hey said.
Bolder ones came up; their number increased; there was soon a crowd. But
almost all of them let their hands fall on feeling the cold flesh on the
edge of their lips; others, on the contrary, devoured it with delight.

That they might be led away by example, they urged one another on
mutually. Such as had at first refused went to see the Garamantians, and
returned no more. They cooked the pieces on coals at the point of the
sword; they salted them with dust, and contended for the best morsels.
When nothing was left of the three corpses, their eyes ranged over the
whole plain to find others.

But were they not in possession of Carthaginians--twenty captives taken
in the last encounter, whom no one had noticed up to the present? These
disappeared; moreover, it was an act of vengeance. Then, as they must
live, as the taste for this food had become developed, and as they were
dying, they cut the throats of the water-carriers, grooms, and all the
serving-men belonging to the Mercenaries. They killed some of them every
day. Some ate much, recovered strength, and were sad no more.

Soon this resource failed. Then the longing was directed to the wounded
and sick. Since they could not recover, it was as well to release
them from their tortures; and, as soon as a man began to stagger, all
exclaimed that he was now lost, and ought to be made use of for the
rest. Artifices were employed to accelerate their death; the last
remnant of their foul portion was stolen from them; they were trodden
on as though by inadvertence; those in the last throes wishing to make
believe that they were strong, strove to stretch out their arms, to
rise, to laugh. Men who had swooned came to themselves at the touch of
a notched blade sawing off a limb;--and they still slew, ferociously and
needlessly, to sate their fury.

A mist heavy and warm, such as comes in those regions at the end
of winter, sank on the fourteenth day upon the army. This change
of temperature brought numerous deaths with it, and corruption was
developed with frightful rapidity in the warm dampness which was kept
in by the sides of the mountain. The drizzle that fell upon the corpses
softened them, and soon made the plain one broad tract of rottenness.
Whitish vapours floated overhead; they pricked the nostrils, penetrated
the skin, and troubled the sight; and the Barbarians thought that
through the exhalations of the breath they could see the souls of their
companions.