Chapter Chapter 2 · AT SICCA

. AT SICCA

Two days afterwards the Mercenaries left Carthage.

They had each received a piece of gold on the condition that they

should go into camp at Sicca, and they had been told with all sorts of

caresses:

“You are the saviours of Carthage! But you would starve it if you

remained there; it would become insolvent. Withdraw! The Republic will

be grateful to you later for all this condescension. We are going to

levy taxes immediately; your pay shall be in full, and galleys shall be

equipped to take you back to your native lands.”

They did not know how to reply to all this talk. These men, accustomed

as they were to war, were wearied by residence in a town; there was

difficulty in convincing them, and the people mounted the walls to see

them go away.

They defiled through the street of Khamon, and the Cirta gate,

pell-mell, archers with hoplites, captains with soldiers, Lusitanians

with Greeks. They marched with a bold step, rattling their heavy

cothurni on the paving stones. Their armour was dented by the catapult,

and their faces blackened by the sunburn of battles. Hoarse cries issued

from their thick beards, their tattered coats of mail flapped upon the

pommels of their swords, and through the holes in the brass might be

seen their naked limbs, as frightful as engines of war. Sarissæ, axes,

spears, felt caps and bronze helmets, all swung together with a single

motion. They filled the street thickly enough to have made the walls

crack, and the long mass of armed soldiers overflowed between the lofty

bitumen-smeared houses six storys high. Behind their gratings of iron or

reed the women, with veiled heads, silently watched the Barbarians pass.

The terraces, fortifications, and walls were hidden beneath the crowd

of Carthaginians, who were dressed in garments of black. The sailors’

tunics showed like drops of blood among the dark multitude, and nearly

naked children, whose skin shone beneath their copper bracelets,

gesticulated in the foliage of the columns, or amid the branches of

a palm tree. Some of the Ancients were posted on the platform of the

towers, and people did not know why a personage with a long beard stood

thus in a dreamy attitude here and there. He appeared in the distance

against the background of the sky, vague as a phantom and motionless as

stone.

All, however, were oppressed with the same anxiety; it was feared that

the Barbarians, seeing themselves so strong, might take a fancy to stay.

But they were leaving with so much good faith that the Carthaginians

grew bold and mingled with the soldiers. They overwhelmed them with

protestations and embraces. Some with exaggerated politeness and

audacious hypocrisy even sought to induce them not to leave the city.

They threw perfumes, flowers, and pieces of silver to them. They gave

them amulets to avert sickness; but they had spit upon them three times

to attract death, or had enclosed jackal’s hair within them to put

cowardice into their hearts. Aloud, they invoked Melkarth’s favour,

and in a whisper, his curse.

Then came the mob of baggage, beasts of burden, and stragglers. The sick

groaned on the backs of dromedaries, while others limped along leaning

on broken pikes. The drunkards carried leathern bottles, and the greedy

quarters of meat, cakes, fruits, butter wrapped in fig leaves, and snow

in linen bags. Some were to be seen with parasols in their hands, and

parrots on their shoulders. They had mastiffs, gazelles, and panthers

following behind them. Women of Libyan race, mounted on asses, inveighed

against the Negresses who had forsaken the lupanaria of Malqua for the

soldiers; many of them were suckling children suspended on their bosoms

by leathern thongs. The mules were goaded out at the point of the sword,

their backs bending beneath the load of tents, while there were numbers

of serving-men and water-carriers, emaciated, jaundiced with fever,

and filthy with vermin, the scum of the Carthaginian populace, who had

attached themselves to the Barbarians.

When they had passed, the gates were shut behind them, but the people

did not descend from the walls. The army soon spread over the breadth of

the isthmus.

It parted into unequal masses. Then the lances appeared like tall blades

of grass, and finally all was lost in a train of dust; those of the

soldiers who looked back towards Carthage could now only see its long

walls with their vacant battlements cut out against the edge of the sky.

Then the Barbarians heard a great shout. They thought that some from

among them (for they did not know their own number) had remained in the

town, and were amusing themselves by pillaging a temple. They laughed a

great deal at the idea of this, and then continued their journey.

They were rejoiced to find themselves, as in former days, marching all

together in the open country, and some of the Greeks sang the old song

of the Mamertines:

“With my lance and sword I plough and reap; I am master of the house!

The disarmed man falls at my feet and calls me Lord and Great King.”

They shouted, they leaped, the merriest began to tell stories; the

time of their miseries was past. As they arrived at Tunis, some of

them remarked that a troop of Balearic slingers was missing. They were

doubtless not far off; and no further heed was paid to them.

Some went to lodge in the houses, others camped at the foot of the

walls, and the townspeople came out to chat with the soldiers.

During the whole night fires were seen burning on the horizon in the

direction of Carthage; the light stretched like giant torches across the

motionless lake. No one in the army could tell what festival was being

celebrated.

On the following day the Barbarians passed through a region that was

covered with cultivation. The domains of the patricians succeeded one

another along the border of the route; channels of water flowed

through woods of palm; there were long, green lines of olive-trees;

rose-coloured vapours floated in the gorges of the hills, while blue

mountains reared themselves behind. A warm wind was blowing. Chameleons

were crawling on the broad leaves of the cactus.

The Barbarians slackened their speed.

They marched on in isolated detachments, or lagged behind one another at

long intervals. They ate grapes along the margin of the vines. They lay

on the grass and gazed with stupefaction upon the large, artificially

twisted horns of the oxen, the sheep clothed with skins to protect their

wool, the furrows crossing one another so as to form lozenges, and the

ploughshares like ships’ anchors, with the pomegranate trees that were

watered with silphium. Such wealth of the soil and such inventions of

wisdom dazzled them.

In the evening they stretched themselves on the tents without unfolding

them; and thought with regret of Hamilcar’s feast, as they fell asleep

with their faces towards the stars.

In the middle of the following day they halted on the bank of a river,

amid clumps of rose-bays. Then they quickly threw aside lances, bucklers

and belts. They bathed with shouts, and drew water in their helmets,

while others drank lying flat on their stomachs, and all in the midst of

the beasts of burden whose baggage was slipping from them.

Spendius, who was seated on a dromedary stolen in Hamilcar’s parks,

perceived Matho at a distance, with his arm hanging against his breast,

his head bare, and his face bent down, giving his mule drink, and

watching the water flow. Spendius immediately ran through the crowd

calling him, “Master! master!”

Matho gave him but scant thanks for his blessings, but Spendius paid no

heed to this, and began to march behind him, from time to time turning

restless glances in the direction of Carthage.

He was the son of a Greek rhetor and a Campanian prostitute. He had at

first grown rich by dealing in women; then, ruined by a shipwreck, he

had made war against the Romans with the herdsmen of Samnium. He had

been taken and had escaped; he had been retaken, and had worked in the

quarries, panted in the vapour-baths, shrieked under torture, passed

through the hands of many masters, and experienced every frenzy. At

last, one day, in despair, he had flung himself into the sea from the

top of a trireme where he was working at the oar. Some of Hamilcar’s

sailors had picked him up when at the point of death, and had brought

him to the ergastulum of Megara, at Carthage. But, as fugitives were to

be given back to the Romans, he had taken advantage of the confusion to

fly with the soldiers.

During the whole of the march he remained near Matho; he brought him

food, assisted him to dismount, and spread a carpet in the evening

beneath his head. Matho at last was touched by these attentions, and by

degrees unlocked his lips.

He had been born in the gulf of Syrtis. His father had taken him on a

pilgrimage to the temple of Ammon. Then he had hunted elephants in the

forests of the Garamantes. Afterwards he had entered the service of

Carthage. He had been appointed tetrarch at the capture of Drepanum.

The Republic owed him four horses, twenty-three medimni of wheat, and

a winter’s pay. He feared the gods, and wished to die in his native

land.

Spendius spoke to him of his travels, and of the peoples and temples

that he had visited. He knew many things: he could make sandals,

boar-spears and nets; he could tame wild beasts and could cook fish.

Sometimes he would interrupt himself, and utter a hoarse cry from the

depths of his throat; Matho’s mule would quicken his pace, and others

would hasten after them, and then Spendius would begin again though

still torn with agony. This subsided at last on the evening of the

fourth day.

They were marching side by side to the right of the army on the side of

a hill; below them stretched the plain lost in the vapours of the night.

The lines of soldiers also were defiling below, making undulations in

the shade. From time to time these passed over eminences lit up by the

moon; then stars would tremble on the points of the pikes, the helmets

would glimmer for an instant, all would disappear, and others would come

on continually. Startled flocks bleated in the distance, and a something

of infinite sweetness seemed to sink upon the earth.

Spendius, with his head thrown back and his eyes half-closed, inhaled

the freshness of the wind with great sighs; he spread out his arms,

moving his fingers that he might the better feel the cares that streamed

over his body. Hopes of vengeance came back to him and transported him.

He pressed his hand upon his mouth to check his sobs, and half-swooning

with intoxication, let go the halter of his dromedary, which was

proceeding with long, regular steps. Matho had relapsed into his former

melancholy; his legs hung down to the ground, and the grass made a

continuous rustling as it beat against his cothurni.

The journey, however, spread itself out without ever coming to an end.

At the extremity of a plain they would always reach a round-shaped

plateau; then they would descend again into a valley, and the mountains

which seemed to block up the horizon would, in proportion as they were

approached, glide as it were from their positions. From time to time a

river would appear amid the verdure of tamarisks to lose itself at the

turning of the hills. Sometimes a huge rock would tower aloft like the

prow of a vessel or the pedestal of some vanished colossus.

At regular intervals they met with little quadrangular temples, which

served as stations for the pilgrims who repaired to Sicca. They were

closed like tombs. The Libyans struck great blows upon the doors to have

them opened. But no one inside responded.

Then the cultivation became more rare. They suddenly entered upon belts

of sand bristling with thorny thickets. Flocks of sheep were browsing

among the stones; a woman with a blue fleece about her waist was

watching them. She fled screaming when she saw the soldiers’ pikes

among the rocks.

They were marching through a kind of large passage bordered by two

chains of reddish coloured hillocks, when their nostrils were greeted

with a nauseous odour, and they thought that they could see something

extraordinary on the top of a carob tree: a lion’s head reared itself

above the leaves.

They ran thither. It was a lion with his four limbs fastened to a cross

like a criminal. His huge muzzle fell upon his breast, and his two

fore-paws, half-hidden beneath the abundance of his mane, were spread

out wide like the wings of a bird. His ribs stood severally out beneath

his distended skin; his hind legs, which were nailed against each other,

were raised somewhat, and the black blood, flowing through his hair,

had collected in stalactites at the end of his tail, which hung down

perfectly straight along the cross. The soldiers made merry around; they

called him consul, and Roman citizen, and threw pebbles into his eyes to

drive away the gnats.

But a hundred paces further on they saw two more, and then there

suddenly appeared a long file of crosses bearing lions. Some had been

so long dead that nothing was left against the wood but the remains

of their skeletons; others which were half eaten away had their jaws

twisted into horrible grimaces; there were some enormous ones; the

shafts of the crosses bent beneath them, and they swayed in the wind,

while bands of crows wheeled ceaselessly in the air above their heads.

It was thus that the Carthaginian peasants avenged themselves when

they captured a wild beast; they hoped to terrify the others by such

an example. The Barbarians ceased their laughter, and were long lost

in amazement. “What people is this,” they thought, “that amuses

itself by crucifying lions!”

They were, besides, especially the men of the North, vaguely uneasy,

troubled, and already sick. They tore their hands with the darts of the

aloes; great mosquitoes buzzed in their ears, and dysentry was breaking

out in the army. They were weary at not yet seeing Sicca. They were

afraid of losing themselves and of reaching the desert, the country of

sands and terrors. Many even were unwilling to advance further. Others

started back to Carthage.

At last on the seventh day, after following the base of a mountain for a

long time, they turned abruptly to the right, and there then appeared

a line of walls resting on white rocks and blending with them. Suddenly

the entire city rose; blue, yellow, and white veils moved on the walls

in the redness of the evening. These were the priestesses of Tanith,

who had hastened hither to receive the men. They stood ranged along the

rampart, striking tabourines, playing lyres, and shaking crotala, while

the rays of the sun, setting behind them in the mountains of Numidia,

shot between the strings of their lyres over which their naked arms were

stretched. At intervals their instruments would become suddenly still,

and a cry would break forth strident, precipitate, frenzied, continuous,

a sort of barking which they made by striking both corners of the mouth

with the tongue. Others, more motionless than the Sphynx, rested on

their elbows with their chins on their hands, and darted their great

black eyes upon the army as it ascended.

Although Sicca was a sacred town it could not hold such a multitude; the

temple alone, with its appurtenances, occupied half of it. Accordingly

the Barbarians established themselves at their ease on the plain;

those who were disciplined in regular troops, and the rest according to

nationality or their own fancy.

The Greeks ranged their tents of skin in parallel lines; the Iberians

placed their canvas pavilions in a circle; the Gauls made themselves

huts of planks; the Libyans cabins of dry stones, while the Negroes with

their nails hollowed out trenches in the sand to sleep in. Many, not

knowing where to go, wandered about among the baggage, and at nightfall

lay down in their ragged mantles on the ground.

The plain, which was wholly bounded by mountains, expanded around them.

Here and there a palm tree leaned over a sand hill, and pines and oaks

flecked the sides of the precipices: sometimes the rain of a storm would

hang from the sky like a long scarf, while the country everywhere was

still covered with azure and serenity; then a warm wind would drive

before it tornadoes of dust, and a stream would descend in cascades from

the heights of Sicca, where, with its roofing of gold on its columns of

brass, rose the temple of the Carthaginian Venus, the mistress of the

land. She seemed to fill it with her soul. In such convulsions of the

soil, such alternations of temperature, and such plays of light would

she manifest the extravagance of her might with the beauty of her

eternal smile. The mountains at their summits were crescent-shaped;

others were like women’s bosoms presenting their swelling breasts, and

the Barbarians felt a heaviness that was full of delight weighing down

their fatigues.

Spendius had bought a slave with the money brought him by his dromedary.

The whole day long he lay asleep stretched before Matho’s tent. Often

he would awake, thinking in his dreams that he heard the whistling of

the thongs; with a smile he would pass his hands over the scars on his

legs at the place where the fetters had long been worn, and then he

would fall asleep again.

Matho accepted his companionship, and when he went out Spendius would

escort him like a lictor with a long sword on his thigh; or perhaps

Matho would rest his arm carelessly on the other’s shoulder, for

Spendius was small.

One evening when they were passing together through the streets in the

camp they perceived some men covered with white cloaks; among them was

Narr’ Havas, the prince of the Numidians. Matho started.

“Your sword!” he cried; “I will kill him!”

“Not yet!” said Spendius, restraining him. Narr’ Havas was already

advancing towards him.

He kissed both thumbs in token of alliance, showing nothing of the anger

which he had experienced at the drunkenness of the feast; then he spoke

at length against Carthage, but did not say what brought him among the

Barbarians.

“Was it to betray them, or else the Republic?” Spendius asked

himself; and as he expected to profit by every disorder, he felt

grateful to Narr’ Havas for the future perfidies of which he suspected

him.

The chief of the Numidians remained amongst the Mercenaries. He appeared

desirous of attaching Matho to himself. He sent him fat goats, gold

dust, and ostrich feathers. The Libyan, who was amazed at such caresses,

was in doubt whether to respond to them or to become exasperated at

them. But Spendius pacified him, and Matho allowed himself to be ruled

by the slave, remaining ever irresolute and in an unconquerable torpor,

like those who have once taken a draught of which they are to die.

One morning when all three went out lion-hunting, Narr’ Havas

concealed a dagger in his cloak. Spendius kept continually behind him,

and when they returned the dagger had not been drawn.

Another time Narr’ Havas took them a long way off, as far as the

boundaries of his kingdom. They came to a narrow gorge, and Narr’

Havas smiled as he declared that he had forgotten the way. Spendius

found it again.

But most frequently Matho would go off at sunrise, as melancholy as

an augur, to wander about the country. He would stretch himself on the

sand, and remain there motionless until the evening.

He consulted all the soothsayers in the army one after the

other,—those who watch the trail of serpents, those who read the

stars, and those who breathe upon the ashes of the dead. He swallowed

galbanum, seseli, and viper’s venom which freezes the heart; Negro

women, singing barbarous words in the moonlight, pricked the skin of

his forehead with golden stylets; he loaded himself with necklaces

and charms; he invoked in turn Baal-Khamon, Moloch, the seven Kabiri,

Tanith, and the Venus of the Greeks. He engraved a name upon a copper

plate, and buried it in the sand at the threshold of his tent. Spendius

used to hear him groaning and talking to himself.

One night he went in.

Matho, as naked as a corpse, was lying on a lion’s skin flat on his

stomach, with his face in both his hands; a hanging lamp lit up his

armour, which was hooked on to the tent-pole above his head.

“You are suffering?” said the slave to him. “What is the matter

with you? Answer me?” And he shook him by the shoulder calling him

several times, “Master! master!”

At last Matho lifted large troubled eyes towards him.

“Listen!” he said in a low voice, and with a finger on his lips.

“It is the wrath of the Gods! Hamilcar’s daughter pursues me! I am

afraid of her, Spendius!” He pressed himself close against his breast

like a child terrified by a phantom. “Speak to me! I am sick! I want

to get well! I have tried everything! But you, you perhaps know some

stronger gods, or some resistless invocation?”

“For what purpose?” asked Spendius.

Striking his head with both his fists, he replied:

“To rid me of her!”

Then speaking to himself with long pauses he said:

“I am no doubt the victim of some holocaust which she has promised to

the gods?—She holds me fast by a chain which people cannot see. If I

walk, it is she that is advancing; when I stop, she is resting! Her eyes

burn me, I hear her voice. She encompasses me, she penetrates me. It

seems to me that she has become my soul!

“And yet between us there are, as it were, the invisible billows of a

boundless ocean! She is far away and quite inaccessible! The splendour

of her beauty forms a cloud of light around her, and at times I think

that I have never seen her—that she does not exist—and that it is

all a dream!”

Matho wept thus in the darkness; the Barbarians were sleeping. Spendius,

as he looked at him, recalled the young men who once used to entreat

him with golden cases in their hands, when he led his herd of courtesans

through the towns; a feeling of pity moved him, and he said—

“Be strong, my master! Summon your will, and beseech the gods no more,

for they turn not aside at the cries of men! Weeping like a coward! And

you are not humiliated that a woman can cause you so much suffering?”

“Am I a child?” said Matho. “Do you think that I am moved by their

faces and songs? We kept them at Drepanum to sweep out our stables. I

have embraced them amid assaults, beneath falling ceilings, and while

the catapult was still vibrating!—But she, Spendius, she!—”

The slave interrupted him:

“If she were not Hanno’s daughter—”

“No!” cried Matho. “She has nothing in common with the daughters

of other men! Have you seen her great eyes beneath her great eyebrows,

like suns beneath triumphal arches? Think: when she appeared all the

torches grew pale. Her naked breast shone here and there through the

diamonds of her necklace; behind her you perceived as it were the odour

of a temple, and her whole being emitted something that was sweeter than

wine and more terrible than death. She walked, however, and then she

stopped.”

He remained gaping with his head cast down and his eyeballs fixed.

“But I want her! I need her! I am dying for her! I am transported with

frenzied joy at the thought of clasping her in my arms, and yet I hate

her, Spendius! I should like to beat her! What is to be done? I have a

mind to sell myself and become her slave! You have been that! You were

able to get sight of her; speak to me of her! Every night she ascends

to the terrace of her palace, does she not? Ah! the stones must quiver

beneath her sandals, and the stars bend down to see her!”

He fell back in a perfect frenzy, with a rattling in his throat like a

wounded bull.

Then Matho sang: “He pursued into the forest the female monster, whose

tail undulated over the dead leaves like a silver brook.” And with

lingering tones he imitated