t alert, who
had hastened thither without their arms), were Campanians, Gauls, and
Greeks, so that no one in the crowd understood him. Hanno, perceiving
this, stopped and reflected, swaying himself heavily from one leg to the
other.

It occurred to him to call the captains together; then his heralds
shouted the order in Greek, the language which, from the time of
Xanthippus, had been used for commands in the Carthaginian armies.

The guards dispersed the mob of soldiers with strokes of the whip; and
the captains of the Spartan phalanxes and the chiefs of the Barbarian
cohorts soon arrived with the insignia of their rank, and in the
armour of their nation. Night had fallen, a great tumult was spreading
throughout the plain; fires were burning here and there; and the
soldiers kept going from one to another asking what the matter was, and
why the Suffet did not distribute the money?

He was setting the infinite burdens of the Republic before the captains.
Her treasury was empty. The tribute to Rome was crushing her. "We are
quite at a loss what to do! She is much to be pitied!"

From time to time he would rub his limbs with his aloe-wood spatula,
or perhaps he would break off to drink a ptisan made of the ashes of a
weasel and asparagus boiled in vinegar from a silver cup handed to
him by a slave; then he would wipe his lips with a scarlet napkin and
resume:

"What used to be worth a shekel of silver is now worth three shekels
of gold, while the cultivated lands which were abandoned during the war
bring in nothing! Our purpura fisheries are nearly gone, and even pearls
are becoming exhorbitant; we have scarcely unguents enough for the
service of the gods! As for the things of the table, I shall say nothing
about them; it is a calamity! For want of galleys we are without spices,
and it is a matter of great difficulty to procure silphium on account
of the rebellions on the Cyrenian frontier. Sicily, where so many slaves
used to be had, is now closed to us! Only yesterday I gave more money
for a bather and four scullions than I used at one time to give for a
pair of elephants!"

He unrolled a long piece of papyrus; and, without omitting a single
figure, read all the expenses that the government had incurred; so much
for repairing the temples, for paving the streets, for the construction
of vessels, for the coral-fisheries, for the enlargement of the
Syssitia, and for engines in the mines in the country of the
Cantabri