A few persisted in following the armies.  They ran on the flank of the syntagmata by the side of the captains.  They called to their husbands, pulled them by the cloak, cursed them as they beat their breasts, and held out their little naked and weeping children at arm’s length.  The sight of them was unmanning the Barbarians; they were an embarrassment and a peril.  Several times they were repulsed, but they came back again; Matho made the horsemen belonging to Narr’ Havas charge them with the point of the lance; and on some Balearians shouting out to him that they must have women, he replied:  “I have none!”

Just now he was invaded by the genius of Moloch.  In spite of the rebellion of his conscience, he performed terrible deeds, imagining that he was thus obeying the voice of a god.  When he could not ravage the fields, Matho would cast stones into them to render them sterile.

He urged Autaritus and Spendius with repeated messages to make haste.  But the Suffet’s operations were incomprehensible.  He encamped at Eidous, Monchar, and Tehent successively; some scouts believed that they saw him in the neighbourhood of Ischiil, near the frontiers of Narr’ Havas, and it was reported that he had crossed the river above Tebourba as though to return to Carthage.  Scarcely was he in one place when he removed to another.  The routes that he followed always remained unknown.  The Suffet preserved his advantages without offering battle, and while pursued by the Barbarians seemed to be leading them.

These marches and counter marches were still more fatiguing to the Carthaginians, and Hamilcar’s forces, receiving no reinforcements, diminished from day to day.  The country people were now more backward in bringing him provisions.  In every direction he encountered taciturn hesitation and hatred; and in spite of his entreaties to the Great Council no succour came from Carthage.

It was said, perhaps it was believed, that he had need of none.  It was a trick, or his complaints were unnecessary; and Hanno’s partisans, in order to do him an ill turn, exaggerated the importance of his victory.  The troops which he commanded he was welcome to; but they were not going to supply his demands continually in that way.  The war was quite burdensome enough! it had cost too much, and from pride the patricians belonging to his faction supported him but slackly.

Then Hamilcar, despairing of the Republic, took by force from the tribes all that he wanted for the war—­grain, oil, wood, cattle, and men.  But the inhabitants were not long in taking flight.  The villages passed through were empty, and the cabins were ransacked without anything being discerned in them.  The Punic army was soon encompassed by a terrible solitude.

The Carthaginians, who were furious, began to sack the provinces; they filled up the cisterns and fired the houses.  The sparks, being carried by the wind, were scattered far off, and whole forests were on fire on the mountains; they bordered the valleys with a crown of flames, and it was often necessary to wait in order to pass beyond them.  Then the soldiers resumed their march over the warm ashes in the full glare of the sun.