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Updated: May 23, 2025
The Suffet could not have known anything about it; the town in front of him masked everything that was beyond and behind; and the captains who had been successively sent to the two generals had not re-appeared. Then fugitives arrived with the tale of the rout, and the Punic army halted. This catastrophe, falling upon them as it did in the midst of their victory, stupefied them.
Hamilcar turned pale, and then quickly replied: "Let him come up!" Iddibal entered without prostrating himself. He held a young boy, covered with a goat's-hair cloak, by the hand, and at once raised the hood which screened his face. "Here he is, Master! Take him!" The Suffet and the slave went into a corner of the room.
They had to be left outside. As soon as the Suffet was in the town the principal men came to greet him. He had himself taken to the vapour baths, and called for his cooks. Three hours afterwards he was still immersed in the oil of cinnamomum with which the basin had been filled; and while he bathed he ate flamingoes' tongues with honied poppy-seeds on a spread ox-hide.
"Ah! you wish to die?" said the Suffet scornfully. "Yes!" replied the slave in an intrepid tone. Then, without heeding the precedent or the pecuniary loss, Hamilcar said to the serving-men: "Away with him!" Perhaps in his thoughts he intended a sacrifice. It was a misfortune which he inflicted upon himself in order to avert more terrible ones.
"Without constraint, from the bottom of your souls, with the intention of fulfilling your promises?" They assured him that they were returning to the rest in order to fulfil them. "Well!" rejoined the Suffet, "in accordance with the convention concluded between myself, Barca, and the ambassadors of the Mercenaries, it is you whom I choose and shall keep!" Spendius fell swooning upon the mat.
The Suffet preserved his advantages without offering battle, and while pursued by the Barbarians seemed to be leading them. These marches and counter marches were still more fatiguing to the Carthaginians, and Hamilcar's forces, receiving no reinforcements, diminished from day to day. The country people were now more backward in bringing him provisions.
The steps of the Acropolis were occupied by the multitude. In the square of Khamon the people were pressing forwards to see the Suffet come out, and the terraces were gradually being loaded with people; a few recognised him, and he was saluted; but he retired in order the better to excite the impatience of the people.
The Suffet had speedily calculated whether the sums present corresponded with the gains and losses which had just been read to him; and he was going away when he perceived three brass jars completely empty. Abdalonim turned away his head to mark his horror, and Hamilcar, resigning himself to it, said nothing.
Nevertheless he remembered Sicca, and the rage caused by all his woes found vent in the abuse of these three men. "Ah! traitors! ah! wretches! infamous, accursed creatures! And you outraged me! me! the Suffet! Their services, the price of their blood, say they! Ah! yes! their blood! their blood!" Then speaking to himself: "All shall perish! not one shall be sold!
The Suffet had proposed to all the captives that they should serve in his troops. Several had fearlessly refused; and quite resolved neither to support them nor to abandon them to the Great Council, he had sent them away with injunctions to fight no more against Carthage.
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