Numidians, for he knew that he was behind the Barbarians, and ready to

fall upon them. But Narr' Havas, being too weak, was not going to make
any venture alone; and the Suffet had the rampart raised twelve palms

higher, all the material in the arsenals piled up in the Acropolis,
and the machines repaired once more.

Sinews taken from bulls' necks, or else stags' hamstrings, were
commonly employed for the twists of the catapults. However, neither

stags nor bulls were in existence in Carthage. Hamilcar asked the
Ancients for the hair of their wives; all sacrificed it, but the

quantity was not sufficient. In the buildings of the Syssitia there
were twelve hundred marriageable slaves destined for prostitution in

Greece and Italy, and their hair, having been rendered elastic by the
use of unguents, was wonderfully well adapted for engines of war. But

the subsequent loss would be too great. Accordingly it was decided
that a choice should be made of the finest heads of hair among the

wives of the plebeians. Careless of their country's needs, they
shrieked in despair when the servants of the Hundred came with

scissors to lay hands upon them.
The Barbarians were animated with increased fury. They could be seen

in the distance taking fat from the dead to grease their machines,
while others pulled out the nails and stitched them end to end to make

cuirasses. They devised a plan of putting into the catapults vessels
filled with serpents which had been brought by the Negroes; the clay

pots broke on the flag-stones, the serpents ran about, seemed to
multiply, and, so numerous were they, to issue naturally from the

walls. Then the Barbarians, not satisfied with their invention,
improved upon it; they hurled all kinds of filth, human excrements,

pieces of carrion, corpses. The plague reappeared. The teeth of the
Carthaginians fell out of their mouths, and their gums were

discoloured like those of camels after too long a journey.
The machines were set up on the terrace, although the latter did not

as yet reach everywhere to the height of the rampart. Before the
twenty-three towers on the fortification stood twenty-three others of

wood. All the tollenos were mounted again, and in the centre, a little
further back, appeared the formidable helepolis of Demetrius

Poliorcetes, which Spendius had at last reconstructed. Of pyramidical
shape, like the pharos of Alexandria, it was one hundred and thirty

cubits high and twenty-three wide, with nine stories, diminishing as
they approached the summit, and protected by scales of brass; they

were pierced with numerous doors and were filled with soldiers, and on
the upper platform there stood a catapult flanked by two ballistas.

Then Hamilcar planted crosses for those who should speak of surrender,
and even the women were brigaded. The people lay in the streets and

waited full of distress.
Then one morning before sunrise (it was the seventh day of the month

of Nyssan) they heard a great shout uttered by all the Barbarians
simultaneously; the leaden-tubed trumpets pealed, and the great

Paphlagonian horns bellowed like bulls. All rose and ran to the
rampart.

A forest of lances, pikes, and swords bristled at its base. It leaped
against the wall, the ladders grappled them; and Barbarians' heads

appeared in the intervals of the battlements.
Beams supported by long files of men were battering at the gates; and,

in order to demolish the wall at places where the terrace was wanting,
the Mercenaries came up in serried cohorts, the first line crawling,

the second bending their hams, and the others rising in succession to
the last who stood upright; while elsewhere, in order to climb up, the

tallest advanced in front and the lowest in the rear, and all rested
their shields upon their helmets with their left arms, joining them

together at the edges so tightly that they might have been taken for
an assemblage of large tortoises. The projectiles slid over these

oblique masses.
The Carthaginians threw down mill-stones, pestles, vats, casks, beds,

everything that could serve as a weight and could knock down. Some
watched at the embrasures with fisherman's nets, and when the

Barbarian arrived he found himself caught in the meshes, and struggled
like a fish. They demolished their own battlements; portions of wall

fell down raising a great dust; and as the catapults on the terrace
were shooting over against one another, the stones would strike

together and shiver into a thousand pieces, making a copious shower
upon the combatants.

Soon the two crowds formed but one great chain of human bodies; it
overflowed into the intervals in the terrace, and, somewhat looser at

the two extremities, swayed perpetually without advancing. They
clasped one another, lying flat on the ground like wrestlers. They

crushed one another. The women leaned over the battlements and
shrieked. They were dragged away by their veils, and the whiteness of

their suddenly uncovered sides shone in the arms of the Negroes as the
latter buried their daggers in them. Some corpses did not fall, being

too much pressed by the crowd, and, supported by the shoulders of
their companions, advanced for some minutes quite upright and with

staring eyes. Some who had both temples pierced by a javelin swayed
their heads about like bears. Mouths, opened to shout, remained

gaping; severed hands flew through the air. Mighty blows were dealt,
which were long talked of by the survivors.

Meanwhile arrows darted from the towers of wood and stone. The
tollenos moved their long yards rapidly; and as the Barbarians had

sacked the old cemetery of the aborigines beneath the Catacombs, they
hurled the tombstones against the Carthaginians. Sometimes the cables

broke under the weight of too heavy baskets, and masses of men, all
with uplifted arms, would fall from the sky.

Up to the middle of the day the veterans had attacked the Taenia
fiercely in order to penetrate into the harbour and destroy the fleet.

Hamilcar had a fire of damp straw lit upon the roofing of Khamon, and
as the smoke blinded them they fell back to left, and came to swell

the horrible rout which was pressing forward in Malqua. Some
syntagmata composed of sturdy men, chosen expressly for the purpose,

had broken in three gates. They were checked by lofty barriers made of
planks studded with nails, but a fourth yielded easily; they dashed

over it at a run and rolled into a pit in which there were hidden
snares. At the south-west gate Autaritus and his men broke down the

rampart, the fissure in which had been stopped up with bricks. The
ground behind rose, and they climbed it nimbly. But on the top they

found a second wall composed of stones and long beams lying quite flat
and alternating like the squares on a chess-board. It was a Gaulish

fashion, and had been adapted by the Suffet to the requirements of the
situation; the Gauls imagined themselves before a town in their own

country. Their attack was weak, and they were repulsed.
All the roundway, from the street of Khamon as far as the Green

Market, now belonged to the Barbarians, and the Samnites were
finishing off the dying with blows of stakes; or else with one foot on

the wall were gazing down at the smoking ruins beneath them, and the
battle which was beginning again in the distance.

The slingers, who were distributed through the rear, were still
shooting. But the springs of the Acarnanian slings had broken from

use, and many were throwing stones with the hand like shepherds; the
rest hurled leaden bullets with the handle of a whip. Zarxas, his

shoulders covered with his long black hair, went about everywhere, and
led on the Barbarians. Two pouches hung at his hips; he thrust his

left hand into them continually, while his right arm whirled round
like a chariot-wheel.

Matho had at first refrained from fighting, the better to command the
Barbarians all at once. He had been seen along the gulf with the

Mercenaries, near the lagoon with the Numidians, and on the shores of
the lake among the Negroes, and from the back part of the plain he