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Updated: May 2, 2025
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.
He had still remaining three thousand Africans, twelve hundred Greeks, fifteen hundred Campanians, two hundred Iberians, four hundred Etruscans, five hundred Samnites, forty Gauls, and a troop of Naffurs, nomad bandits met with in the date region in all seven thousand two hundred and nineteen soldiers, but not one complete syntagmata.
The voice of the crier announcing the orders could no longer be heard in the midst of the Punic syntagmata; their signals were being repeated by the standards, which were raised above the dust, and every one was swept away in the swaying of the great mass that surrounded him. Hamilcar commanded the Numidians to advance. But the Naffurs rushed to meet them.
The fierce beasts galloped through the syntagmata. Some, whose legs were broken, went hopping along like wounded ostriches. The Punic infantry turned in a body upon the Barbarians, and cut them off. Their maniples wheeled about at intervals from one another.
Those whose hands were empty clasped one another close; breasts cracked against cuirasses, and corpses hung with head thrown back between a pair of contracted arms. There was a company of sixty Umbrians who, firm on their hams, their pikes before their eyes, immovable and grinding their teeth, forced two syntagmata to recoil simultaneously.
Sometimes horrible barkings would be heard and the man would not come up again. Three phalangites, in the fourth dilochia of the twelfth syntagmata, killed one another with knives in a dispute about a rat.
Lanes appeared between the syntagmata; a chorus of wild cries swelled up swept nearer, and the furious riders of the desert came galloping through every interspace. To them had been granted, for a mark of honour, the ending of the battle. It was only a single rush, a brandishing and plunging of javelins retained in grasp, a little more blood spattered upon the horses' necks and bellies.
In the centre bristled the phalanx, formed of syntagmata or full squares having sixteen men on each side. All the leaders of all the files appeared amid long, sharp lanceheads, which jutted out unevenly around them, for the first six ranks crossed their sarissae, holding them in the middle, and the ten lower ranks rested them upon the shoulders of their companions in succession before them.
Two syntagmata, however, had taken refuge on the right in a bend of ground, had thrown away their arms, and were all kneeling with their faces towards the Punic tents imploring mercy with uplifted arms. Their legs and hands were tied; then when they were stretched on the ground beside one another the elephants were brought back.
And now, at last, it was won; the advance had been checked by the closer welding of the syntagmata, half his men were down; but Sergius, still unhurt, had stooped and raised the standard, kissing its crimson beak and wings. Then he looked up. Half the space between himself and the bearded horseman had vanished, and the latter was no longer talking carelessly with those about.
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