Moloch to provide
them himself at his own expense, and pulling off his necklace of blue
stones he threw it into the crowd as the pledge of his oath.

Then the Africans claimed the corn in accordance with the engagements
made by the Great Council. Gisco spread out the accounts of the Syssitia
traced in violet pigment on sheep skins; and read out all that had
entered Carthage month by month and day by day.

Suddenly he stopped with gaping eyes, as if he had just discovered his
sentence of death among the figures.

The Ancients had, in fact, fraudulently reduced them, and the corn sold
during the most calamitous period of the war was set down at so low a
rate that, blindness apart, it was impossible to believe it.

"Speak!" they shouted. "Louder! Ah! he is trying to lie, the coward!
Don't trust him."

For some time he hesitated. At last he resumed his task.

The soldiers, without suspecting that they were being deceived, accepted
the accounts of the Syssitia as true. But the abundance that had
prevailed at Carthage made them furiously jealous. They broke open the
sycamore chest; it was three parts empty. They had seen such sums coming
out of it, that they thought it inexhaustible; Gisco must have buried
some in his tent. They scaled the knapsacks. Matho led them, and as they
shouted "The money! the money!" Gisco at last replied:

"Let your general give it to you!"

He looked them in the face without speaking, with his great yellow eyes,
and his long face that was paler than his beard. An arrow, held by its
feathers, hung from the large gold ring in his ear, and a stream of
blood was trickling from his tiara upon his shoulder.

At a gesture from Matho all advanced. Gisco held out his arms; Spendius
tied his wrists with a slip knot; another knocked him down, and he
disappeared amid the disorder of the crowd which was stumbling over the
knapsacks.

They sacked his tent. Nothing was found in it except things
indispensable to life; and, on a closer search, three images of Tanith,
and, wrapped up in an ape's skin, a black stone which had fallen from
the moon. Many Carthaginians had chosen to accompany him; they were
eminent men, and all belonged to the war party.

They were dragged outside the tents and thrown into the pit used for the
reception of filth. They were tied with iron chains around the body to
solid stakes, and were offered food at the point of the javelin.

Autaritus overwhelmed them with invectives a