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  The left side also of the shield was filled with Spartan warriors, carved in high relief; they were led in triumph by victorious Xanthippus, who came from Amyclae, the city of Leda. Near them hung Regulus, glorious in suffering, beneath a picture of his punishment, setting to Saguntuma noble example of loyalty. Hard by was a happier scene — herds of wild beasts chased by hunters, and African huts, carved in shining metal. Not far away the savage sunburnt sister of a blackamoor soothed lionesses, her companions, with her native speech. The shepherd roamed free over the plains, and his flock, unforbidden, made their way into pastures without limit; the Punic guardian of the herd took all his possessions with him, according to the custom of his country — his javelins, his barking Cretan hound, his tent, his fire hidden in the veins of flint, and the reed-pipe which his steers know well. Conspicuous on the shield was Saguntum, rising on its lofty eminence; and round it swarmed countless hosts and serried ranks of fighters, who assailed it with their quivering spears. On the outer rim of the shield flowed the Ebro, enclosing the vast circuit with its curves and windings. And there was Hannibal; having broken the treaty by crossing the river, he was summoning the Punic nations to battle against Rome. Proud of such a gift, the leader fitted the new armour to his broad shoulders with a clang. Then, with head held high, he spoke thus: “Ah! what torrents of Roman blood will drench this armour! How great a penalty shall the Senate, the disposer of war, pay to me!”

  By now the beleaguered enemy was growing feebler, and time sapped the strength of the citizens, while they looked in their extremity for the eagles and troops of their ally. At last they turned their gaze away from the delusive sea, and gave up the shore as hopeless, and saw their doom at hand. Inward pangs, piercing to the marrow, had long been fixed there, utterly consuming the starving people. Famine, long concealed, devoured their much-enduring flesh with slow and secret poison, and burnt up their bloodless veins; by now their eyes sank back from the emaciated cheeks; the bones, a hideous sight when the flesh was gone, stuck out, covered only by the yellow skin and ill-joined by the shaking arteries. They tried to ease their suffering by the moist dews and damp soil of night, and with useless toil squeezed; in vain the sap from dry wood. They shrank from no pollution; their fierce hunger forced them to eat strange food; they stripped their shields bare and gnawed the loosened coverings of their bucklers.

  Hercules looked down from high heaven and beheld these things and wept over the calamities of the stricken town; but he was helpless, and respect for the bidding of his mighty sire hindered him from opposing the decrees of his cruel stepmother. Therefore, hiding his intent, he took his way to the abode of sacred Loyalty, seeking to discover her hidden purpose. It chanced that the goddess, who loves solitude, was then in a distant region of heaven, pondering in her heart the high concerns of the gods. Then he who gave peace to Nemea accosted her thus with reverence: “Goddess more ancient than Jupiter, glory of gods and men, without whom neither sea nor land finds peace, sister of Justice, silent divinity in the heart of man, canst thou look on unmoved at the awful doom of thine own Saguntum, and watch the city while it suffers so many penalties in thy defence? For thy sake the people die; the matrons, conquered by famine, call on thee alone; the pitiful cries of the men invoke thee; thy name is heard in the first utterance of their little ones. Bring help from heaven, and grant that the fallen may rise.”

  Thus spoke Alcmena’s son, and the goddess made answer: “I see it indeed, and the breaking of treaties is not disregarded by me: the day is fixed that shall hereafter punish such evil deeds. But, when I hastened to leave the sin-stained earth, I was forced to settle here and change my habitation, because the human race was so fertile in wickedness; I fled from wicked kings, who themselves fear as much as they are feared, and the frenzy for gold, and the rich rewards of wickedness. I fled also from nations hateful in their customs and living by violence like wild beasts, where all honour is undermined by luxury, and where shame is buried in deep darkness. Force is worshipped, and the sword usurps the place of justice, and virtue has given place to crime. Behold the nations! no man is innocent; fellowship in guilt alone preserves peace. But, if thou desirest the walls built by thy hand to keep a manhood worthy of thee by a noble ending, and not, worn out as they are, surrender themselves as prisoners to the Carthaginian, I will grant the only boon now allowed by fate and by the chain of coming events: I will prolong the renown of their death and send it down to posterity; and I myself will follow their glorious spirits to the nether world.”

  Then the austere goddess sped down the light ether and, burning with anger, made for Saguntum and found it struggling with doom. Taking possession of their minds and pervading their breasts, her familiar habitation, she instilled her divine power into their hearts. Then, piercing even to their marrow, she filled them with a burning passion for herself. They call for arms and put forth their feeble efforts in battle. Strength beyond their hopes is forthcoming; to honour their loved goddess, and to die nobly in her defence — this purpose comes still closer to their hearts. An unspoken resolve fills the triumphant hearts of the sufferers — to endure things even worse than death, to imitate the diet of wild beasts, and make their meals an abomination. But stainless Loyalty forbids them to prolong a life defiled by crime, and to stay their hunger with the flesh of fellow-creatures.

  It chanced that Saturn’s daughter was repairing to the Carthaginian camp; and, soon as she saw the maiden, Loyalty, in the citadel of the hated people, she rebuked her eagerness to stir up war, and, stumbling in her rage, summoned at once dark Tisiphone who drives with her scourge the spirits in the depths of hell. Stretching out her hands she said: “Daughter of Night, use your power to overthrow yonder walls, and lay the proud people low by their own hands. This is Juno’s bidding; I myself shall keep near and watch from a cloud your handiwork and your zeal. Take up the weapons that confound the gods and even supreme Jupiter, and that make Acheron tremble — flame and hideous serpents and that hissing which belongs to you alone and makes Cerberus shut his mouths for fear; take frothing venom mixed with gall; take all the crime and punishment and wrath that are nursed in your teeming breast, and heap them headlong upon the Rutulians, and send all Saguntum down to Erebus. Let this be the price they pay for Loyalty’s descent from heaven.”

  With these words the angry goddess spurred on the ruthless Fury, and hurled her with her own hand against the walls; and suddenly the mountain shook all round, and the waves along the shore made a deeper sound. Upon the Fury’s head and round her swollen neck a brood of scaly-backed serpents glittered and hissed. Opening wide his hollow jaws, Death stalked abroad and gaped for the doomed citizens; and round him stood Mourning and Wailing with blackened breast and Grief and Pain; and all the Avengers were there; and the sleepless guardian of the dismal dwelling bayed from his triple throat. At once the Fiend changed her shape and took the likeness of Tiburna and her gait withal and the sound of her voice. Tiburna, robbed of her husband, Murrus, was mourning for her marriage-bed made empty by war and the fierce blast of battle; she was of noble birth and derived her name from the blood of Daunus. The Fury assumed her likeness and then, with hair dishevelled and cheeks torn in sign of mourning, rushed wildly into the midst of the crowd. “How long?” she cried. “We have done enough for the sake of Loyalty and our forefathers; my own eyes have seen the bleeding form of my loved Murrus, have seen him startling my nights with his mangled body, and speaking fearful words: ‘Save yourself, dear wife, from the calamities of this hapless city; and, if the victory of the Carthaginian leaves no land for refuge, seek safety, Tiburna, with my ghost. Our gods are overthrown, we Rutulians are undone, the Punic sword is master of all.’ My heart quakes with fear, and his ghost is still before my eyes. Shall I then see the dwellings of Saguntum vanish utterly? Fortunate Murrus, to die and leave his country still alive! But as for us — we shall be carried off to wait on the women of Carthage; and, after the calamities of war and the dangers of the great deep, victorious Carthage will b
ehold us; and at last, when the final darkness of death comes, I shall be laid a captive in the lap of Libya. But you, young men, whose conscious valour has denied that you can ever be taken captive, you who have in death a mighty weapon against misfortune, rescue your mothers from slavery with your swords. Steep is the path that makes virtue seen. Hasten to be the first to snatch a glory that few can attain to, a glory unknown till now!”

  When she had stirred up her hearers’ troubled minds with this appeal, next she sought the mound which Amphitryon’s son had built on the topmost peak of the mountain, as a sea-mark for sailors and a welcome tribute of honour to the dead. Then — dreadful to behold — a snake burst forth at her summons from its abode in the depths of the mound; its body was dark-green and rough with spots of gold; its fiery eyes glittered with blood-red flame; and the mouth with its flickering tongue made a loud hissing. Between the terrified groups its coils moved on through the centre of the city, and swiftly it glided down from the high walls; then, as if escaping, it made its way to the shore near the town, and plunged headlong into the waves of the foaming sea.

  Then indeed men’s reason tottered: it seemed that the dead were fleeing forth from abodes no longer safe, and that their ghosts refused to lie in conquered soil. They were sick with disappointed hope of deliverance; they refused food; the disguised Fury possessed them. To postpone the date of death is as grievous as Heaven’s refusal to pity their suffering; in their frenzy they find existence a burden and long to snap the thread of life instantly. Built by many hands, a pyre whose height rose to heaven was erected in the centre of the city. Hither they dragged or carried the wealth of a long peace, the prizes won by valour, robes embroidered with Gallician gold by their matrons, weapons brought by their ancestors from Dulichian Zacynthus, and the household gods that came across the sea from the ancient city of the Rutulians. They throw on the pile all that the conquered still possess, and their shields too and swords that could not save; and they dig up from the bowels of the earth hoards buried in time of war, and with joy and pride consign the conqueror’s booty to the all-devouring flames.

  When the fatal Fury saw this pile, she brandished the torch that was dipped in the fiery waves of Phlegethon; and she hid the gods above with the darkness of Hell. Then the people, ever unconquered, began a work, which glory in defeat keeps famous for ever throughout the world. First Tisiphone, resenting a father’s half-hearted stroke, pushed the hilt forward in triumph and drove in the reluctant sword, and cracked her hellish scourge again and again with hideous noise. Against their will men stain their hands with kindred blood; they marvel at the crime they have committed with loathing, and weep over the wickedness they have wrought. One man, distraught with rage and the madness of disaster and extreme suffering, turns a sidelong glance at the breast of his mother. Another, snatching an axe and aiming it at the neck of his loved wife, reproaches himself and curses his unfinished crime, and, as if paralysed, throws his weapon down. Yet he is not suffered to escape; for the Fury repeats her blows, and breathes black passion into him with her hissing mouth. Thus there is an end of all wedded love: the husband has forgotten the joys of his marriage-bed, and remembers his bride no more. Another, exerting all his strength, throws a suffering body into the flames where the crest of the dark-rolling fire sends up thick smoke and pitchy blackness.

  Again, in the midst of the crowd, ill-starred Tymbrenus, distraught with love assuming strange disguise, and eager to rob the Carthaginian of his father’s death, mutilates the features that resemble his own, and desecrates a body that is the image of himself. Twin brethren also, alike in every point, Eurymedon and Lycormas, each an exact likeness of the other, were slain there in their prime. To their mother it had been a sweet perplexity to name her sons aright, and to be uncertain of her own children’s features. The sword that pierced the throat of Eurymedon, while the poor old mother lamented, had already cleared him of guilt; and while she, distraught with sorrow and mistaking whom she saw, cried out, “What mean you, madman? Turn your sword against me, Lycormas,” lo! Lycormas had already stabbed himself in the throat. But she cried aloud: “Eurymedon, what madness is this?” — and the mother, misled by the likeness of the twins, called back her dead sons by wrong names; at last, driving the steel through her own quivering breast, she sank down over the sons whom even then she could not distinguish.

  Who could command his tears when recounting the dreadful fate of the city, the crimes that deserve praise, the penalty paid by Loyalty, and the piteous doom of pious souls? Even the Punic army, enemies incapable of pity, could scarce have refrained from weeping. A city, that was long the abode of Loyalty and that claimed a god as the founder of her walls, is falling now, disregarded by the injustice of Heaven, amid the treacherous warfare of Carthaginians and horrors committed by her own citizens; fire and sword run riot, and any spot that is not burning is a scene of crime. The pyre sends up aloft a sable cloud of black smoke. On the high top of the lofty mountain the citadel that former wars had spared is blazing — from this point the citizens were wont to see the Punic camp and the shore and the whole of Saguntum, — the temples of the gods are blazing. The sea is lit up by the reflection of the fire, and the conflagration quivers on the restless water.

  Lo! in the midst of madness and murder, unhappy Tiburna was seen. Her right hand was armed with her husband’s bright sword, and in her left she brandished a burning torch; her disordered hair stood on end, her shoulders were bare, and she displayed a breast discoloured by cruel blows. She hurried right over the corpses to the tomb of Murrus. Such seems Alecto, when the palace of the Infernal Father thunders doom, and the monarch’s wrath troubles and vexes the dead; then the Fury, standing before the throne and terrible seat of the god, does service to the Jupiter of Tartarus and deals out punishments. Her husband’s armour, lately rescued with much bloodshed, she placed on the mound with tears; then she prayed to the dead to welcome her, and applied her burning torch to the pile. Then, rushing upon death, “Best of husbands,” she cried, “see, I myself carry this weapon to you in the shades.” And so she stabbed herself and fell down over the armour, meeting the fire with open mouth.

  Unhappy in their death, half-consumed by the fire, without distinction or order, the bodies of the people lay pell-mell, one upon another. Even so, when a lion, driven by hunger, has at last prevailed and stormed the sheepfold with parched gorge, he roars with gaping jaws and devours the helpless sheep, and streams of blood are vomited forth from his vast gape; he couches down on dark heaps of victims half-devoured, or, gnashing his teeth with panting and roaring, stalks between the piles of mangled carcasses. Around him in confusion lie the sheep with the Molossian dog that guarded them, and the band of shepherds with the owner of the flock and fold; and their huts are utterly destroyed and their dwellings demolished. The Carthaginians rushed into the citadel which so many disasters had left undefended. And then at last the Fiend, her duty done, returned, with thanks from Juno, to the nether world, proud and triumphant that she carried with her to Tartarus a multitude of victims.

  But you, ye star-like souls, whom no succeeding age shall ever match — go, glory of the earth, a worshipful company, and adorn Elysium and the pure abodes of the righteous. Whereas he, who gained glory by an unjust victory — hear it, ye nations, and break not treaties of peace nor set power above loyalty! — banished from his native land he shall wander, an exile, over the whole earth; and terrified Carthage shall see him in full retreat. Often, startled in his sleep by the ghosts of Saguntum, he shall wish that he had fallen by his own hand; but the steel will be denied him, and the warrior once invincible in earlier years shall carry down to the waters of Styx a body disfigured and blackened by poison.

  BOOK III

  ARGUMENT

  AFTER THE TAKING OF SAGUNTUM, BOSTAR IS SENT TO AFRICA TO CONSULT JUPITER AMMON (1-13). HANNIBAL GOES TO GADES, WHERE HE IS SHOWN THE FAMOUS TEMPLE OF HERCULES AND MARVELS AT THE TIDES OF THE ATLANTIC (14-60). HE SENDS HIS WIFE, HIMILCE, AND HIS INFANT S
ON TO CARTHAGE (61-157). HE DREAMS OF THE COMING CAMPAIGN (158-213). HE SETS OFF: A CATALOGUE OF HIS FORCES (214-405). HE CROSSES THE PYRENEES (406-441). HE CROSSES THE RHONE AND THE DURANCE (442-476). THE ALPS ARE DESCRIBED (477-499). AFTER FRIGHTFUL HARDSHIPS HE PITCHES A CAMP ON THE SUMMIT OF THE MOUNTAINS (500-556). VENUS AND JUPITER CONVERSE CONCERNING THE DESTINY OF ROME (557-629). HANNIBAL ENCAMPS IN THE COUNTRY OF THE TAURINI (630-646). BOSTAR BRINGS BACK FROM AFRICA THE RESPONSE OF JUPITER AMMON (647-714).

  AFTER the Carthaginians had broken faith, and the walls of faithful Saguntum, frowned on by the Father of Heaven, had been overthrown, the conqueror at once visited the peoples who dwell at the limit where the world ends, and Gades, the home of a race akin to Carthage. Nor did he omit to consult the wisdom and foresight of prophets concerning the struggle for power. Bostar was ordered to set sail at once and to inquire into the future before it came. From early times men have always trusted the shrine where horned Ammon sits on high, a rival of the Delphian caves, and reveals future ages in his prophetic grove among the thirsty Garamantes. From there Hannibal sought a good omen for his enterprise; he sought to know coming events before their date and to learn the changing fortunes of the war.