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.
