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Hamilcar walked along step by step. "What am I to do with these old creatures?" he said. "Sell them! There are too many Gauls: they are drunkards! and too many Cretans: they are liars! Buy me some Cappadocians, Asiatics, and Negroes." He was astonished that the children were so few. "The house ought to have births every year, Giddenem.
He was a miserable child, at once lean and bloated; his skin looked greyish, like the infected rag hanging to his sides; his head was sunk between his shoulders, and with the back of his hand he was rubbing his eyes, which were filled with flies. How could he ever be confounded with Hannibal! and there was no time to choose another. Hamilcar looked at Giddenem; he felt inclined to strangle him.
You will leave the huts open every night to let them mingle freely." He then had the thieves, the lazy, and the mutinous shown to him. He distributed punishments, with reproaches to Giddenem; and Giddenem, ox-like, bent his low forehead, with its two broad intersecting eyebrows. "See, Eye of Baal," he said, pointing out a sturdy Libyan, "here is one who was caught with the rope round his neck."
The slaves drew back and formed a large circle around them; Giddenem was frantically kissing his sandals; Hamilcar stood upright with his arms raised above him.
Then he stood still with staring eyelids, and panted as though he were about to die. But he clapped his hands three times. Giddenem appeared. "Listen!" he said, "go and take from among the slaves a male child from eight to nine years of age, with black hair and swelling forehead! Bring him here! make haste!" Giddenem soon entered again, bringing forward a young boy.
Giddenem had hidden those who were mutilated behind the others. Hamilcar perceived them. "Who cut off your arm?" "The soldiers, Eye of Baal." Then to a Samnite who was staggering like a wounded heron: "And you, who did that to you?" It was the governor, who had broken his leg with an iron bar. This silly atrocity made the Suffet indignant; he snatched the jet necklace out of Giddenem's hands.
The grain grated as it was being crushed. Several fell upon their knees; the others, continuing their work, stepped across them. He asked for Giddenem, the governor of the slaved, and that personage appeared, his rank being displayed in the richness of his dress.
Giddenem replied that such treatment was necessary in order to subdue them. "It was scarcely worth while sending you to the slaves' school at Syracuse. Fetch the others!"
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