rough
the air, dashing the sword from the hand or the brain out of the skull.
The wounded, sheltering themselves with one arm beneath their shields,
pointed their swords by resting the pommels on the ground, while others,
lying in pools of blood, would turn and bite the heels of those above
them. The multitude was so compact, the dust so thick, and the tumult
so great that it was impossible to distinguish anything; the cowards who
offered to surrender were not even heard. 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. Some Epirote shepherds ran upon the
left squadron of the Clinabarians, and whirling their staves, seized the
horses by the man; the animals threw their riders and fled across the
plain. The Punic slingers scattered here and there stood gaping. The
phalanx began to waver, the captains ran to and fro in distraction,
the rearmost in the files were pressing upon the soldiers, and the
Barbarians had re-formed; they were recovering; the victory was theirs.

But a cry, a terrible cry broke forth, a roar of pain and wrath: it came
from the seventy-two elephants which were rushing on in double line,
Hamilcar having waited until the Mercenaries were massed together in
one spot to let them loose against them; the Indians had goaded them so
vigorously that blood was trickling down their broad ears. Their trunks,
which were smeared with mimium, were stretched straight out in the air
like red serpents; their breasts were furnished with spears and their
backs with cuirasses; their tusks were lengthened with steel blades
curved like sabres,--and to make them more ferocious they had been
intoxicated with a mixture of pepper, wine, and incense. They shook
their necklaces of bells, and shrieked; and the elephantarchs bent their
heads beneath the stream of phalaricas which was beginning to fly from
the tops of the towers.

In order to resist them the better the Barbarians rushed forward in
a compact crowd; the elephants flung themselves impetuously upon the
centre of it. The spurs on their breasts, like ships' prows, clove
through the cohorts, which flowed surging back. They stifled the men
with their trunks, or else snatching them up