, recalled half the army. Regulus wished much to
return, as the slave who tilled his little farm had run away with his
plough, and his wife was in distress; but he was so valuable that he
could not be recalled, and he remained and soon took Tunis. The
Carthaginians tried to win their gods' favor back by offering horrid
human sacrifices to Moloch and Baal, and then hired a Spartan general
named Xanthippus, who defeated the Romans, chiefly by means of the
elephants, and made Regulus prisoner. The Romans, who hated the
Carthaginians so much as to believe them capable of any wickedness,
declared that in their jealousy of Xanthippus' victory, they sent him
home to Greece in a vessel so arranged as to founder at sea.

[Illustration: ROMAN ORDER OF BATTLE.]

However, the Romans, after several disasters in Sicily, gained a great
victory near Panormus, capturing one hundred elephants, which were
brought to Rome to be hunted by the people that they might lose their
fear of them. The Carthaginians were weakened enough to desire peace,
and they sent Regulus to propose it, making him swear to return if he
did not succeed. He came to the outskirts of the city, but would not
enter. He said he was no Roman proconsul, but the slave of Carthage.
However, the Senate came out to hear him, and he gave the message, but
added that the Romans ought not to accept these terms, but to stand
out for much better ones, giving such reasons that the whole people was
persuaded. He was entreated to remain and not meet the angry men of
Carthage; but nothing would persuade him to break his word, and he went
back. The Romans told dreadful stories of the treatment he met with--how
his eyelids were cut off and he was put in the sunshine, and at last he
was nailed up in a barrel lined with spikes and rolled down hill. Some
say that this was mere report, and that Carthaginian prisoners at Rome
were as savagely treated; but at any rate the constancy of Regulus has
always been a proverb.

The war went on, and one of the proud Claudius family was in command at
Trepanum, in Sicily, when the enemy's fleet came in sight. Before a
battle the Romans always consulted the sacred fowls that were carried
with the army. Claudius was told that their augury was against a
battle--they would not eat. "Then let them drink," he cried, and threw
them into the sea. His impiety, as all felt it, was punished by an utter
defeat, and he killed himself to avoid an enquiry. The war we