Hannibal's daughter

On a point of land on the Tœnia, a hundred paces or so to the south of the canal connecting the sea with the Cothon or double harbour of Carthage, stood a palatial residence. Upon the balcony, which ran completely round the house on the first storey, stood a man gazing steadily across the gulf towards the north-east, past the end of the Hermæan Promontory, to the left, of which the distant Island of Zembra alone relieved the monotony of the horizon. His face was grave, and his short hair and beard were slightly grey, but he was evidently a man from whom the fire of youth had not yet departed. His eye was the eye of one born to command; his straight-cut, sun-burned features told the tale of many campaigns. Near him, on a stool covered with a leopard skin, was carelessly thrown a steel helmet richly incrusted with gold, and with the crest and the crown deeply indented, as if from recent hard usage. The golden crest was in one place completely divided by a sword cut, the brighter colour of the gold within the division plainly showing that the blow had been but lately delivered. On the floor of the balcony, at the foot of the stool, lay a long straight sword. Although the hilt was of ivory, and the scabbard of silver inlaid with gems, the blood-stains on the former and the absence of many of the gems from their sockets, told that this was no fair-weather weapon for state occasions, but a lethal blade which had been borne by its owner in the brunt of many a combat. Only, the armour which the warrior wore--consisting as it did merely of a bright steel breast-piece, upon the breast of which was emblazoned in gold a gorgeous representation of the sun, the emblem of the great god Baal or Moloch, and the back of which was similarly inlaid with the two-horned moon, the attribute of the glorious Astarte, Queen of Heaven, and further studded with golden stars, the emblems of all the other and lesser divinities--seemed on first appearance as if more intended for the court than the camp. A closer examination, however, revealed the fact that this also was no mere holiday armour, for it, too, bore severe marks of ill-usage. The warrior’s arms were bare from the elbow downwards, save for a couple of circlets of gold upon each wrist, which from their width seemed more intended for defence than ornament. Beneath the armour he wore a bright toga of pure white cloth, the lower part falling in a kilted skirt below the knee, being adorned with a narrow band of Tyrian purple. Upon his feet he wore cothurns or sandals strongly attached with leather thongs, the thongs being protected with bright chain mail. Some steel pieces for the protection of the thigh and knee were lying close at hand.

Such was the attire of the great General Hamilcar Barca, as with an ever-deepening frown upon his anxious brow, he gazed sternly and steadily in deepest reverie across the sea.

At length his reverie seemed to be broken.

“Why gaze thus towards Sicily,” he muttered; “why dream of vengeance upon the hated Romans, who now occupy from end to end of that fair isle, where, for many years, by the grace of Melcareth, the invisible and omnipotent god, I was able with my small army of mercenaries to deal them so many terrible and crushing blows?

“Have they not almost as much cause to hate and to dread me, who did so much to lower their pride and wipe out the memory of their former victories? Did I not brave them for years from Mount Ercte, descending daily like a wolf from the mountain crest, to ravage the country in front of their very faces in strongly-fortified Panormus, from the shelter of whose walls, for very fear of my name, they scarcely dared to stir, so sure were they that their armies would be cut to pieces by Hamilcar Barca?

“Did I not firmly establish myself in Mount Eryx, half-way up its slope in the city on the hill, and there for two years, despite a huge Roman army at the bottom, and their Gallic allies holding the fortified temple at the top, snap my fingers at them, ay, laugh them to scorn and destroy them by the thousand? For all that time, was not their gold utterly unable to buy the treachery of my followers--were not their arms utterly futile against my person? Did they not indeed find to their cost that I was indeed the Hamilcar my name betokens--him whom the mighty Melcareth protects?”

Proudly glancing across the sea with a scornful laugh, he continued:

“Oh, ye Romans! well know ye that had not mine own countrymen left me for four long years without men, money, or provisions, Sicily had even now been mine. Oh, Prætor Valerius! what was thy much boasted victory of the Œgatian Islands over the Admiral Hanno but the conquest of a mere convoy of ill-armed cargo vessels, whom mine economical countrymen were too parsimonious to send to my relief under proper escort. Where was then thy glory, Valerius? And thou, too, Lutatius Catulus? how did I receive thy arrogant proposals that my troops should march out of Eryx under the yoke? I, a Hamilcar Barca, march out under the yoke!” The General’s swarthy cheek reddened at the thought. “Did not I but laugh in thy beard and lay my hand upon this sword--which I now lift up and kiss before heaven,” he raised and kissed the blood-stained hilt. “Did not I, even as I do now, but simply bare the well-known blade,” here he drew it from its sheath, “and thou didst fall and tremble before me, and in thine anxiety to rid Sicily of me didst willingly take back thine insult and offer to Hamilcar and all his troops the full and free liberty to march out with all the honours of war? Ah!” he continued, stretching forth his sword menacingly across the sea, “for all that it hath been mine own countrymen who were the main cause of my downfall, I yet owe thee a vengeance, Rome, a vengeance not for mine own but for my country’s sake, and, with the help of the gods, in days not long to come, those of my blood shall redden the plains and mountains of Europe with the terrible vengeance of the Barcine sword.”

The General returned his sword to its sheath with an angry clang, then striding across the wide balcony to where it overlooked a beautiful garden on the other side of the house, he shouted loudly:

“Hannibal, Hannibal!”

There was no reply, but down beneath the shelter of the fig trees Hamilcar could plainly perceive three little boys engaged in a very rough game of mimic warfare. They were all three armed with wooden swords and small shields of metal. One of them was up in a fig tree and striking downwards at the head of one who stood upon the crown of a wall; while the third boy, who stood below the wall, was striking upwards at his legs. The din of the resounding blows falling upon the shields was so great that the boy at first did not hear.

“Hannibal, come hither at once,” cried out his father again in louder tones.

Looking up and seeing his father, the boy on the wall threw down his shield, a movement which was instantly taken advantage of by each of the two other boys to get a blow well home. He did not, however, pause to retaliate, but crying out, “That will I revenge later,” threw down his sword also and rushed into the house and up to the balcony, for even at his early age the boy had been taught discipline and instant obedience, and he knew better than to delay. He appeared before his father all out of breath and with torn clothing. Notwithstanding that his forehead was bleeding from the result of the last cut which had been delivered by the boy in the tree, he did not attempt to wipe the wound, but with cast-down eyes and hands crossed over his breast, silently awaited his father’s commands.

“What wast thou doing in the garden, Hannibal?”

“Waiting until Chronos the slave could take me up to see the burnt sacrifice to Baal of the mercenaries whom thou hast conquered,” he answered--then added excitedly, “Matho, who murdered Gisco and his six hundred after mutilating them first, is to be tortured, thou knowest, oh, my father, Chronos told me so, and I am going to see it done.”

Hamilcar frowned.

“Nay, it is not my will that thou shalt go to see Matho tortured and burnt; now, what else wast thou doing down there?”

The boy’s face fell; he did not like to be deprived of the pleasure of seeing Matho tortured first and burned afterwards, for, boy as he was, he knew that if ever man in this world deserved the torture, that man was this last surviving chief of his father’s revolted mercenaries.

But he made no protest at the deprivation of his expected morning’s amusement, answering his father simply.

“I was playing with my brothers Hasdrubal and Mago at thine occupation of the City on Mount Eryx, oh! my father. Mago was up in the tree and represented the Gauls who had deserted and joined the Romans. Hasdrubal was down below and took the place of the Roman Army.”

“And thou wast in thy father’s place between the two, and like thy father himself, hast been wounded,” replied Hamilcar, smiling grimly. “Come, wipe thy face, lad, and tell me why didst not thou, being the strongest, take the part of the Romans at the bottom of the hill?”

Fiercely the youth raised his head, and, looking his father straight in the face, replied:

“For two reasons, my father. First, I am much stronger than Hasdrubal, and the war would have been too soon over; secondly, I hate the Romans, and for nothing in the world would I represent them even in play.”

“Ah! thou hatest the Romans! And wilt thou then fight them one day in earnest and avenge the torrents of Carthaginian blood they have caused to flow, the hundreds of Carthaginian cities whose inhabitants they have put to the sword; avenge, too, our defeat and loss of forty-one elephants before Heraclea; the sacking of Agrigentum and enslavement of 25,000 of its citizens; the terrible loss of three hundred warships at Ecnomos; the invasion of Carthaginia by Regulus; his sacking and burning of all the fair domain between here and Clypea, across yonder Hermæan Promontory; the capture by Cœcilius Metellus before Panormus of 120 elephants from Hasdrubal, all of them slaughtered in cold blood as a spectacle for the Roman citizens in the Roman circus; the fight at--”

“Stop, father, stop!” cried the young Hannibal, stamping his foot. “I can bear no more. By thy sword here, which I can even now draw--see I do so--I swear to fight and avenge all these disasters. By the favour of the great god Baal, whose name I bear, I will wage war against them all my life as soon as ever I am old enough to carry arms.”

“Good,” said his father, “thou art a worthy son of Hamilcar, and this very day shalt thou swear, not in the bloody temple of Moloch, but in the sacred fane of Melcareth, the god of the city, the god of thy forefathers in Tyre, and the god of the divine Dido, the foundress of Carthage, that never wilt thou relax the hatred to the Romans thou hast even now sworn by thy father’s sword. Never shalt thou, whilst life lasts thee, cease to fight for thy native city, thy native country. Look forth, my lad, upon all thou canst see now, and say, is it not a fair domain? Let all that lies before thine eyes now sink down deep into the innermost recesses of thy memory, for soon I shall take thee hence; but I would not have thee, when far away, forget the sacred city for whose very existence thou and I must fight. When thou hast gazed thy fill upon all that lies before us, thou must perform thine ablutions, arrange thy disordered dress, and then thou shalt accompany me, not to see the sacrifice of the mercenaries in the pit of fire before the brazen image of Moloch, but to make thy vow in the temple of the invisible and all-pervading mighty essence of godhead, the eternal Melcareth.”