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The citadel, Byrsa, was two miles in circuit, and when it finally surrendered to the Romans, fifty thousand people marched out of it. On its summit was the famous temple of Æsculapius. At the northwestern angle of the city were twenty immense reservoirs, each four hundred feet by twenty-eight, filled with water, brought by an aqueduct at a distance of fifty-two miles.
If the Proconsul who then occupied the Byrsa palace, the celebrated Symmachus, belonged to an old Italian family, he whom he represented, the Emperor Valentinian, was the son of a Pannonian soldier. The Count Theodosius, the general who suppressed the insurrection of Firmus in Mauretania, was a Spaniard, and the army he led into Africa was made up, for the most part, of Gauls.
Worn out at length with lonely grief, she asked if she might go to Byrsa Cottage, for a change. Even that was refused, though her father's kind heart ached at the necessary denial. Sharp words again had passed between the farmer and the tanner concerning her, and the former believed that his brother-in-law would even encourage the outlaw still.
"I was sure to find friends among the Arabs either belonging to the regiment stationed in Byrsa or those employed in the storehouses or stables; so the next morning I entered the citadel and soon met these men, who belonged to my tribe and village.
Then the people of Malqua found themselves caught between the old enclosure of Byrsa behind, and the Barbarians in front. But there was enough to be done in thickening the wall and making it as high as possible without troubling about them; they were abandoned; all perished; and although they were generally hated, Hamilcar came to be greatly abhorred.
Already the low, leafy hill could be seen, dotted with the white villas of the wealthy Phoenician merchants. Above them, a gleaming dot against the pale blue morning sky, shone the brazen roof of the citadel of Byrsa, which capped the sloping town. "Already they can see us from the watch-towers," he remarked. "Even from afar they may know the galley of Black Magro.
Among these are walls in the style called "Cyclopian," built of a very hard material, and more than thirty-two feet thick, which seem to have surrounded the ancient Byrsa or citadel, and which are still in places sixteen feet high. The Roman walls found emplaced above these are of far inferior strength and solidity.
He defeated Hasdrubal, the last of the Carthaginian generals, and took the citadel of Byrsa; but though all hope was over, the city held out in utter desperation.
At the foot of Byrsa there stretched a long black mass: it was the temple of Tanith, a whole made up of monuments and galleries, courts and fore-courts, and bounded by a low wall of dry stones. Spendius and Matho leaped over it. This first barrier enclosed a wood of plane-trees as a precaution against plague and infection in the air.
The wind fell light and it was not until the evening of the eighth day after leaving Corinth that Carthage, with the citadel of Byrsa rising above it, could be distinguished. The ship was moving but slowly through the water, and the captain said that unless a change took place they would not make port until late the next morning.
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