It was at Megara, a suburb of Carthage, in the gardens of Hamilcar. The soldiers whom he had commanded in Sicily were having a great feast to celebrate the anniversary of the battle of Eryx, and as th...

Two days afterwards the Mercenaries left Carthage. They had each received a piece of gold on the condition that they should go into camp at Sicca, and they had been told with all sorts of caresses: “Y...

The moon was rising just above the waves, and on the town which was still wrapped in darkness there glittered white and luminous specks:⁠—the pole of a chariot, a dangling rag of linen, the corner of ...

Some country people, riding on asses or running on foot, arrived in the town, pale, breathless, and mad with fear. They were flying before the army. It had accomplished the journey from Sicca in three...

After leaving the gardens Matho and Spendius found themselves checked by the rampart of Megara. But they discovered a breach in the great wall and passed through. The ground sloped downwards, forming ...

“I ought to have carried her off!” Matho said in the evening to Spendius. “I should have seized her, and torn her from her house! No one would have dared to touch me!” Spendius was not listening to hi...

The Announcer of the Moons, who watched on the summit of the temple of Eschmoun every night in order to signal the disturbances of the planet with his trumpet, one morning perceived towards the west s...

In the following day he drew two hundred and twenty-three thousand kikars of gold from the Syssitia, and decreed a tax of fourteen shekels upon the rich. Even the women contributed; payment was made i...

Hamilcar had thought that the Mercenaries would await him at Utica, or that they would return against him; and finding his forces insufficient to make or to sustain an attack, he had struck southwards...

These clamourings of the populace did not alarm Hamilcar’s daughter. She was disturbed by loftier anxieties: her great serpent, the black python, was drooping; and in the eyes of the Carthaginians, th...

The man who guided Salammbô made her ascend again beyond the pharos in the direction of the Catacombs, and then go down the long suburb of Molouya, which was full of steep lanes. The sky was beginning...

Twelve hours afterwards all that remained of the Mercenaries was a heap of wounded, dead, and dying. Hamilcar had suddenly emerged from the bottom of the gorge, and again descended the western slope t...

The Barbarians had no need of a circumvallation on the side of Africa, for it was theirs. But to facilitate the approach to the walls, the entrenchments bordering the ditch were thrown down. Matho nex...

The Carthaginians had not reentered their houses when the clouds accumulated more thickly; those who raised their heads towards the colossus could feel big drops on their foreheads, and the rain fell....

There were rejoicings at Carthage⁠—rejoicings deep, universal, extravagant, frantic; the holes of the ruins had been stopped up, the statues of the gods had been repainted, the streets were strewn wit...