第 十五 章 · MATHO

had traced an imaginary line

from his tent to Megara, and inwardly swore to follow it, and none of

their men stirred. But the rest, under the command of Autaritus, went

off, abandoning the western part of the rampart, and so profound was the

carelessness exhibited that no one even thought of replacing them.

Narr’ Havas spied them from afar in the mountains. During the night he

led all his men along the sea-shore on the outer side of the Lagoon, and

entered Carthage.

He presented himself as a saviour with six thousand men all carrying

meal under their cloaks, and forty elephants laden with forage and dried

meat. The people flocked quickly around them; they gave them names. The

sight of these strong animals, sacred to Baal, gave the Carthaginians

even more joy than the arrival of such relief; it was a token of the

tenderness of the god, a proof that he was at last about to interfere in

the war to defend them.

Narr’ Havas received the compliments of the Ancients. Then he ascended

to Salammbô’s palace.

He had not seen her again since the time when in Hamilcar’s tent amid

the five armies he had felt her little, cold, soft hand fastened to his

own; she had left for Carthage after the betrothal. His love, which

had been diverted by other ambitions, had come back to him; and now he

expected to enjoy his rights, to marry her, and take her.

Salammbô did not understand how the young man could ever become her

master! Although she asked Tanith every day for Matho’s death, her

horror of the Libyan was growing less. She vaguely felt that the hate

with which he had persecuted her was something almost religious,—and

she would fain have seen in Narr’ Havas’s person a reflection, as

it were, of that malice which still dazzled her. She desired to know him

better, and yet his presence would have embarrassed her. She sent him

word that she could not receive him.

Moreover, Hamilcar had forbidden his people to admit the King of the

Numidians to see her; by putting off his reward to the end of the war

he hoped to retain his devotion;—and, through dread of the Suffet,

Narr’ Havas withdrew.

But he bore himself haughtily towards the Hundred. He changed their

arrangements. He demanded privileges for his men, and placed them

on important posts; thus the Barbarians stared when they perceived

Numidians on the towers.

The surprise of the Carthaginians was greater still when three hundred

of their own people, who had been made prisoners during the Sicilian

war, arrived on board an old Punic trireme. Hamilcar, in fact, had

secretly sent back to the Quirites the crews of the Latin vessels,

taken before the defection of the Tyrian towns; and, to reciprocate the

courtesy, Rome was now sending him back her captives. She scorned the

overtures of the Mercenaries in Sardinian, and would not even recognise

the inhabitants of Utica as subjects.

Hiero, who was ruling at Syracuse, was carried away by this example. For

the preservation of his own States it was necessary that an equilibrium

should exist between the two peoples; he was interested, therefore, in

the safety of the Chanaanites, and he declared himself their friend, and

sent them twelve hundred oxen, with fifty-three thousand nebels of pure

wheat.

A deeper reason prompted aid to Carthage. It was felt that if the

Mercenaries triumphed, every one, from soldier to plate-washer, would

rise, and that no government and no house could resist them.

Meanwhile Hamilcar was scouring the eastern districts. He drove back

the Gauls, and all the Barbarians found that they were themselves in

something like a state of siege.

Then he set himself to harass them. He would arrive and then retire, and

by constantly renewing this manouvre, he gradually detached them from

their encampments. Spendius was obliged to follow them, and in the end

Matho yielded in like manner.

He did not pass beyond Tunis. He shut himself up within its walls. This

persistence was full of wisdom, for soon Narr’ Havas was to be

seen issuing from the gate of Khamon with his elephants and soldiers.

Hamilcar was recalling him, but the other Barbarians were already

wandering about in the provinces in pursuit of the Suffet.

The latter had received three thousand Gauls from Clypea. He had horses

brought to him from Cyrenaica, and armour from Brutium, and began the

war again.

Never had his genius been so impetuous and fertile. For five moons he

dragged his enemies after him. He had an end to which he wished to guide

them.

The Barbarians had at first tried to encompass him with small

detachments, but he always escaped them. They ceased to separate then.

Their army amounted to about forty thousand men, and several times they

enjoyed the sight of seeing the Carthaginians fall back.

The horsemen of Narr’ Havas were what they found most tormenting.

Often, at times of the greatest weariness, when they were advancing over

the plains, and dozing beneath the weight of their arms, a great line of

dust would suddenly rise on the horizon; there would be a galloping up

to them, and a rain of darts would pour from the bosom of a cloud filled

with flaming eyes. The Numidians in their white cloaks would utter

loud shouts, raise their arms, press their rearing stallions with their

knees, and, wheeling them round abruptly, would then disappear. They had

always supplies of javelins and dromedaries some distance off, and they

would return more terrible than before, howl like wolves, and take to

flight like vultures. The Barbarians posted at the extremities of the

files fell one by one; and this would continue until evening, when an

attempt would be made to enter the mountains.

Although they were perilous for elephants, Hamilcar made his way in

among them. He followed the long chain which extends from the promontory

of Hermæum to the top of Zagouan. This, they believed, was a device for

hiding the insufficiency of his troops. But the continual uncertainty in

which he kept them exasperated them at last more than any defeat. They

did not lose heart, and marched after him.

At last one evening they surprised a body of velites amid some big

rocks at the entrance of a pass between the Silver Mountain and the Lead

Mountain; the entire army was certainly in front of them, for a noise

of footsteps and clarions could be heard; the Carthaginians immediately

fled through the gorge. It descended into a plain, and was shaped like

an iron hatchet with a surrounding of lofty cliffs. The Barbarians

dashed into it in order to overtake the velites; quite at the bottom

other Carthaginians were running tumultuously amid galloping oxen. A man

in a red cloak was to be seen; it was the Suffet; they shouted this to

one another; and they were carried away with increased fury and joy.

Several, from laziness or prudence, had remained on the threshold of the

pass. But some cavalry, debouching from a wood, beat them down upon

the rest with blows of pike and sabre; and soon all the Barbarians were

below in the plain.

Then this great human mass, after swaying to and fro for some time,

stood still; they could discover no outlet.

Those who were nearest to the pass went back again, but the passage had

entirely disappeared. They hailed those in front to make them go on;

they were being crushed against the mountain, and from a distance they

inveighed against their companions, who were unable to find the route

again.

In fact the Barbarians had scarcely descended when men who had been

crouching behind the rocks raised the latter with beams and overthrew

them, and as the slope was steep the huge blocks had rolled down

pell-mell and completely stopped up the narrow opening.

At the other extremity of the plain stretched a long passage, split in

gaps here and there, and leading to a ravine which ascended to the upper

plateau, where the Punic army was stationed. Ladders had been placed

beforehand in this passage against the wall of cliff; and, protected by

the windings of the gaps, the velites were able to seize and mount them

before being overtaken. Several even made their way to the bottom of the

ravine; they were drawn up with cables, for the ground at this spot was

of moving sand, and so much inclined that it was impossible to climb

it even on the knees. The Barbarians arrived almost immediately. But

a portcullis, forty cubits high, and made to fit the intervening space

exactly, suddenly sank before them like a rampart fallen from the skies.

The Suffet’s combinations had therefore succeeded. None of the

Mercenaries knew the mountain, and, marching as they did at the head

of their columns, they had drawn on the rest. The rocks, which were

somewhat narrow at the base, had been easily cast down; and, while

all were running, his army had raised shouts, as of distress, on the

horizon. Hamilcar, it is true, might have lost his velites, only half of

whom remained, but he would have sacrificed twenty times as many for the

success of such an enterprise.

The Barbarians pressed forward until morning, in compact files, from one

end of the plain to the other. They felt the mountain with their hands,

seeking to discover a passage.

At last day broke; and they perceived all about them a great white wall

hewn with the pick. And no means of safety, no hope! The two natural

outcomes from this blind alley were closed by the portcullis and the

heaps of rocks.

Then they all looked at one another without speaking. They sank down in

collapse, feeling an icy coldness in their loins, and an overwhelming

weight upon their eyelids.

They rose, and bounded against the rocks. But the lowest were weighted

by the pressure of the others, and were immovable. They tried to cling

to them so as to reach the top, but the bellying shape of the great

masses rendered all hold impossible. They sought to cleave the ground on

both sides of the gorge, but their instruments broke. They made a large

fire with the tent poles, but the fire could not burn the mountain.

They returned to the portcullis; it was garnished with long nails as

thick as stakes, as sharp as the spines of a porcupine, and closer than

the hairs of a brush. But they were animated by such rage that they

dashed themselves against it. The first were pierced to the backbone,

those coming next surged over them, and all fell back, leaving human

fragments and bloodstained hair on those horrible branches.

When their discouragement was somewhat abated, they made an examination

of the provisions. The Mercenaries, whose baggage was lost, possessed

scarcely enough for two days; and all the rest found themselves

destitute,—for they had been awaiting a convoy promised by the

villages of the South.

However, some bulls were roaming about, those which the Carthaginians

had loosed in the gorge to attract the Barbarians. They killed them with

lance thrusts and ate them, and when their stomachs were filled their

thoughts were less mournful.

The next day they slaughtered all the mules to the number of about

forty; then they scraped the skins, boiled the entrails, pounded the

bones, and did not yet despair; the army from Tunis had no doubt been

warned, and was coming.

But on the evening of the fifth day their hunger increased; they gnawed

their sword-belts, and the little sponges which bordered the bottom of

their helmets.

These forty thousand men were massed into the species of hippodrome

formed by the mountain about them. Some remained in front of the

portcullis, or at the foot of the rocks; the rest covered the plain

confusedly. The strong shunned one another, and the timid sought out the

brave, who, nevertheless, were unable to save them.

To avoid infection, the corpses of the velites had been speedily buried;

and the position of the graves was no longer visible.

All the Barbarians lay drooping on the ground. A veteran would pass

between their lines here and there; and they would howl curses against

the Carthaginians, against Hamilcar, and against Matho, although he was

innocent of their disaster; but it seemed to them that their pains would

have been less if he had shared them. Then they groaned, and some wept

softly like little children.

They came to the captains and besought them to grant them something that

would alleviate their sufferings. The others made no reply; or, seized

with fury, would pick up a stone and fling it in their faces.

Several, in fact, carefully kept a reserve of food in a hole in the

ground—a few handfuls of dates, or a little meal; and they ate this

during the night, with their heads bent beneath their cloaks. Those

who had swords kept them naked in their hands, and the most suspicious

remained standing with their backs against the mountain.

They accused their chiefs and threatened them. Autaritus was not afraid

of showing himself. With the Barbaric obstinacy which nothing could

discourage, he would advance twenty times a day to the rocks at the

bottom, hoping every time to find them perchance displaced; and swaying

his heavy fur-covered shoulders, he reminded his companions of a bear

coming forth from its cave in springtime to see whether the snows are

melted.

Spendius, surrounded by the Greeks, hid himself in one of the gaps; as

he was afraid, he caused a rumour of his death to be spread.

They were now hideously lean; their skin was overlaid with bluish

marblings. On the evening of the ninth day three Iberians died.

Their frightened companions left the spot. They were stripped, and the

white, naked bodies lay in the sunshine on the sand.

Then the Garamantians began to prowl slowly round about them. They were

men accustomed to existence in solitude, and they reverenced no god. At

last the oldest of the band made a sign, and bending over the corpses

they cut strips from them with their knives, then squatted upon their

heels and ate. The rest looked on from a distance; they uttered cries

of horror;—many, nevertheless, being, at the bottom of their souls,

jealous of such courage.

In the middle of the night some of these approached, and, dissembling

their eagerness, asked for a small mouthful, merely to try, they said.

Bolder ones came up; their number increased; there was soon a crowd. But

almost all of them let their hands fall on feeling the cold flesh on the

edge of their lips; others, on the contrary, devoured it with delight.

That they might be led away by example, they urged one another on

mutually. Such as had at first refused went to see the Garamantians, and

returned no more. They cooked the pieces on coals at the point of the

sword; they salted them with dust, and contended for the best morsels.

When nothing was left of the three corpses, their eyes ranged over the

whole plain to find others.

But were they not in possession of Carthaginians—twenty captives taken

in the last encounter, whom no one had noticed up to the present? These

disappeared; moreover, it was an act of vengeance. Then, as they must

live, as the taste for this food had become developed, and as they were

dying, they cut the throats of the water-carriers, grooms, and all the

serving-men belonging to the Mercenaries. They killed some of them every

day. Some ate much, recovered strength, and were sad no more.

Soon this resource failed. Then the longing was directed to the wounded

and sick. Since they could not recover, it was as well to release

them from their tortures; and, as soon as a man began to stagger, all

exclaimed that he was now lost, and ought to be made use of for the

rest. Artifices were employed to accelerate their death; the last

remnant of their foul portion was stolen from them; they were trodden

on as though by inadvertence; those in the last throes wishing to make

believe that they were strong, strove to stretch out their arms, to

rise, to laugh. Men who had swooned came to themselves at the touch of a

notched blade sawing off a limb;—and they still slew, ferociously and

needlessly, to sate their fury.

A mist heavy and warm, such as comes in those regions at the end

of winter, sank on the fourteenth day upon the army. This change

of temperature brought numerous deaths with it, and corruption was

developed with frightful rapidity in the warm dampness which was kept

in by the sides of the mountain. The drizzle that fell upon the corpses

softened them, and soon made the plain one broad tract of rottenness.

Whitish vapours floated overhead; they pricked the nostrils, penetrated

the skin, and troubled the sight; and the Barbarians thought that

through the exhalations of the breath they could see the souls of their

companions. They were overwhelmed with immense disgust. They wished for

nothing more; they preferred to die.

Two days afterwards the weather became fine again, and hunger seized

them once more. It seemed to them that their stomachs were being

wrenched from them with tongs. Then they rolled about in convulsions,

flung handfuls of dust into their mouths, bit their arms, and burst into

frantic laughter.

They were still more tormented by thirst, for they had not a drop of

water, the leathern bottles having been completely dried up since the

ninth day. To cheat their need they applied their tongues to the metal

plates on their waist-belts, their ivory pommels, and the steel of their

swords. Some former caravan-leaders tightened their waists with ropes.

Others sucked a pebble. They drank urine cooled in their brazen helmets.

And they still expected the army from Tunis! The length of time which it

took in coming was, according to their conjectures, an assurance of its

early arrival. Besides, Matho, who was a brave fellow, would not desert

them. “’Twill be to-morrow!” they would say to one another; and

then to-morrow would pass.

At the beginning they had offered up prayers and vows, and practised all

kinds of incantations. Just now their only feeling to their divinities

was one of hatred, and they strove to revenge themselves by believing in

them no more.

Men of violent disposition perished first; the Africans held out

better than the Gauls. Zarxas lay stretched at full length among the

Balearians, his hair over his arm, inert. Spendius found a plant with

broad leaves filled abundantly with juice, and after declaring that it

was poisonous, so as to keep off the rest, he fed himself upon it.

They were too weak to knock down the flying crows with stones. Sometimes

when a gypaëtus was perched on a corpse, and had been mangling it for

a long time, a man would set himself to crawl towards it with a javelin

between his teeth. He would support himself with one hand, and after

taking a good aim, throw his weapon. The white-feathered creature,

disturbed by the noise, would desist and look about in tranquil fashion

like a cormorant on a rock, and would then again thrust in its hideous,

yellow beak, while the man, in despair, would fall flat on his face in

the dust. Some succeeded in discovering chameleons and serpents. But it

was the love of life that kept them alive. They directed their souls to

this idea exclusively, and clung to existence by an effort of the will

that prolonged it.

The most stoical kept close to one another, seated in a circle here and

there, among the dead in the middle of the plain; and wrapped in their

cloaks they gave themselves up silently to their sadness.

Those who had been born in towns recalled the resounding streets, the

taverns, theatres, baths, and the barbers’ shops where there are tales

to be heard. Others could once more see country districts at sunset,

when the yellow corn waves, and the great oxen ascend the hills again

with the ploughshares on their necks. Travellers dreamed of cisterns,

hunters of their forests, veterans of battles; and in the somnolence

that benumbed them their thoughts jostled one another with the

precipitancy and clearness of dreams. Hallucinations came suddenly upon

them; they sought for a door in the mountain in order to flee, and tried

to pass through it. Others thought that they were sailing in a storm

and gave orders for the handling of a ship, or else fell back in terror,

perceiving Punic battalions in the clouds. There were some who imagined

themselves at a feast, and sang.

Many through a strange mania would repeat the same word or continually

make the same gesture. Then when they happened to raise their heads

and look at one another they were choked with sobs on discovering the

horrible ravages made in their faces. Some had ceased to suffer, and to

while away the hours told of the perils which they had escaped.

Death was certain and imminent to all. How many times had they not tried

to open up a passage! As to implore terms from the conqueror, by what

means could they do so? They did not even know where Hamilcar was.

The wind was blowing from the direction of the ravine. It made the sand

flow perpetually in cascades over the portcullis; and the cloaks and

hair of the Barbarians were being covered with it as though the earth

were rising upon them and desirous of burying them. Nothing stirred; the

eternal mountain seemed still higher to them every morning.

Sometimes flights of birds darted past beneath the blue sky in the

freedom of the air. The men closed their eyes that they might not see

them.

At first they felt a buzzing in their ears, their nails grew black, the

cold reached to their breasts; they lay upon their sides and expired

without a cry.

On the nineteenth day two thousand Asiatics were dead, with fifteen

hundred from the Archipelago, eight thousand from Libya, the youngest of

the Mercenaries and whole tribes—in all twenty thousand soldiers, or

half of the army.

Autaritus, who had only fifty Gauls left, was going to kill himself in

order to put an end to this state of things, when he thought he saw a

man on the top of the mountain in front of him.

Owing to his elevation this man did not appear taller than a dwarf.

However, Autaritus recognised a shield shaped like a trefoil on his left

arm. “A Carthaginian!” he exclaimed, and immediately throughout

the plain, before the portcullis and beneath the rocks, all rose. The

soldier was walking along the edge of the precipice; the Barbarians

gazed at him from below.

Spendius picked up the head of an ox; then having formed a diadem with

two belts, he fixed it on the horns at the end of a pole in token of

pacific intentions. The Carthaginian disappeared. They waited.

At last in the evening a sword-belt suddenly fell from above like a

stone loosened from the cliff. It was made of red leather covered with

embroidery, with three diamond stars, and stamped in the centre, it bore

the mark of the Great Council: a horse beneath a palm-tree. This was

Hamilcar’s reply, the safe-conduct that he sent them.

They had nothing to fear; any change of fortune brought with it the end

of their woes. They were moved with extravagant joy, they embraced one

another, they wept. Spendius, Autaritus, and Zarxas, four Italiotes,

a Negro and two Spartans offered themselves as envoys. They were

immediately accepted. They did not know, however, by what means they

should get away.

But a cracking sounded in the direction of the rocks; and the most

elevated of them, after rocking to and fro, rebounded to the bottom.

In fact, if they were immovable on the side of the Barbarians—for it

would have been necessary to urge them up an incline plane, and

they were, moreover, heaped together owing to the narrowness of the

gorge—on the others, on the contrary, it was sufficient to drive

against them with violence to make them descend. The Carthaginians

pushed them, and at daybreak they projected into the plain like the

steps of an immense ruined staircase.

The Barbarians were still unable to climb them. Ladders were held out

for their assistance; all rushed upon them. The discharge of a catapult

drove the crowd back; only the Ten were taken away.

They walked amid the Clinabarians, leaning their hands on the horses’

croups for support.

Now that their first joy was over they began to harbour anxieties.

Hamilcar’s demands would be cruel. But Spendius reassured them.

“I will speak!” And he boasted that he knew excellent things to say

for the safety of the army.

Behind all the bushes they met with ambushed sentries, who prostrated

themselves before the sword-belt which Spendius had placed over his

shoulder.

When they reached the Punic camp the crowd flocked around them, and they

thought that they could hear whisperings and laughter. The door of a

tent opened.

Hamilcar was at the very back of it seated on a stool beside a table on

which there shone a naked sword. He was surrounded by captains, who were

standing.

He started back on perceiving these men, and then bent over to examine

them.

Their pupils were strangely dilated, and there was a great black circle

round their eyes, which extended to the lower parts of their ears; their

bluish noses stood out between their hollow cheeks, which were chinked

with deep wrinkles; the skin of their bodies was too large for their

muscles, and was hidden beneath a slate-coloured dust; their lips were

glued to their yellow teeth; they exhaled an infectious odour; they

might have been taken for half-opened tombs, for living sepulchres.

In the centre of the tent, on a mat on which the captains were about to

sit down, there was a dish of smoking gourds. The Barbarians fastened

their eyes upon it with a shivering in all their limbs, and tears came

to their eyelids; nevertheless they restrained themselves.

Hamilcar turned away to speak to some one. Then they all flung

themselves upon it, flat on the ground. Their faces were soaked in the

fat, and the noise of their deglutition was mingled with the sobs of joy

which they uttered. Through astonishment, doubtless, rather than pity,

they were allowed to finish the mess. Then when they had risen Hamilcar

with a sign commanded the man who bore the sword-belt to speak. Spendius

was afraid; he stammered.

Hamilcar, while listening to him, kept turning round on his finger a

big gold ring, the same which had stamped the seal of Carthage upon the

sword-belt. He let it fall to the ground; Spendius immediately picked it

up; his servile habits came back to him in the presence of his master.

The others quivered with indignation at such baseness.

But the Greek raised his voice and spoke for a long time in rapid,

insidious, and even violent fashion, setting forth the crimes of Hanno,

whom he knew to be Barca’s enemy, and striving to move Hamilcar’s

pity by the details of their miseries and the recollection of their

devotion; in the end he became forgetful of himself, being carried away

by the warmth of his temper.

Hamilcar replied that he accepted their excuses. Peace, then, was about

to be concluded, and now it would be a definitive one! But he required

that ten Mercenaries, chosen by himself, should be delivered up to him

without weapons or tunics.

They had not expected such clemency; Spendius exclaimed: “Ah! twenty

if you wish, master!”

“No! ten will suffice,” replied Hamilcar quietly.

They were sent out of the tent to deliberate. As soon as they were

alone, Autaritus protested against the sacrifice of their companions,

and Zarxas said to Spendius:

“Why did you not kill him? his sword was there beside you!”

“Him!” said Spendius. “Him! him!” he repeated several times, as

though the thing had been impossible, and Hamilcar were an immortal.

They were so overwhelmed with weariness that they stretched themselves

on their backs on the ground, not knowing at what resolution to arrive.

Spendius urged them to yield. At last they consented, and went in again.

Then the Suffet put his hand into the hands of the ten Barbarians in

turn, and pressed their thumbs; then he rubbed it on his garment, for

their viscous skin gave a rude, soft impression to the touch, a greasy

tingling which induced horripilation. Afterwards he said to them:

“You are really all the chiefs of the Barbarians, and you have sworn

for them?”

“Yes!” they replied.

“Without constraint, from the bottom of your souls, with the intention

of fulfilling your promises?”

They assured him that they were returning to the rest in order to fulfil

them.

“Well!” rejoined the Suffet, “in accordance with the convention

concluded between myself, Barca, and the ambassadors of the Mercenaries,

it is you whom I choose and shall keep!”

Spendius fell swooning upon the mat. The Barbarians, as though

abandoning him, pressed close together; and there was not a word, not a

complaint.

Their companions, who were waiting for them, not seeing them return,

believed themselves betrayed. The envoys had no doubt given themselves

up to the Suffet.

They waited for two days longer; then on the morning of the third, their

resolution was taken. With ropes, picks, and arrows, arranged like

rungs between strips of canvas, they succeeded in scaling the rocks; and

leaving the weakest, about three thousand in number, behind them, they

began their march to rejoin the army at Tunis.

Above the gorge there stretched a meadow thinly sown with shrubs; the

Barbarians devoured the buds. Afterwards they found a field of beans;

and everything disappeared as though a cloud of grasshoppers had passed

that way. Three hours later they reached a second plateau bordered by a

belt of green hills.

Among the undulations of these hillocks, silvery sheaves shone at

intervals from one another; the Barbarians, who were dazzled by the

sun, could perceive confusedly below great black masses supporting them;

these rose, as though they were expanding. They were lances in towers on

elephants terribly armed.

Besides the spears on their breasts, the bodkin tusks, the brass plates

which covered their sides, and the daggers fastened to their knee-caps,

they had at the extremity of their tusks a leathern bracelet, in

which the handle of a broad cutlass was inserted; they had set out

simultaneously from the back part of the plain, and were advancing on

both sides in parallel lines.

The Barbarians were frozen with a nameless terror. They did not even try

to flee. They already found themselves surrounded.

The elephants entered into this mass of men; and the spurs on their

breasts divided it, the lances on their tusks upturned it like

ploughshares; they cut, hewed, and hacked with the scythes on their

trunks; the towers, which were full of phalaricas, looked like volcanoes

on the march; nothing could be distinguished but a large heap, whereon

human flesh, pieces of brass and blood made white spots, grey sheets

and red fuses. The horrible animals dug out black furrows as they passed

through the midst of it all.

The fiercest was driven by a Numidian who was crowned with a diadem of

plumes. He hurled javelins with frightful quickness, giving at intervals

a long shrill whistle. The great beasts, docile as dogs, kept an eye on

him during the carnage.

The circle of them narrowed by degrees; the weakened Barbarians offered

no resistance; the elephants were soon in the centre of the plain.

They lacked space; they thronged half-rearing together, and their tusks

clashed against one another. Suddenly Narr’ Havas quieted them, and

wheeling round they trotted back to the hills.

Two syntagmata, however, had taken refuge on the right in a bend of

ground, had thrown away their arms, and were all kneeling with their

faces towards the Punic tents imploring mercy with uplifted arms.

Their legs and hands were tied; then when they were stretched on the

ground beside one another the elephants were brought back.

Their breasts cracked like boxes being forced; two were crushed at every

step; the big feet sank into the bodies with a motion of the haunches

which made the elephants appear lame. They went on to the very end.

The level surface of the plain again became motionless. Night fell.

Hamilcar was delighting himself with the spectacle of his vengeance, but

suddenly he started.

He saw, and all saw, some more Barbarians six hundred paces to the

left on the summit of a peak! In fact four hundred of the stoutest

Mercenaries, Etruscans, Libyans, and Spartans had gained the heights at

the beginning, and had remained there in uncertainty until now. After

the massacre of their companions they resolved to make their way through

the Carthaginians; they were already descending in serried columns, in a

marvellous and formidable fashion.

A herald was immediately despatched to them. The Suffet needed soldiers;

he received them unconditionally, so greatly did he admire their

bravery. They could even, said the man of Carthage, come a little

nearer, to a place, which he pointed out to them, where they would find

provisions.

The Barbarians ran thither and spent the night in eating. Then the

Carthaginians broke into clamours against the Suffet’s partiality for

the Mercenaries.

Did he yield to these outbursts of insatiable hatred or was it a

refinement of treachery? The next day he came himself, without a sword

and bare-headed, with an escort of Clinabarians, and announced to

them that having too many to feed he did not intend to keep them.

Nevertheless, as he wanted men and he knew of no means of selecting the

good ones, they were to fight together to the death; he would then admit

the conquerors into his own body-guard. This death was quite as good as

another;—and then moving his soldiers aside (for the Punic standards

hid the horizon from the Mercenaries) he showed them the one hundred

and ninety-two elephants under Narr’ Havas, forming a single straight

line, their trunks brandishing broad steel blades like giant arms

holding axes above their heads.

The Barbarians looked at one another silently. It was not death that

made them turn pale, but the horrible compulsion to which they found

themselves reduced.

The community of their lives had brought about profound friendship among

these men. The camp, with most, took the place of their country; living

without a family they transferred the needful tenderness to a companion,

and they would fall asleep in the starlight side by side under the

same cloak. And then in their perpetual wanderings through all sorts of

countries, murders, and adventures, they had contracted affections, one

for the other, in which the stronger protected the younger in the midst

of battles, helped him to cross precipices, sponged the sweat of fevers

from his brow, and stole food for him, and the weaker, a child perhaps,

who had been picked up on the roadside, and had then become a Mercenary,

repaid this devotion by a thousand kindnesses.

They exchanged their necklaces and earrings, presents which they had

made to one another in former days, after great peril, or in hours of

intoxication. All asked to die, and none would strike. A young fellow

might be seen here and there, saying to another whose beard was grey:

“No! no! you are more robust! you will avenge us, kill me!” and the

man would reply: “I have fewer years to live! Strike to the heart, and

think no more about it!” Brothers gazed on one another with clasped

hands, and friend bade friend eternal farewells, standing and weeping

upon his shoulder.

They threw off their cuirasses that the sword-points might be thrust in

the more quickly. Then there appeared the marks of the great blows which

they had received for Carthage, and which looked like inscriptions on

columns.

They placed themselves in four equal ranks, after the fashion of

gladiators, and began with timid engagements. Some had even bandaged

their eyes, and their swords waved gently through the air like blind

men’s sticks. The Carthaginians hooted, and shouted to them that they

were cowards. The Barbarians became animated, and soon the combat as

general, headlong, and terrible.

Sometimes two men all covered with blood would stop, fall into each

other’s arms, and die with mutual kisses. None drew back. They rushed

upon the extended blades. Their delirium was so frenzied that the

Carthaginians in the distance were afraid.

At last they stopped. Their breasts made a great hoarse noise, and

their eyeballs could be seen through their long hair, which hung down

as though it had come out of a purple bath. Several were turning round

rapidly, like panthers wounded in the forehead. Others stood motionless

looking at a corpse at their feet; then they would suddenly tear their

faces with their nails, take their swords with both hands, and plunge

them into their own bodies.

There were still sixty left. They asked for drink. They were told by

shouts to throw away their swords, and when they had done so water was

brought to them.

While they were drinking, with their faces buried in the vases, sixty

Carthaginians leaped upon them and killed them with stiletos in the

back.

Hamilcar had done this to gratify the instincts of his army, and, by

means of this treachery, to attach it to his own person.

The war, then, was ended; at least he believed that it was; Matho

would not resist; in his impatience the Suffet commanded an immediate

departure.

His scouts came to tell him that a convoy had been descried, departing

towards the Lead Mountain. Hamilcar did not trouble himself about it.

The Mercenaries once annihilated, the Nomads would give him no further

trouble. The important matter was to take Tunis. He advanced by forced

marches upon it.

He had sent Narr’ Havas to Carthage with the news of his victory; and

the King of the Numidians, proud of his success, visited Salammbô.

She received him in her gardens under a large sycamore tree, amid

pillows of yellow leather, and with Taanach beside her. Her face was

covered with a white scarf, which, passing over her mouth and forehead,

allowed only her eyes to be seen; but her lips shone in the transparency

of the tissue like the gems on her fingers, for Salammbô had both

her hands wrapped up, and did not make a gesture during the whole

conversation.

Narr’ Havas announced the defeat of the Barbarians to her. She thanked

him with a blessing for the services which he had rendered to her

father. Then he began to tell her about the whole campaign.

The doves on the palm trees around them cooed softly, and other birds

fluttered amid the grass: ring-necked glareolas, Tartessus quails and

Punic guinea-fowl. The garden, long uncultivated, had multiplied

its verdure; coloquintidas mounted into the branches of cassias, the

asclepias was scattered over fields of roses, all kinds of vegetation

formed entwinings and bowers; and here and there, as in the woods,

sun-rays, descending obliquely, marked the shadow of a leaf upon the

ground. Domestic animals, grown wild again, fled at the slightest

noise. Sometimes a gazelle might be seen trailing scattered peacocks’

feathers after its little black hoofs. The clamours of the distant town

were lost in the murmuring of the waves. The sky was quite blue, and not

a sail was visible on the sea.

Narr’ Havas had ceased speaking; Salammbô was looking at him without

replying. He wore a linen robe with flowers painted on it, and with gold

fringes at the hem; two silver arrows fastened his plaited hair at the

tips of his ears; his right hand rested on a pike-staff adorned with

circles of electrum and tufts of hair.

As she watched him a crowd of dim thoughts absorbed her. This young man,

with his gentle voice and feminine figure, captivated her eyes by the

grace of his person, and seemed to her like an elder sister sent by the

Baals to protect her. The recollection of Matho came upon her, nor did

she resist the desire to learn what had become of him.

Narr’ Havas replied that the Carthaginians were advancing towards

Tunis to take it. In proportion as he set forth their chances of success

and Matho’s weaknesses, she seemed to rejoice in extraordinary hope.

Her lips trembled, her breast panted. When he finally promised to kill

him himself, she exclaimed: “Yes! kill him! It must be so!”

The Numidian replied that he desired this death ardently, since he would

be her husband when the war was over.

Salammbô started, and bent her head.

But Narr’ Havas, pursuing the subject, compared his longings to

flowers languishing for rain, or to lost travellers waiting for the day.

He told her, further, that she was more beautiful than the moon, better

than the wind of morning or than the face of a guest. He would bring

for her from the country of the Blacks things such as there were none in

Carthage, and the apartments in their house should be sanded with gold

dust.

Evening fell, and odours of balsam were exhaled. For a long time they

looked at each other in silence, and Salammbô’s eyes, in the depths

of her long draperies, resembled two stars in the rift of a cloud.

Before the sun set he withdrew.

The Ancients felt themselves relieved of a great anxiety, when he

left Carthage. The people had received him with even more enthusiastic

acclamations than on the first occasion. If Hamilcar and the King of the

Numidians triumphed alone over the Mercenaries it would be impossible

to resist them. To weaken Barca they therefore resolved to make the aged

Hanno, him whom they loved, a sharer in the deliverance of Carthage.

He proceeded immediately towards the western provinces, to take his

vengeance in the very places which had witnessed his shame. But the

inhabitants and the Barbarians were dead, hidden, or fled. Then his

anger was vented upon the country. He burnt the ruins of the ruins, he

did not leave a single tree nor a blade of grass; the children and the

infirm, that were met with, were tortured; he gave the women to his

soldiers to be violated before they were slaughtered.

Often, on the crests of the hills, black tents were struck as though

overturned by the wind, and broad, brilliantly bordered discs, which

were recognised as being chariot-wheels, revolved with a plaintive sound

as they gradually disappeared in the valleys. The tribes, which had

abandoned the siege of Carthage, were wandering in this way through the

provinces, waiting for an opportunity, or for some victory to be gained

by the Mercenaries, in order to return. But, whether from terror or

famine, they all took the roads to their native lands, and disappeared.

Hamilcar was not jealous of Hanno’s successes. Nevertheless he was in

a hurry to end matters; he commanded him to fall back upon Tunis; and

Hanno, who loved his country, was under the walls of the town on the

appointed day.

For its protection it had its aboriginal population, twelve thousand

Mercenaries, and, in addition, all the Eaters of Uncleanness, for

like Matho they were riveted to the horizon of Carthage, and plebs and

schalischim gazed at its lofty walls from afar, looking back in thought

to boundless enjoyments. With this harmony of hatred, resistance was

briskly organised. Leathern bottles were taken to make helmets; all the

palm-trees in the gardens were cut down for lances; cisterns were dug;

while for provisions they caught on the shores of the lake big white

fish, fed on corpses and filth. Their ramparts, kept in ruins now by the

jealousy of Carthage, were so weak that they could be thrown down with a

push of the shoulder. Matho stopped up the holes in them with the stones

of the houses. It was the last struggle; he hoped for nothing, and yet

he told himself that fortune was fickle.

As the Carthaginians approached they noticed a man on the rampart who

towered over the battlements from his belt upwards. The arrows that

flew about him seemed to frighten him no more than a swarm of swallows.

Extraordinary to say, none of them touched him.

Hamilcar pitched his camp on the south side; Narr’ Havas, to his

right, occupied the plain of Rhades, and Hanno the shore of the lake;

and the three generals were to maintain their respective positions, so

as all to attack the walls simultaneously.

But Hamilcar wished first to show the Mercenaries that he would punish

them like slaves. He had the ten ambassadors crucified beside one

another on a hillock in front of the town.

At the sight of this the besieged forsook the rampart.

Matho had said to himself that if he could pass between the walls and

Narr’ Havas’s tents with such rapidity that the Numidians had

not time to come out, he could fall upon the rear of the Carthaginian

infantry, who would be caught between his division and those inside. He

dashed out with his veterans.

Narr’ Havas perceived him; he crossed the shore of the lake, and came

to warn Hanno to dispatch men to Hamilcar’s assistance. Did he believe

Barca too weak to resist the Mercenaries? Was it a piece of treachery or

folly? No one could ever learn.

Hanno, desiring to humiliate his rival, did not hesitate. He shouted

orders to sound the trumpets, and his whole army rushed upon the

Barbarians. The latter returned, and ran straight against the

Carthaginians; they knocked them down, crushed them under their feet,

and, driving them back in this way, reached the tent of Hanno, who was

then surrounded by thirty Carthaginians, the most illustrious of the

Ancients.

He appeared stupefied by their audacity; he called for his captains.

Every one thrust his fist under his throat, vociferating abuse. The

crowd pressed on; and those who had their hands on him could scarce

retain their hold. However, he tried to whisper to them: “I will gave

you whatever you want! I am rich! Save me!” They dragged him along;

heavy as he was his feet did not touch the ground. The Ancients had

been carried off. His terror increased. “You have beaten me! I am your

captive! I will ransom myself! Listen to me, my friends!” and borne

along by all those shoulders which were pressed against his sides, he

repeated: “What are you going to do? What do you want? You can see

that I am not obstinate! I have always been good-natured!”

A gigantic cross stood at the gate. The Barbarians howled: “Here!

here!” But he raised his voice still higher; and in the names of their

gods he called upon them to lead him to the schalischim, because he

wished to confide to him something on which their safety depended.

They paused, some asserting that it was right to summon Matho. He was

sent for.

Hanno fell upon the grass; and he saw around him other crosses also, as

though the torture by which he was about to perish had been multiplied

beforehand; he made efforts to convince himself that he was mistaken,

that there was only one, and even to believe that there were none at

all. At last he was lifted up.

“Speak!” said Matho.

He offered to give up Hamilcar; then they would enter Carthage and both

be kings.

Matho withdrew, signing to the others to make haste. It was a stratagem,

he thought, to gain time.

The Barbarian was mistaken; Hanno was in an extremity when consideration

is had to nothing, and, moreover, he so execrated Hamilcar that he

would have sacrificed him and all his soldiers on the slightest hope of

safety.

The Ancients were languishing on the ground at the foot of the crosses;

ropes had already been passed beneath their armpits. Then the old

Suffet, understanding that he must die, wept.

They tore off the clothes that were still left on him—and the horror

of his person appeared. Ulcers covered the nameless mass; the fat on his

legs hid the nails on his feet; from his fingers there hung what looked

like greenish strips; and the tears streaming through the tubercles on

his cheeks gave to his face an expression of frightful sadness, for

they seemed to take up more room than on another human face. His royal

fillet, which was half unfastened, trailed with his white hair in the

dust.

They thought that they had no ropes strong enough to haul him up to the

top of the cross, and they nailed him upon it, after the Punic fashion,

before it was erected. But his pride awoke in his pain. He began to

overwhelm them with abuse. He foamed and twisted like a marine monster

being slaughtered on the shore, and predicted that they would all end

more horribly still, and that he would be avenged.

He was. On the other side of the town, whence there now escaped jets of

flame with columns of smoke, the ambassadors from the Mercenaries were

in their last throes.

Some who had swooned at first had just revived in the freshness of the

wind; but their chins still rested upon their breasts, and their bodies

had fallen somewhat, in spite of the nails in their arms, which were

fastened higher than their heads; from their heels and hands blood

fell in big, slow drops, as ripe fruit falls from the branches of a

tree,—and Carthage, gulf, mountains, and plains all appeared to them

to be revolving like an immense wheel; sometimes a cloud of dust, rising

from the ground, enveloped them in its eddies; they burned with horrible

thirst, their tongues curled in their mouths, and they felt an icy sweat

flowing over them with their departing souls.

Nevertheless they had glimpses, at an infinite depth, of streets,

marching soldiers, and the swinging of swords; and the tumult of battle

reached them dimly like the noise of the sea to shipwrecked men dying

on the masts of a ship. The Italiotes, who were sturdier than the rest,

were still shrieking. The Lacedæmonians were silent, with eyelids

closed; Zarxas, once so vigorous, was bending like a broken reed; the

Ethiopian beside him had his head thrown back over the arms of the

cross; Autaritus was motionless, rolling his eyes; his great head of

hair, caught in a cleft in the wood, fell straight upon his forehead,

and his death-rattle seemed rather to be a roar of anger. As to

Spendius, a strange courage had come to him; he despised life now in

the certainty which he possessed of an almost immediate and an eternal

emancipation, and he awaited death with impassibility.

Amid their swooning, they sometimes started at the brushing of feathers

passing across their lips. Large wings swung shadows around them,

croakings sounded in the air; and as Spendius’s cross was the highest,

it was upon his that the first vulture alighted. Then he turned his face

towards Autaritus, and said slowly to him with an unaccountable smile:

“Do you remember the lions on the road to Sicca?”

“They were our brothers!” replied the Gaul, as he expired.

The Suffet, meanwhile, had bored through the walls and reached

the citadel. The smoke suddenly disappeared before a gust of wind,

discovering the horizon as far as the walls of Carthage; he even thought

that he could distinguish people watching on the platform of Eschmoun;

then, bringing back his eyes, he perceived thirty crosses of extravagant

size on the shore of the Lake, to the left.

In fact, to render them still more frightful, they had been constructed

with tent-poles fastened end to end, and the thirty corpses of the

Ancients appeared high up in the sky. They had what looked like white

butterflies on their breasts; these were the feathers of the arrows

which had been shot at them from below.

A broad gold ribbon shone on the summit of the highest; it hung down

to the shoulder, there being no arm on that side, and Hamilcar had some

difficulty in recognising Hanno. His spongy bones had given way under

the iron pins, portions of his limbs had come off, and nothing was left

on the cross but shapeless remains, like the fragments of animals that

are hung up on huntsmen’s doors.

The Suffet could not have known anything about it; the town in front of

him masked everything that was beyond and behind; and the captains who

had been successively sent to the two generals had not re-appeared. Then

fugitives arrived with the tale of the rout, and the Punic army halted.

This catastrophe, falling upon them as it did in the midst of their

victory, stupefied them. Hamilcar’s orders were no longer listened to.

Matho took advantage of this to continue his ravages among the

Numidians.

Hanno’s camp having been overthrown, he had returned against them.

The elephants came out; but the Mercenaries advanced through the plain

shaking about flaming firebrands, which they had plucked from the walls,

and the great beasts, in fright, ran headlong into the gulf, where

they killed one another in their struggles, or were drowned beneath

the weight of their cuirasses. Narr’ Havas had already launched his

cavalry; all threw themselves face downwards upon the ground; then, when

the horses were within three paces of them, they sprang beneath their

bellies, ripped them open with dagger-strokes, and half the Numidians

had perished when Barca came up.

The exhausted Mercenaries could not withstand his troops. They retired

in good order to the mountain of the Hot Springs. The Suffet was prudent

enough not to pursue them. He directed his course to the mouths of the

Macaras.

Tunis was his; but it was now nothing but a heap of smoking rubbish. The

ruins fell through the breaches in the walls to the centre of the plain;

quite in the background, between the shores of the gulf, the corpses of

the elephants drifting before the wind conflicted, like an archipelago

of black rocks floating on the water.

Narr’ Havas had drained his forests of these animals, taking young and

old, male and female, to keep up the war, and the military force of

his kingdom could not repair the loss. The people who had seen them

perishing at a distance were grieved at it; men lamented in the

streets, calling them by their names like deceased friends: “Ah! the

Invincible! the Victory! the Thunderer! the Swallow!” On the first

day, too, there was no talk except of the dead citizens. But on the

morrow the tents of the Mercenaries were seen on the mountain of the

Hot Springs. Then so deep was the despair that many people, especially

women, flung themselves headlong from the top of the Acropolis.

Hamilcar’s designs were not known. He lived alone in his tent with

none near him but a young boy, and no one ever ate with them, not even

excepting Narr’ Havas. Nevertheless he showed great deference to the

latter after Hanno’s defeat; but the king of the Numidians had too

great an interest in becoming his son not to distrust him.

This inertness veiled skilful manouvres. Hamilcar seduced the heads of

the villages by all sorts of artifices; and the Mercenaries were hunted,

repulsed, and enclosed like wild beasts. As soon as they entered a wood,

the trees caught fire around them; when they drank of a spring it was

poisoned; the caves in which they hid in order to sleep were walled up.

Their old accomplices, the populations who had hitherto defended them,

now pursued them; and they continually recognised Carthaginian armour in

these bands.

Many had their faces consumed with red tetters; this, they thought, had

come to them through touching Hanno. Others imagined that it was because

they had eaten Salammbô’s fishes, and far from repenting of it, they

dreamed of even more abominable sacrileges, so that the abasement of

the Punic Gods might be still greater. They would fain have exterminated

them.

In this way they lingered for three months along the eastern coast, and

then behind the mountain of Selloum, and as far as the first sands of

the desert. They sought for a place of refuge, no matter where.

Utica and Hippo-Zarytus alone had not betrayed them; but Hamilcar was

encompassing these two towns. Then they went northwards at haphazard

without even knowing the various routes. Their many miseries had

confused their understandings.

The only feeling left them was one of exasperation, which went on

developing; and one day they found themselves again in the gorges of

Cobus and once more before Carthage!

Then the actions multiplied. Fortune remained equal; but both sides were

so wearied that they would willingly have exchanged these skirmishes for

a great battle, provided that it were really the last.

Matho was inclined to carry this proposal himself to the Suffet. One of

his Libyans devoted himself for the purpose. All were convinced as they

saw him depart that he would not return.

He returned the same evening.

Hamilcar accepted the challenge. The encounter should take place the

following day at sunrise, in the plain of Rhades.

The Mercenaries wished to know whether he had said anything more, and

the Libyan added:

“As I remained in his presence, he asked me what I was waiting for.

‘To be killed!’ I replied. Then he rejoined: ‘No! begone! that

will be to-morrow with the rest.’”

This generosity astonished the Barbarians; some were terrified by it,

and Matho regretted that the emissary had not been killed.

He had still remaining three thousand Africans, twelve hundred

Greeks, fifteen hundred Campanians, two hundred Iberians, four hundred

Etruscans, five hundred Samnites, forty Gauls, and a troop of Naffurs,

nomad bandits met with in the date region—in all seven thousand two

hundred and nineteen soldiers, but not one complete syntagmata. They

had stopped up the holes in their cuirasses with the shoulder-blades of

quadrupeds, and replaced their brass cothurni with worn sandals. Their

garments were weighted with copper or steel plates; their coats of

mail hung in tatters about them, and scars appeared like purple threads

through the hair on their arms and faces.

The wraiths of their dead companions came back to their souls and

increased their energy; they felt, in a confused way, that they were the

ministers of a god diffused in the hearts of the oppressed, and were the

pontiffs, so to speak, of universal vengeance! Then they were enraged

with grief at what was extravagant injustice, and above all by the sight

of Carthage on the horizon. They swore an oath to fight for one another

until death.

The beasts of burden were killed, and as much as possible was eaten so

as to gain strength; afterwards they slept. Some prayed, turning towards

different constellations.

The Carthaginians arrived first in the plain. They rubbed the edges of

their shields with oil to make the arrows glide off them easily; the

foot-soldiers who wore long hair took the precaution of cutting it on

the forehead; and Hamilcar ordered all bowls to be inverted from the

fifth hour, knowing that it is disadvantageous to fight with the stomach

too full. His army amounted to fourteen thousand men, or about double

the number of the Barbarians. Nevertheless, he had never felt such

anxiety; if he succumbed it would mean the annihilation of the Republic,

and he would perish on the cross; if, on the contrary, he triumphed, he

would reach Italy by way of the Pyrenees, the Gauls, and the Alps, and

the empire of the Barcas would become eternal. Twenty times during the

night he rose to inspect everything himself, down to the most trifling

details. As to the Carthaginians, they were exasperated by their

lengthened terror. Narr’ Havas suspected the fidelity of his

Numidians. Moreover, the Barbarians might vanquish them. A strange

weakness had come upon him; every moment he drank large cups of water.

But a man whom he did not know opened his tent and laid on the ground a

crown of rock-salt, adorned with hieratic designs formed with sulphur,

and lozenges of mother-of-pearl; a marriage crown was sometimes sent to

a betrothed husband; it was a proof of love, a sort of invitation.

Nevertheless Hamilcar’s daughter had no tenderness for Narr’ Havas.

The recollection of Matho disturbed her in an intolerable manner; it

seemed to her that the death of this man would unburden her thoughts,

just as people to cure themselves of the bite of a viper crush it upon

the wound. The king of the Numidians was depending upon her; he awaited

the wedding with impatience, and, as it was to follow the victory,

Salammbô made him this present to stimulate his courage. Then his

distress vanished, and he thought only of the happiness of possessing so

beautiful a woman.

The same vision had assailed Matho; but he cast it from him immediately,

and his love, that he thus thrust back, was poured out upon his

companions in arms. He cherished them like portions of his own person,

of his hatred,—and he felt his spirit higher, and his arms stronger;

everything that he was to accomplish appeared clearly before him. If

sighs sometimes escaped him, it was because he was thinking of Spendius.

He drew up the Barbarians in six equal ranks. He posted the Etruscans

in the centre, all being fastened to a bronze chain; the archers were

behind, and on the wings he distributed the Naffurs, who were mounted on

short-haired camels, covered with ostrich feathers.

The Suffet arranged the Carthaginians in similar order. He placed the

Clinabarians outside the infantry next to the velites, and the Numidians

beyond; when day appeared, both sides were thus in line face to face.

All gazed at each other from a distance, with round fierce eyes. There

was at first some hesitation; at last both armies moved.

The Barbarians advanced slowly so as not to become out of breath,

beating the ground with their feet; the centre of the Punic army formed

a convex curve. Then came the burst of a terrible shock, like the crash

of two fleets in collision. The first rank of the Barbarians had quickly

opened up, and the marksmen, hidden behind the others, discharged their

bullets, arrows, and javelins. The curve of the Carthaginians, however,

flattened by degrees, became quite straight, and then bent inwards; upon

this, the two sections of the velites drew together in parallel lines,

like the legs of a compass that is being closed. The Barbarians, who

were attacking the phalanx with fury, entered the gap; they were being

lost; Matho checked them,—and while the Carthaginian wings continued

to advance, he drew out the three inner ranks of his line; they soon

covered his flanks, and his army appeared in triple array.

But the Barbarians placed at the extremities were the weakest,

especially those on the left, who had exhausted their quivers, and the

troop of velites, which had at last come up against them, was cutting

them up greatly.

Matho made them fall back. His right comprised Campanians, who were

armed with axes; he hurled them against the Carthaginian left; the

centre attacked the enemy, and those at the other extremity, who were

out of peril, kept the velites at a distance.

Then Hamilcar divided his horsemen into squadrons, placed hoplites

between them, and sent them against the Mercenaries.

Those cone-shaped masses presented a front of horses, and their broader

sides were filled and bristling with lances. The Barbarians found it

impossible to resist; the Greek foot-soldiers alone had brazen armour,

all the rest had cutlasses on the end of poles, scythes taken from the

farms, or swords manufactured out of the fellies of wheels; the

soft blades were twisted by a blow, and while they were engaged in

straightening them under their heels, the Carthaginians massacred them

right and left at their ease.

But the Etruscans, riveted to their chain, did not stir; those who were

dead, being prevented from falling, formed an obstruction with their

corpses; and the great bronze line widened and contracted in turn, as

supple as a serpent, and as impregnable as a wall. The Barbarians would

come to re-form behind it, pant for a minute, and then set off again

with the fragments of their weapons in their hands.

Many already had none left, and they leaped upon the Carthaginians,

biting their faces like dogs. The Gauls in their pride stripped

themselves of the sagum; they showed their great white bodies from a

distance, and they enlarged their wounds to terrify the enemy. The voice

of the crier announcing the orders could no longer be heard in the

midst of the Punic syntagmata; their signals were being repeated by the

standards, which were raised above the dust, and every one was swept

away in the swaying of the great mass that surrounded him.

Hamilcar commanded the Numidians to advance. But the Naffurs rushed to

meet them.

Clad in vast black robes, with a tuft of hair on the top of the skull,

and a shield of rhinoceros leather, they wielded a steel which had no

handle, and which they held by a rope; and their camels, which bristled

all over with feathers, uttered long, hoarse cluckings. Each blade fell

on a precise spot, then rose again with a smart stroke carrying off a

limb with it. The fierce beasts galloped through the syntagmata. Some,

whose legs were broken, went hopping along like wounded ostriches.

The Punic infantry turned in a body upon the Barbarians, and cut them

off. Their maniples wheeled about at intervals from one another. The

more brilliant Carthaginian weapons encircled them like golden crowns;

there was a swarming movement in the centre, and the sun, striking down

upon the points of the swords, made them glitter with white flickering

gleams. However, files of Clinabarians lay stretched upon the plain;

some Mercenaries snatched away their armour, clothed themselves in it,

and then returned to the fray. The deluded Carthaginians were several

times entangled in their midst. They would stand stupidly motionless,

or else would back, surge again, and triumphant shouts rising in the

distance seemed to drive them along like derelicts in a storm. Hamilcar

was growing desperate; all was about to perish beneath the genius of

Matho and the invincible courage of the Mercenaries.

But a great noise of tabourines burst forth on the horizon. It was a

crowd of old men, sick persons, children of fifteen years of age, and

even women, who, being unable to withstand their distress any longer,

had set out from Carthage, and, for the purpose of placing themselves

under the protection of something formidable, had taken from

Hamilcar’s palace the only elephant that the Republic now

possessed,—that one, namely, whose trunk had been cut off.

Then it seemed to the Carthaginians that their country, forsaking its

walls, was coming to command them to die for her. They were seized with

increased fury, and the Numidians carried away all the rest.

The Barbarians had set themselves with their backs to a hillock in

the centre of the plain. They had no chance of conquering, or even of

surviving; but they were the best, the most intrepid, and the strongest.

The people from Carthage began to throw spits, larding-pins and hammers,

over the heads of the Numidians; those whom consuls had feared died

beneath sticks hurled by women; the Punic populace was exterminating the

Mercenaries.

The latter had taken refuge on the top of the hill. Their circle closed

up after every fresh breach; twice it descended to be immediately

repulsed with a shock; and the Carthaginians stretched forth their arms

pell-mell, thrusting their pikes between the legs of their companions,

and raking at random before them. They slipped in the blood; the steep

slope of the ground made the corpses roll to the bottom. The elephant,

which was trying to climb the hillock, was up to its belly; it seemed to

be crawling over them with delight; and its shortened trunk, which was

broad at the extremity, rose from time to time like an enormous leech.

Then all paused. The Carthaginians ground their teeth as they gazed at

the hill, where the Barbarians were standing.

At last they dashed at them abruptly, and the fight began again. The

Mercenaries would often let them approach, shouting to them that they

wished to surrender; then, with frightful sneers, they would kill

themselves at a blow, and as the dead fell, the rest would mount upon

them to defend themselves. It was a kind of pyramid, which grew larger

by degrees.

Soon there were only fifty, then only twenty, only three, and lastly

only two—a Samnite armed with an axe, and Matho who still had his

sword.

The Samnite with bent hams swept his axe alternately to the right and

left, at the same time warning Matho of the blows that were being aimed

at him. “Master, this way! that way! stoop down!”

Matho had lost his shoulder-pieces, his helmet, his cuirass; he was

completely naked, and more livid than the dead, with his hair quite

erect, and two patches of foam at the corners of his lips,—and his

sword whirled so rapidly that it formed an aureola around him. A

stone broke it near the guard; the Samnite was killed and the flood of

Carthaginians closed in, they touched Matho. Then he raised both his

empty hands towards heaven, closed his eyes, and, opening out his arms

like a man throwing himself from the summit of a promontory into the

sea, hurled himself among the pikes.

They moved away before him. Several times he ran against the

Carthaginians. But they always drew back and turned their weapons aside.

His foot struck against a sword. Matho tried to seize it. He felt

himself tied by the wrists and knees, and fell.

Narr’ Havas had been following him for some time, step by step,

with one of the large nets used for capturing wild beasts, and, taking

advantage of the moment when he stooped down, had involved him in it.

Then he was fastened on the elephants with his four limbs forming a

cross; and all those who were not wounded escorted him, and rushed with

great tumult towards Carthage.

The news of the victory had arrived in some inexplicable way at the

third hour of the night; the clepsydra of Khamon had just completed the

fifth as they reached Malqua; then Matho opened his eyes. There were so

many lights in the houses that the town appeared to be all in flames.

An immense clamour reached him dimly; and lying on his back he looked at

the stars.

Then a door closed and he was wrapped in darkness.

On the morrow, at the same hour, the last of the men left in the Pass of

the Hatchet expired.

On the day that their companions had set out, some Zuaeces who were

returning had tumbled the rocks down, and had fed them for some time.

The Barbarians constantly expected to see Matho appear,—and from

discouragement, from languor, and from the obstinacy of sick men who

object to change their situation, they would not leave the mountain;

at last the provisions were exhausted and the Zuaeces went away. It was

known that they numbered scarcely more than thirteen hundred men, and

there was no need to employ soldiers to put an end to them.

Wild beasts, especially lions, had multiplied during the three years

that the war had lasted. Narr’ Havas had held a great battue,

and—after tying goats at intervals—had run upon them and so driven

them towards the Pass of the Hatchet;—and they were now all living in

it when a man arrived who had been sent by the Ancients to find out what

there was left of the Barbarians.

Lions and corpses were lying over the tract of the plain, and the dead

were mingled with clothes and armour. Nearly all had the face or an arm

wanting; some appeared to be still intact; others were completely dried

up, and their helmets were filled with powdery skulls; feet which had

lost their flesh stood out straight from the knemides; skeletons still

wore their cloaks; and bones, cleaned by the sun, made gleaming spots in

the midst of the sand.

The lions were resting with their breasts against the ground and both

paws stretched out, winking their eyelids in the bright daylight, which

was heightened by the reflection from the white rocks. Others were

seated on their hind-quarters and staring before them, or else were

sleeping, rolled into a ball and half hidden by their great manes; they

all looked well fed, tired, and dull. They were as motionless as the

mountain and the dead. Night was falling; the sky was striped with broad

red bands in the west.

In one of the heaps, which in an irregular fashion embossed the plain,

something rose up vaguer than a spectre. Then one of the lions set

himself in motion, his monstrous form cutting a black shadow on the

background of the purple sky, and when he was quite close to the man, he

knocked him down with a single blow of his paw.

Then, stretching himself flat upon him, he slowly drew out the entrails

with the edge of his teeth.

Afterwards he opened his huge jaws, and for some minutes uttered a

lengthened roar which was repeated by the echoes in the mountain, and

was finally lost in the solitude.

Suddenly some small gravel rolled down from above. The rustling of rapid

steps was heard, and in the direction of the portcullis and of the gorge

there appeared pointed muzzles and straight ears, with gleaming, tawny

eyes. These were the jackals coming to eat what was left.

The Carthaginian, who was leaning over the top of the precipice to look,

went back again.

Chapter 15. MATHO

There were rejoicings at Carthage,—rejoicings deep, universal,

extravagant, frantic; the holes of the ruins had been stopped up, the

statues of the gods had been repainted, the streets were strewn with

myrtle branches, incense smoked at the corners of the crossways, and the

throng on the terraces looked, in their variegated garments, like heaps

of flowers blooming in the air.

The shouts of the water-carriers watering the pavement rose above the

continual screaming of voices; slaves belonging to Hamilcar offered

in his name roasted barley and pieces of raw meat; people accosted one

another, and embraced one another with tears; the Tyrian towns were

taken, the nomads dispersed, and all the Barbarians annihilated.

The Acropolis was hidden beneath coloured velaria; the beaks of the

triremes, drawn up in line outside the mole, shone like a dyke of

diamonds; everywhere there was a sense of the restoration of order, the

beginning of a new existence, and the diffusion of vast happiness: it

was the day of Salammbô’s marriage with the King of the Numidians.

On the terrace of the temple of Khamon there were three long tables

laden with gigantic plate, at which the priests, Ancients, and the rich

were to sit, and there was a fourth and higher one for Hamilcar,

Narr’ Havas, and Salammbô; for as she had saved her country by the

restoration of the zaïmph, the people turned her wedding day into a

national rejoicing, and were waiting in the square below till she should

appear.

But their impatience was excited by another and more acrid longing:

Matho’s death has been promised for the ceremony.

It had been proposed at first to flay him alive, to pour lead into his

entrails, to kill him with hunger; he should be tied to a tree, and

an ape behind him should strike him on the head with a stone; he had

offended Tanith, and the cynocephaluses of Tanith should avenge her.

Others were of opinion that he should be led about on a dromedary after

linen wicks, dipped in oil, had been inserted in his body in several

places;—and they took pleasure in the thought of the large animal

wandering through the streets with this man writhing beneath the fires

like a candelabrum blown about by the wind.

But what citizens should be charged with his torture, and why disappoint

the rest? They would have liked a kind of death in which the whole

town might take part, in which every hand, every weapon, everything

Carthaginian, to the very paving-stones in the streets and the waves in

the gulf, could rend him, and crush him, and annihilate him. Accordingly

the Ancients decided that he should go from his prison to the square of

Khamon without any escort, and with his arms fastened to his back; it

was forbidden to strike him to the heart, in order that he might live

the longer; to put out his eyes, so that he might see the torture

through; to hurl anything against his person, or to lay more than three

fingers upon him at a time.

Although he was not to appear until the end of the day, the people

sometimes fancied that he could be seen, and the crowd would rush

towards the Acropolis, and empty the streets, to return with lengthened

murmurings. Some people had remained standing in the same place since

the day before, and they would call on one another from a distance and

show their nails which they had allowed to grow, the better to bury them

into his flesh. Others walked restlessly up and down; some were as pale

as though they were awaiting their own execution.

Suddenly lofty feather fans rose above the heads, behind the Mappalian

district. It was Salammbô leaving her palace; a sigh of relief found

vent.

But the procession was long in coming; it marched with deliberation.

First there filed past the priests of the Patæc Gods, then those of

Eschmoun, of Melkarth, and all the other colleges in succession, with

the same insignia, and in the same order as had been observed at the

time of the sacrifice. The pontiffs of Moloch passed with heads bent,

and the multitude stood aside from them in a kind of remorse. But the

priests of Rabbetna advanced with a proud step, and with lyres in their

hands; the priestesses followed them in transparent robes of yellow

or black, uttering cries like birds and writhing like vipers, or else

whirling round to the sound of flutes to imitate the dance of the stars,

while their light garments wafted puffs of delicate scents through the

streets.

The Kedeschim, with painted eyelids, who symbolised the hermaphrodism of

the Divinity, received applause among these women, and, being perfumed

and dressed like them, they resembled them in spite of their flat

breasts and narrower hips. Moreover, on this day the female principle

dominated and confused all things; a mystic voluptuousness moved in the

heavy air; the torches were already lighted in the depths of the sacred

woods; there was to be a great celebration there during the night; three

vessels had brought courtesans from Sicily, and others had come from the

desert.

As the colleges arrived they ranged themselves in the courts of the

temples, on the outer galleries, and along double staircases which rose

against the walls, and drew together at the top. Files of white robes

appeared between the colonnades, and the architecture was peopled with

human statues, motionless as statues of stone.

Then came the masters of the exchequer, the governors of the provinces,

and all the rich. A great tumult prevailed below. Adjacent streets were

discharging the crowd, hierodules were driving it back with blows of

sticks; and then Salammbô appeared in a litter surmounted by a purple

canopy, and surrounded by the Ancients crowned with their golden tiaras.

Thereupon an immense shout arose; the cymbals and crotala sounded more

loudly, the tabourines thundered, and the great purple canopy sank

between the two pylons.

It appeared again on the first landing. Salammbô was walking slowly

beneath it; then she crossed the terrace to take her seat behind on a

kind of throne cut out of the carapace of a tortoise. An ivory stool

with three steps was pushed beneath her feet; two Negro children knelt

on the edge of the first step, and sometimes she would rest both arms,

which were laden with rings of excessive weight, upon their heads.

From ankle to hip she was covered with a network of narrow meshes which

were in imitation of fish scales, and shone like mother-of-pearl; her

waist was clasped by a blue zone, which allowed her breasts to be

seen through two crescent-shaped slashings; the nipples were hidden by

carbuncle pendants. She had a headdress made of peacock’s feathers

studded with gems; an ample cloak, as white as snow, fell behind

her,—and with her elbows at her sides, her knees pressed together,

and circles of diamonds on the upper part of her arms, she remained

perfectly upright in a hieratic attitude.

Her father and her husband were on two lower seats, Narr’ Havas

dressed in a light simar and wearing his crown of rock-salt, from which

there strayed two tresses of hair as twisted as the horns of Ammon; and

Hamilcar in a violet tunic figured with gold vine branches, and with a

battle-sword at his side.

The python of the temple of Eschmoun lay on the ground amid pools of

pink oil in the space enclosed by the tables, and, biting its tail,

described a large black circle. In the middle of the circle there was a

copper pillar bearing a crystal egg; and, as the sun shone upon it, rays

were emitted on every side.

Behind Salammbô stretched the priests of Tanith in linen robes; on her

right the Ancients, in their tiaras, formed a great gold line, and

on the other side the rich with their emerald sceptres a great green

line,—while quite in the background, where the priests of Moloch were

ranged, the cloaks looked like a wall of purple. The other colleges

occupied the lower terraces. The multitude obstructed the streets. It

reached to the house-tops, and extended in long files to the summit of

the Acropolis. Having thus the people at her feet, the firmament

above her head, and around her the immensity of the sea, the gulf, the

mountains, and the distant provinces, Salammbô in her splendour was

blended with Tanith, and seemed the very genius of Carthage, and its

embodied soul.

The feast was to last all night, and lamps with several branches were

planted like trees on the painted woollen cloths which covered the low

tables. Large electrum flagons, blue glass amphoras, tortoise-shell

spoons, and small round loaves were crowded between the double row of

pearl-bordered plates; bunches of grapes with their leaves had been

rolled round ivory vine-stocks after the fashion of the thyrsus; blocks

of snow were melting on ebony trays, and lemons, pomegranates, gourds,

and watermelons formed hillocks beneath the lofty silver plate; boars

with open jaws were wallowing in the dust of spices; hares, covered with

their fur, appeared to be bounding amid the flowers; there were shells

filled with forcemeat; the pastry had symbolic shapes; when the covers

of the dishes were removed doves flew out.

The slaves, meanwhile, with tunics tucked up, were going about on

tiptoe; from time to time a hymn sounded on the lyres, or a choir of

voices rose. The clamour of the people, continuous as the noise of

the sea, floated vaguely around the feast, and seemed to lull it in a

broader harmony; some recalled the banquet of the Mercenaries; they gave

themselves up to dreams of happiness; the sun was beginning to go down,

and the crescent of the moon was already rising in another part of the

sky.

But Salammbô turned her head as though some one had called her; the

people, who were watching her, followed the direction of her eyes.

The door of the dungeon, hewn in the rock at the foot of the temple, on

the summit of the Acropolis, had just opened; and a man was standing on

the threshold of this black hole.

He came forth bent double, with the scared look of fallow deer when

suddenly enlarged.

The light dazzled him; he stood motionless awhile. All had recognised

him, and they held their breath.

In their eyes the body of this victim was something peculiarly theirs,

and was adorned with almost religious splendour. They bent forward to

see him, especially the women. They burned to gaze upon him who had

caused the deaths of their children and husbands; and from the bottom

of their souls there sprang up in spite of themselves an infamous

curiosity, a desire to know him completely, a wish mingled with remorse

which turned to increased execration.

At last he advanced; then the stupefaction of surprise disappeared.

Numbers of arms were raised, and he was lost to sight.

The staircase of the Acropolis had sixty steps. He descended them as

though he were rolled down in a torrent from the top of a mountain;

three times he was seen to leap, and then he alighted below on his feet.

His shoulders were bleeding, his breast was panting with great shocks;

and he made such efforts to burst his bonds that his arms, which were

crossed on his naked loins, swelled like pieces of a serpent.

Several streets began in front of him, leading from the spot at which he

found himself. In each of them a triple row of bronze chains fastened to

the navels of the Patæc gods extended in parallel lines from one end

to the other; the crowd was massed against the houses, and servants,

belonging to the Ancients, walked in the middle brandishing thongs.

One of them drove him forward with a great blow; Matho began to move.

They thrust their arms over the chains shouting out that the road had

been left too wide for him; and he passed along, felt, pricked, and

slashed by all those fingers; when he reached the end of one street

another appeared; several times he flung himself to one side to bite

them; they speedily dispersed, the chains held him back, and the crowd

burst out laughing.

A child rent his ear; a young girl, hiding the point of a spindle in her

sleeve, split his cheek; they tore handfuls of hair from him and strips

of flesh; others smeared his face with sponges steeped in filth and

fastened upon sticks. A stream of blood started from the right side of

his neck, frenzy immediately set in. This last Barbarian was to them a

representative of all the Barbarians, and all the army; they were taking

vengeance on him for their disasters, their terrors, and their shame.

The rage of the mob developed with its gratification; the curving chains

were over-strained, and were on the point of breaking; the people did

not feel the blows of the slaves who struck at them to drive them back;

some clung to the projections of the houses; all the openings in the

walls were stopped up with heads; and they howled at him the mischief

that they could not inflict upon him.

It was atrocious, filthy abuse mingled with ironical encouragements and

imprecations; and, his present tortures not being enough for them, they

foretold to him others that should be still more terrible in eternity.