Matho had been greeted with great shouting when he had come back bearing the veil of the goddess; even those who were not of the Chanaanitish religion were made by their vague enthusiasm to feel the arrival of a genius.  As to seizing the zaimph, no one thought of it, for the mysterious manner in which he had acquired it was sufficient in the minds of the Barbarians to justify its possession; such were the thoughts of the soldiers of the African race.  The others, whose hatred was not of such long standing, did not know how to make up their minds.  If they had had ships they would immediately have departed.

Spendius, Narr’ Havas, and Matho despatched men to all the tribes on Punic soil.

Carthage was sapping the strength of these nations.  She wrung exorbitant taxes from them, and arrears or even murmurings were punished with fetters, the axe, or the cross.  It was necessary to cultivate whatever suited the Republic, and to furnish what she demanded; no one had the right of possessing a weapon; when villages rebelled the inhabitants were sold; governors were esteemed like wine-presses, according to the quantity which they succeeded in extracting.  Then beyond the regions immediately subject to Carthage extended the allies roamed the Nomads, who might be let loose upon them.  By this system the crops were always abundant, the studs skilfully managed, and the plantations superb.

The elder Cato, a master in the matters of tillage and slaves, was amazed at it ninety-two years later, and the death-cry which he repeated continually at Rome was but the exclamation of jealous greed.

During the last war the exactions had been increased, so that nearly all the towns of Libya had surrendered to Regulus.  To punish them, a thousand talents, twenty thousand oxen, three hundred bags of gold dust, and considerable advances of grain had been exacted from them, and the chiefs of the tribes had been crucified or thrown to the lions.

Tunis especially execrated Carthage!  Older than the metropolis, it could not forgive her her greatness, and it fronted her walls crouching in the mire on the water’s edge like a venomous beast watching her.  Transportation, massacres, and epidemics did not weaken it.  It had assisted Archagathas, the son of Agathocles, and the Eaters of Uncleanness found arms there at once.

The couriers had not yet set out when universal rejoicing broke out in the provinces.  Without waiting for anything they strangled the comptrollers of the houses and the functionaries of the Republic in the baths; they took the old weapons that had been concealed out of the caves; they forged swords with the iron of the ploughs; the children sharpened javelins at the doors, and the women gave their necklaces, rings, earrings, and everything that could be employed for the destruction of Carthage.  Piles of lances were heaped up in the country towns like sheaves of maize.  Cattle and money were sent off.  Matho speedily paid the Mercenaries their arrears, and owing to this, which was Spendius’s idea, he was appointed commander-in-chief—­the schalishim of the Barbarians.