Matho had at first refrained from fighting, the better to command the Barbarians all at once.  He had been seen along the gulf with the Mercenaries, near the lagoon with the Numidians, and on the shores of the lake among the Negroes, and from the back part of the plain he urged forward masses of soldiers who came ceaselessly against the ramparts.  By degrees he had drawn near; the smell of blood, the sight of carnage, and the tumult of clarions had at last made his heart leap.  Then he had gone back into his tent, and throwing off his cuirass had taken his lion’s skin as being more convenient for battle.  The snout fitted upon his head, bordering his face with a circle of fangs; the two fore-paws were crossed upon his breast, and the claws of the hinder ones fell beneath his knees.

He had kept on his strong waist-belt, wherein gleamed a two-edged axe, and with his great sword in both hands he had dashed impetuously through the breach.  Like a pruner cutting willow-branches and trying to strike off as much as possible so as to make the more money, he marched along mowing down the Carthaginians around him.  Those who tried to seize him in flank he knocked down with blows of the pommel; when they attacked him in front he ran them through; if they fled he clove them.  Two men leaped together upon his back; he bounded backwards against a gate and crushed them.  His sword fell and rose.  It shivered on the angle of a wall.  Then he took his heavy axe, and front and rear he ripped up the Carthaginians like a flock of sheep.  They scattered more and more, and he was quite alone when he reached the second enclosure at the foot of the Acropolis.  The materials which had been flung from the summit cumbered the steps and were heaped up higher than the wall.  Matho turned back amid the ruins to summons his companions.

He perceived their crests scattered over the multitude; they were sinking and their wearers were about to perish; he dashed towards them; then the vast wreath of red plumes closed in, and they soon rejoined him and surrounded him.  But an enormous crowd was discharging from the side streets.  He was caught by the hips, lifted up and carried away outside the ramparts to a spot where the terrace was high.

Matho shouted a command and all the shields sank upon the helmets; he leaped upon them in order to catch hold somewhere so as to re-enter Carthage; and, flourishing his terrible axe, ran over the shields, which resembled waves of bronze, like a marine god, with brandished trident, over his billows.

However, a man in a white robe was walking along the edge of the rampart, impassible, and indifferent to the death which surrounded him.  Sometimes he would spread out his right hand above his eyes in order to find out some one.  Matho happened to pass beneath him.  Suddenly his eyeballs flamed, his livid face contracted; and raising both his lean arms he shouted out abuse at him.

Matho did not hear it; but he felt so furious and cruel a look entering his heart that he uttered a roar.  He hurled his long axe at him; some people threw themselves upon Schahabarim; and Matho seeing him no more fell back exhausted.