoped ultimately to share in it.
The societies of merchants, in which the laws were elaborated, chose theinspectors of the exchequer, who on leaving office nominated the hundredmembers of the Council of the Ancients, themselves dependent on theGrand Assembly, or general gathering of all the rich. As to the twoSuffets, the relics of the monarchy and the less than consuls, they weretaken from distinct families on the same day. All kinds of enmities werecontrived between them, so that they might mutually weaken each other.They could not deliberate concerning war, and when they were vanquishedthe Great Council crucified them.
The power of Carthage emanated, therefore, from the Syssitia, that isto say, from a large court in the centre of Malqua, at the place, itwas said, where the first bark of Phonician sailors had touched, thesea having retired a long way since then. It was a collection of littlerooms of archaic architecture, built of palm trunks with corners ofstone, and separated from one another so as to accommodate the varioussocieties separately. The rich crowded there all day to discuss theirown concerns and those of the government, from the procuring of pepperto the extermination of Rome. Thrice in a moon they would have theirbeds brought up to the lofty terrace running along the wall of thecourt, and they might be seen from below at table in the air, withoutcothurni or cloaks, with their diamond-covered fingers wanderingover the dishes, and their large earrings hanging down among theflagons,—all fat and lusty, half-naked, smiling and eating beneath theblue sky, like great sharks sporting in the sea.
But just now they were unable to dissemble their anxiety; they were toopale for that. The crowd which waited for them at the gates escortedthem to their palaces in order to obtain some news from them. As intimes of pestilence, all the houses were shut; the streets would filland suddenly clear again; people ascended the Acropolis or ran to theharbour, and the Great Council deliberated every night. At last thepeople were convened in the square of Khamon, and it was decided toleave the management of things to Hanno, the conqueror of Hecatompylos.
He was a true Carthaginian, devout, crafty, and pitiless towards thepeople of Africa. His revenues equalled those of the Barcas. No one hadsuch experience in administrative affairs.
He decreed the enrolment of all healthy citizens, he placed catapults onthe towers, he exacted exorbitant supplies of arms, he even ordered theconstruction of fourteen galleys which were not required, and he desiredeverything to be registered and carefully set down in writing. He hadhimself conveyed to the arsenal, the pharos, and the treasuries of thetemples; his great litter was continually to be seen swinging from stepto step as it ascended the staircases of the Acropolis. And then inhis palace at night, being unable to sleep, he would yell out warlikemanouvres in terrible tones so as to prepare himself for the fray.
In their extremity of terror all became brave. The rich rangedthemselves in line along the Mappalian district at cockcrow, and tuckingup their robes practised themselves in handling the pike. But forwant of an instructor they had disputes about it. They would sit downbreathless upon the tombs and then begin again. Several even dietedthemselves. Some imagined that it was necessary to eat a great deal inorder to acquire strength, while others who were inconvenienced by theircorpulence weakened themselves with fasts in order to become thin.
Utica had already called several times upon Carthage for assistance; butHanno would not set out until the engines of war had been supplied withthe last screws. He lost three moons more in equipping the one hundredand twelve elephants that were lodged in the ramparts. They were theconquerors of Regulus; the people loved them; it was impossible to treatsuch old friends too well. Hanno had the brass plates which adornedtheir breasts recast, their tusks gilt, their towers enlarged, andcaparisons, edged with very heavy fringes, cut out of the handsomestpurple. Finally, as their drivers were called Indians (after the firstones, no doubt, who came from the Indies) he ordered them all to becostumed after the Indian fashion; that is to say, with white pads roundtheir temples, and small drawers of byssus, which with their transversefolds looked like two valves of a shell applied to the hips.
The army under Autaritus still remained before Tunis. It was hiddenbehind a wall made with mud from the lake, and protected on the top bythorny brushwood. Some Negroes had planted tall sticks here and therebearing frightful faces,—human masks made with birds’ feathers, andjackals’ or serpents’ heads,—which gaped towards the enemy forthe purpose of terrifying him; and the Barbarians, reckoning themselvesinvincible through these means, danced, wrestled, and juggled, convincedthat Carthage would perish before long. Any one but Hanno would easilyhave crushed such a multitude, hampered as it was with herds and women.Moreover, they knew nothing of drill, and Autaritus was so disheartenedthat he had ceased to require it.
They stepped aside when he passed by rolling his big blue eyes. Thenon reaching the edge of the lake he would draw back his sealskin cloak,unfasten the cord which tied up his long red hair, and soak the latterin the water. He regretted that he had not deserted to the Romans alongwith the two thousand Gauls of the temple of Eryx.
Often the sun would suddenly lose his rays in the middle of the day.Then the gulf and the open sea would seem as motionless as molten lead.A cloud of brown dust stretching perpendicularly would speed whirlingalong; the palm trees would bend and the sky disappear, while stoneswould be heard rebounding on the animals’ cruppers; and the Gaul, hislips glued against the holes in his tent, would gasp with exhaustion andmelancholy. His thoughts would be of the scent of the pastures on autumnmornings, of snowflakes,
or of the bellowing of the urus lost in thefog, and closing his eyelids he would in imagination behold the fires inlong, straw-roofed cottages flickering on the marshes in the depths ofthe woods.
Others regretted their native lands as well as he, even though theymight not be so far away. Indeed the Carthaginian captives coulddistinguish the velaria spread over the courtyards of their houses,beyond the gulf on the slopes of Byrsa. But sentries marched round themcontinually. They were all fastened to a common chain. Each one wore aniron carcanet, and the crowd was never weary of coming to gaze at them.The women would show their little children the handsome robes hanging intatters on their wasted limbs.
Whenever Autaritus looked at Gisco he was seized with rage at therecollection of the insult that he had received, and he would havekilled him but for the oath which he had taken to Narr’ Havas. Thenhe would go back into his tent and drink a mixture of barley and cuminuntil he swooned away from intoxication,—to awake afterwards in broaddaylight consumed with horrible thirst.
Matho, meanwhile, was besieging Hippo-Zarytus. But the town wasprotected by a lake, communicating with the sea. It had three lines ofcircumvallation, and upon the heights which surrounded it thereextended a wall fortified with towers. He had never commanded in suchan enterprise before. Moreover, he was beset with thoughts of Salammbô,and he raved in the delight of her beauty as in the sweetness of avengeance that transported him with pride. He felt an acrid, frenzied,permanent want to see her again. He even thought of presenting himselfas the bearer of a flag of truce, in the hope that once within Carthagehe might make his way to her. Often he would cause the assault to besounded and waiting for nothing rush upon the mole which it was soughtto construct in the sea. He would snatch up the stones with his hands,overturn, strike, and deal sword-thrusts everywhere. The Barbarianswould dash on pell-mell; the ladders would break with a loud crash, andmasses of men would tumble into the water, causing it to fly up inred waves against the walls. Finally the tumult would subside, and thesoldiers would retire to make a fresh beginning.
Matho would go and seat himself outside the tents, wipe hisblood-splashed face with his arm, and gaze at the horizon in thedirection of Carthage.
In front of him, among the olives, palms, myrtles and planes, stretchedtwo broad ponds which met another lake, the outlines of which could notbe seen. Behind one mountain other mountains reared themselves, andin the middle of the immense lake rose an island perfectly black andpyramidal in form. On the left, at the extremity of the gulf, weresand-heaps like arrested waves, large and pale, while the sea, flat as apavement of lapis-lazuli, ascended by insensible degrees to the edgeof the sky. The verdure of the country was lost in places beneath longsheets of yellow; carobs were shining like knobs of coral; vine branchesdrooped from the tops of the sycamores; the murmuring of the water couldbe heard; crested larks were hopping about, and the sun’s latest firesgilded the carapaces of the tortoises as they came forth from the reedsto inhale the breeze.
Matho would heave deep sighs. He would lie flat on his face, with hisnails buried in the soil, and weep; he felt wretched, paltry, forsaken.Never would he possess her, and he was unable even to take a town.
At night when alone in his tent he would gaze upon the zaïmph. Of whatuse to him was this thing which belonged to the gods?—and doubt creptinto the Barbarian’s thoughts. Then, on the contrary, it would seemto him that the vesture of the goddess was depending from Salammbô, andthat a portion of her soul hovered in it, subtler than a breath; andhe would feel it, breathe it in, bury his face in it, and kiss it withsobs. He would cover his shoulders with it in order to delude himselfthat he was beside her.
Sometimes he would suddenly steal away, stride in the starlight overthe sleeping soldiers as they lay wrapped in their cloaks, spring upona horse on reaching the camp gates, and two hours later be at Utica inSpendius’s tent.
At first he would speak of the siege, but his coming was only to easehis sorrow by talking about Salammbô. Spendius exhorted him to beprudent.
“Drive away these trifles from your soul, which is degraded by them!Formerly you were used to obey; now you command an army, and if Carthageis not conquered we shall at least be granted provinces. We shall becomekings!”
But how was it that the possession of the zaïmph did not give them thevictory? According to Spendius they must wait.
Matho fancied that the veil affected people of Chanaanitish raceexclusively, and, in his Barbarian-like subtlety, he said to himself:“The zaïmph will accordingly do nothing for me, but since they havelost it, it will do nothing for them.”
Afterwards a scruple troubled him. He was afraid of offending Molochby worshipping Aptouknos, the god of the Libyans, and he timidly askedSpendius to which of the gods it would be advisable to sacrifice a man.
“Keep on sacrificing!” laughed Spendius.
Matho, who could not understand such indifference, suspected the Greekof having a genius of whom he did not speak.
All modes of worship, as well as all races, were to be met with in thesearmies of Barbarians, and consideration was had to the gods of others,for they too, inspired fear. Many mingled foreign practices with theirnative religion. It was to no purpose that they did not adore the stars;if a constellation were fatal or helpful, sacrifices were offered toit; an unknown amulet found by chance at a moment of peril becamea divinity; or it might be a name and nothing more, which would berepeated without any attempt to understand its meaning. But afterpillaging temples, and seeing numbers of nations and slaughters, manyultimately ceased to believe in anything but destiny and death;—andevery evening these would fall asleep with the placidity of wild beasts.Spendius had spit upon the images of Jupiter Olympius; nevertheless hedreaded to speak aloud in the dark, nor did he fail every day to put onhis right boot first.
He reared a long quadrangular terrace in front of Utica, but inproportion as it ascended the rampart was also heightened, and what wasthrown down by the one side was almost immediately raised again by theother. Spendius took care of his men; he dreamed of plans and strove torecall the stratagems which he had heard described in his travels. Butwhy did Narr’ Havas not return? There was nothing but anxiety.
Hanno had at last concluded his preparations. One night when there wasno moon he transported his elephants and soldiers on rafts acrossthe Gulf of Carthage. Then they wheeled round the mountain of the HotSprings so as to avoid Autaritus, and continued their march so slowlythat instead of surprising the Barbarians in the morning, as the Suffethad calculated, they did not reach them until it was broad daylight onthe third day.
Utica had on the east a plain which extended to the large lagoon ofCarthage; behind it a valley ran at right angles between two low andabruptly terminated mountains; the Barbarians were encamped furtherto the left in such a way as to blockade the harbour; and they weresleeping in their tents (for on that day both sides were too wearyto fight and were resting) when the Carthaginian army appeared at theturning of the hills.
Some camp followers furnished with slings were stationed at intervalson the wings. The first line was formed of the guards of the Legion ingolden scale-armour, mounted on their big horses, which were withoutmane, hair, or ears, and had silver horns in the middle of theirforeheads to make them look like rhinoceroses. Between their squadronswere youths wearing small helmets and swinging an ashen javelin in eachhand. The long files of the heavy infantry marched behind. All thesetraders had piled as many weapons upon their bodies as possible. Somemight be seen carrying an axe, a lance, a club, and two swords all atonce; others bristled with darts like porcupines, and their arms stoodout from their cuirasses in sheets of horn or iron plates. At last thescaffoldings of the lofty engines appeared: carrobalistas, onagers,catapults and scorpions, rocking on chariots drawn by mules andquadrigas of oxen; and in proportion as the army drew out, the captainsran panting right and left to deliver commands, close up the files, andpreserve the intervals. Such of the Ancients as held commands had comein purple cassocks, the magnificent fringe
s of which tangled in thewhite straps of their cothurni. Their faces, which were smeared all overwith vermilion, shone beneath enormous helmets surmounted with imagesof the gods; and, as they had shields with ivory borders covered withprecious stones, they might have been taken for suns passing over wallsof brass.
But the Carthaginians manouvred so clumsily that the soldiers inderision urged them to sit down. They called out that they were justgoing to empty their big stomachs, to dust the gilding of their skin,and to give them iron to drink.
A strip of green cloth appeared at the top of the pole planted beforeSpendius’s tent: it was the signal. The Carthaginian army replied toit with a great noise of trumpets, cymbals, flutes of asses’ bones,and tympanums. The Barbarians had already leaped outside the palisades,and were facing their enemies within a javelin’s throw of them.
A Balearic slinger took a step forward, put one of his clay bullets intohis thong, and swung round his arm. An ivory shield was shivered, andthe two armies mingled together.
The Greeks made the horses rear and fall back upon their masters bypricking their nostrils with the points of their lances. The slaveswho were to hurl stones had picked such as were too big, and theyaccordingly fell close to them. The Punic foot-soldiers exposed theright side in cutting with their long swords. The Barbarians broke theirlines; they slaughtered them freely; they stumbled over the dying anddead, quite blinded by the blood that spurted into their faces. Theconfused heap of pikes, helmets, cuirasses and swords turned roundabout, widening out and closing in with elastic contractions. The gapsincreased more and more in the Carthaginian cohorts, the engines couldnot get out of the sand; and finally the Suffet’s litter (his grandlitter with crystal pendants), which from the beginning might havebeen seen tossing among the soldiers like a bark on the waves, suddenlyfoundered. He was no doubt dead. The Barbarians found themselves alone.
The dust around them fell and they were beginning to sing, when Hannohimself appeared on the top of an elephant. He sat bare-headed beneath aparasol of byssus which was carried by a Negro behind him. His necklaceof blue plates flapped against the flowers on his black tunic; his hugearms were compressed within circles of diamonds, and with open mouth hebrandished a pike of inordinate size, which spread out at the end likea lotus, and flashed more than a mirror. Immediately the earthshook,—and the Barbarians saw all the elephants of Carthage, withtheir gilt tusks and blue-painted ears, hastening up in single line,clothed with bronze and shaking the leathern towers which were placedabove their scarlet caparisons, in each of which were three archersbending large bows.
The soldiers were barely in possession of their arms; they had takenup their positions at random. They were frozen with terror; they stoodundecided.
Javelins, arrows, phalaricas, and masses of lead were already beingshowered down upon them from the towers. Some clung to the fringes ofthe caparisons in order to climb up, but their hands were struck offwith cutlasses and they fell backwards upon the swords’ points. Thepikes were too weak and broke, and the elephants passed through thephalanxes like wild boars through tufts of grass; they plucked up thestakes of the camp with their trunks, and traversed it from one end tothe other, overthrowing the tents with their breasts. All the Barbarianshad fled. They were hiding themselves in the hills bordering the valleyby which the Carthaginians had come.
The victorious Hanno presented himself before the gates of Utica. He hada trumpet sounded. The three Judges of the town appeared in the openingof the battlements on the summit of a tower.
But the people of Utica would not receive such well-armed guests. Hannowas furious. At last they consented to admit him with a feeble escort.
The streets were too narrow for the elephants. They had to be leftoutside.
As soon as the Suffet was in the town the principal men came to greethim. He had himself taken to the vapour baths, and called for his cooks.
Three hours afterwards he was still immersed in the oil of cinnamomumwith which the basin had been filled; and while he bathed he ateflamingoes’ tongues with honied poppy-seeds on a spread ox-hide.Beside him was his Greek physician, motionless, in a long yellow robe,directing the re-heating of the bath from time to time, and two youngboys leaned over the steps of the basin and rubbed his legs. Butattention to his body did not check his love for the commonwealth, forhe was dictating a letter to be sent to the Great Council, and assome prisoners had just been taken he was asking himself what terriblepunishment could be devised.
“Stop!” said he to a slave who stood writing in the hollow of hishand. “Let some of them be brought to me! I wish to see them!”
And from the bottom of the hall, full of a whitish vapour on which thetorches cast red spots, three Barbarians were thrust forward: a Samnite,a Spartan, and a Cappadocian.
“Proceed!” said Hanno.
“Rejoice, light of the Baals! your Suffet has exterminated theravenous hounds! Blessings on the Republic! Give orders for prayers!”He perceived the captives and burst out laughing: “Ah! ha! my finefellows of Sicca! You are not shouting so loudly to-day! It is I! Doyou recognise me? And where are your swords? What really terriblefellows!” and he pretended to be desirous to hide himself as ifhe were afraid of them. “You demanded horses, women, estates,magistracies, no doubt, and priesthoods! Why not? Well, I will provideyou with the estates, and such as you will never come out of! You shallbe married to gibbets that are perfectly new! Your pay? it shall bemelted in your mouths in leaden ingots! and I will put you into good andvery exalted positions among the clouds, so as to bring you close to theeagles!”
The three long-haired and ragged Barbarians looked at him withoutunderstanding what he said. Wounded in the knees, they had been seizedby having ropes thrown over them, and the ends of the great chains ontheir hands trailed upon the pavement. Hanno was indignant at theirimpassibility.
“On your knees! on your knees! jackals! dust! vermin! excrements! Andthey make no reply! Enough! be silent! Let them be flayed alive! No!presently!”
He was breathing like a hippopotamus and rolling his eyes. The perfumedoil overflowed beneath the mass of his body, and clinging to the scaleson his skin, made it look pink in the light of the torches.
He resumed:
“For four days we suffered greatly from the sun. Some mules were lostin crossing the Macaras. In spite of their position, the extraordinarycourage—Ah! Demonades! how I suffer! Have the bricks reheated, and letthem be red-hot!”
A noise of rakes and furnaces was heard. The incense smoked morestrongly in the large perfuming pans, and the shampooers, who were quitenaked and were sweating like sponges, crushed a paste composed of wheat,sulphur, black wine, bitch’s milk, myrrh, galbanum and storax upon hisjoints. He was consumed with incessant thirst, but the yellow-robed mandid not yield to this inclination, and held out to him a golden cup inwhich viper broth was smoking.
“Drink!” said he, “that strength of sun-born serpents maypenetrate into the marrow of your bones, and take courage, O reflectionof the gods! You know, moreover, that a priest of Eschmoun watches thosecruel stars round the Dog from which your malady is derived. They aregrowing pale like the spots on your skin, and you are not to die fromthem.”
“Oh! yes, that is so, is it not?” repeated the Suffet, “I am notto die from them!” And his violaceous lips gave forth a breath morenauseous than the exhalation from a corpse. Two coals seemed to burn inthe place of his eyes, which had lost their eyebrows; a mass of wrinkledskin hung over his forehead; both his ears stood out from his headand were beginning to increase in size; and the deep lines formingsemicircles round his nostrils gave him a strange and terrifyingappearance, the look of a wild beast. His unnatural voice was like aroar; he said:
“Perhaps you are right, Demonades. In fact there are many ulcers herewhich have closed. I feel robust. Here! look how I am eating!”
And less from greediness than from ostentation, and the desire to proveto himself that he was in good health, he cut into the forcemeatsof cheese and marjoram, th
e boned fish, gourds, oysters with eggs,horse-radishes, truffles, and brochettes of small birds. As he lookedat the prisoners he revelled in the imagination of their tortures.Nevertheless he remembered Sicca, and the rage caused by all his woesfound vent in the abuse of these three men.
“Ah! traitors! ah! wretches! infamous, accursed creatures! And yououtraged me!—me! the Suffet! Their services, the price of theirblood, say they! Ah! yes! their blood! their blood!” Then speakingto himself:—“All shall perish! not one shall be sold! It would bebetter to bring them to Carthage! I should be seen—but doubtless, Ihave not brought chains enough? Write: Send me—How many of them arethere? go and ask Muthumbal! Go! no pity! and let all their hands be cutoff and brought to me in baskets!”
But strange cries at once hoarse and shrill penetrated into the hallabove Hanno’s voice and the rattling of the dishes that were beingplaced around him. They increased, and suddenly the furious trumpetingof the elephants burst forth as if the battle were beginning again. Agreat tumult was going on around the town.
The Carthaginians had not attempted to pursue the Barbarians. They hadtaken up their quarters at the foot of the walls with their baggage,mules, serving men, and all their train of satraps; and they mademerry in their beautiful pearl-bordered tents, while the camp of theMercenaries was now nothing but a heap of ruins in the plain. Spendiushad recovered his courage. He dispatched Zarxas to Matho, scoured thewoods, rallied his men (the losses had been inconsiderable),—and theywere re-forming their lines enraged at having been conquered without afight, when they discovered a vat of petroleum which had no doubt beenabandoned by the Carthaginians. Then Spendius had some pigs carried offfrom the farms, smeared them with bitumen, set them on fire, and drovethem towards Utica.
The elephants were terrified by the flames and fled. The ground slopedupwards, javelins were thrown at them, and they turned back;—andwith great blows of ivory and trampling feet they ripped up theCarthaginians, stifled them, flattened them. The Barbarians descendedthe hill behind them; the Punic camp, which was without entrenchmentswas sacked at the first rush, and the Carthaginians were crushed againstthe gates, which were not opened through fear of the Mercenaries.
Day broke, and Matho’s foot-soldiers were seen coming up from thewest. At the same time horsemen appeared; they were Narr’ Havas withhis Numidians. Leaping ravines and bushes they ran down the fugitiveslike greyhounds pursuing hares. This change of fortune interrupted theSuffet. He called out to be assisted to leave the vapour bath.
The three captives were still before him. Then a Negro (the same who hadcarried his parasol in the battle) leaned over to his ear.
“Well?” replied the Suffet slowly. “Ah! kill them!” he added inan abrupt tone.
The Ethiopian drew a long dagger from his girdle and the three headsfell. One of them rebounded among the remains of the feast, and leapedinto the basin, where it floated for some time with open mouth andstaring eyes. The morning light entered through the chinks in the wall;the three bodies streamed with great bubbles like three fountains, anda sheet of blood flowed over the mosaics with their powdering of bluedust. The Suffet dipped his hand into this hot mire and rubbed his kneeswith it: it was a cure.
When evening had come he stole away from the town with his escort, andmade his way into the mountain to rejoin his army.
He succeeded in finding the remains of it.
Four days afterward he was on the top of a defile at Gorza, when thetroops under Spendius appeared below. Twenty stout lances might easilyhave checked them by attacking the head of their column, but theCarthaginians watched them pass by in a state of stupefaction. Hannorecognised the king of the Numidians in the rearguard; Narr’Havas bowed to him, at the same time making a sign which he did notunderstand.
The return to Carthage took place amid all kinds of terrors. Theymarched only at night, hiding in the olive woods during the day.There were deaths at every halting-place; several times they believedthemselves lost. At last they reached Cape Hermæum, where vessels cameto receive them.
Hanno was so fatigued, so desperate—the loss of the elephants inparticular overwhelmed him—that he demanded poison from Demonades inorder to put an end to it all. Moreover he could already feel himselfstretched upon the cross.
Carthage had not strength enough to be indignant with him. Its losseshad amounted to one hundred thousand nine hundred and seventy-twoshekels of silver, fifteen thousand six hundred and twenty-three shekelsof gold, eighteen elephants, fourteen members of the Great Council,three hundred of the rich, eight thousand citizens, corn enough forthree moons, a considerable quantity of baggage, and all the engines ofwar! The defection of Narr’ Havas was certain, and both sieges werebeginning again. The army under Autaritus now extended from Tunis toRhades. From the top of the Acropolis long columns of smoke might beseen in the country ascending to the sky; they were the mansions of therich, which were on fire.
One man alone could have saved the Republic. People repented thatthey had slighted him, and the peace party itself voted holocausts forHamilcar’s return.
The sight of the zaïmph had upset Salammbô. At night she thoughtthat she could hear the footsteps of the goddess, and she would awaketerrified and shrieking. Every day she sent food to the temples. Taanachwas worn out with executing her orders, and Schahabarim never left her.
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