e contortions.

But many, from foolishness or prejudice, innocently believed that all
the Carthaginians were very rich, and they walked behind them entreating
them to grant them something. They requested everything that they
thought fine: a ring, a girdle, sandals, the fringe of a robe, and when
the despoiled Carthaginian cried--"But I have nothing left. What do you
want?" they would reply, "Your wife!" Others even said, "Your life!"

The military accounts were handed to the captains, read to the soldiers,
and definitively approved. Then they claimed tents; they received them.
Next the polemarchs of the Greeks demanded some of the handsome suits of
armour that were manufactured at Carthage; the Great Council voted
sums of money for their purchase. But it was only fair, so the horsemen
pretended, that the Republic should indemnify them for their horses;
one had lost three at such a siege, another, five during such a march,
another, fourteen in the precipices. Stallions from Hecatompylos were
offered to them, but they preferred money.

Next they demanded that they should be paid in money (in pieces of
money, and not in leathern coins) for all the corn that was owing to
them, and at the highest price that it had fetched during the war; so
that they exacted four hundred times as much for a measure of meal as
they had given for a sack of wheat. Such injustice was exasperating; but
it was necessary, nevertheless, to submit.

Then the delegates from the soldiers and from the Great Council swore
renewed friendship by the Genius of Carthage and the gods of the
Barbarians. They exchanged excuses and caresses with oriental
demonstrativeness and verbosity. Then the soldiers claimed, as a proof
of friendship, the punishment of those who had estranged them from the
Republic.

Their meaning, it was pretended, was not understood, and they explained
themselves more clearly by saying that they must have Hanno's head.

Several times a day, they left their camp, and walked along the foot of
the walls, shouting a demand that the Suffet's head should be thrown to
them, and holding out their robes to receive it.

The Great Council would perhaps have given way but for a last exaction,
more outrageous than the rest; they demanded maidens, chosen from
illustrious families, in marriage for their chiefs. It was an idea
which had emanated from Spendius, and which many thought most simple and
practicable. But the assumption of their desire to