His impotence exasperated him.He was jealous of this Carthage which contained Salammbo, as if of some one who had possessed her.His nervelessness left him to be replaced by a mad and continual eagerness for action.With flaming cheek, angry eyes, and hoarse voice, he would walk with rapid strides through the camp; or seated on the shore he would scour his great sword with sand.He shot arrows at the passing vultures.His heart overflowed into frenzied speech.
"Give free course to your wrath like a runaway chariot," said Spendius."Shout, blaspheme, ravage and slay.Grief is allayed with blood, and since you cannot sate your love, gorge your hate; it will sustain you!"Matho resumed the command of his soldiers.He drilled them pitilessly.
He was respected for his courage and especially for his strength.
Moreover he inspired a sort of mystic dread, and it was believed that he conversed at night with phantoms.The other captains were animated by his example.The army soon grew disciplined.From their houses the Carthaginians could hear the bugle-flourishes that regulated their exercises.At last the Barbarians drew near.
To crush them in the isthmus it would have been necessary for two armies to take them simultaneously in the rear, one disembarking at the end of the gulf of Utica, and the second at the mountain of the Hot Springs.But what could be done with the single sacred Legion, mustering at most six thousand men? If the enemy bent towards the east they would join the nomads and intercept the commerce of the desert.
If they fell back to the west, Numidia would rise.Finally, lack of provisions would sooner or later lead them to devastate the surrounding country like grasshoppers, and the rich trembled for their fine country-houses, their vineyards and their cultivated lands.
Hanno proposed atrocious and impracticable measures, such as promising a heavy sum for every Barbarian's head, or setting fire to their camp with ships and machines.His colleague Gisco, on the other hand, wished them to be paid.But the Ancients detested him owing to his popularity; for they dreaded the risk of a master, and through terror of monarchy strove to weaken whatever contributed to it or might re-establish it.
Outside the fortification there were people of another race and of unknown origin, all hunters of the porcupine, and eaters of shell-fish and serpents.They used to go into caves to catch hyenas alive, and amuse themselves by making them run in the evening on the sands of Megara between the stelae of the tombs.Their huts, which were made of mud and wrack, hung on the cliff like swallows' nests.There they lived, without government and without gods, pell-mell, completely naked, at once feeble and fierce, and execrated by the people of all time on account of their unclean food.One morning the sentries perceived that they were all gone.
At last some members of the Great Council arrived at a decision.They came to the camp without necklaces or girdles, and in open sandles like neighbours.They walked at a quiet pace, waving salutations to the captains, or stopped to speak to the soldiers, saying that all was finished and that justice was about to be done to their claims.
Many of them saw a camp of Mercenaries for the first time.Instead of the confusion which they had pictured to themselves, there prevailed everywhere terrible silence and order.A grassy rampart formed a lofty wall round the army immovable by the shock of catapults.The ground in the streets was sprinkled with fresh water; through the holes in the tents they could perceive tawny eyeballs gleaming in the shade.The piles of pikes and hanging panoplies dazzled them like mirrors.They conversed in low tones.They were afraid of upsetting something with their long robes.
The soldiers requested provisions, undertaking to pay for them out of the money that was due.
Oxen, sheep, guinea fowl, fruit and lupins were sent to them, with smoked scombri, that excellent scombri which Carthage dispatched to every port.But they walked scornfully around the magnificent cattle, and disparaging what they coveted, offered the worth of a pigeon for a ram, or the price of a pomegranate for three goats.The Eaters of Uncleanness came forward as arbitrators, and declared that they were being duped.Then they drew their swords with threats to slay.
Commissaries of the Great Council wrote down the number of years for which pay was due to each soldier.But it was no longer possible to know how many Mercenaries had been engaged, and the Ancients were dismayed at the enormous sum which they would have to pay.The reserve of silphium must be sold, and the trading towns taxed; the Mercenaries would grow impatient; Tunis was already with them; and the rich, stunned by Hanno's ragings and his colleague's reproaches, urged any citizens who might know a Barbarian to go to see him immediately in order to win back his friendship, and to speak him fair.Such a show of confidence would soothe them.
Traders, scribes, workers in the arsenal, and whole families visited the Barbarians.
The soldiers allowed all the Carthaginians to come in, but by a single passage so narrow that four men abreast jostled one another in it.
Spendius, standing against the barrier, had them carefully searched;facing him Matho was examining the multitude, trying to recognise some one whom he might have seen at Salammbo's palace.
The camp was like a town, so full of people and of movement was it.
