The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (mini ebook reader .TXT) π
The Egyptians were islanders, cut off from the rest of the world by sand and sea. They were rooted in their valley; they lived entirely upon its fruits, and happily these fruits sometimes failed. Had they always been able to obtain enough to eat, they would have remained always in the semi-savage state.
It may appear strange that Egypt should have suffered from famine, for there was no country in the ancient world where food was so abundant and so cheap. Not only did the land produce enormous crops of corn; the ditches and hollows which were filled by the overflowing Nile supplied a harvest of wholesome and nourishing aquatic plants, and on the borders of the des
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fleet-material and artillery, all the military stores in the public magazines,
and all the arms that could be found in the possession of private
individuals. Three thousand catapults and two hundred thousand sets of
armour were given up.
They again came out to the camp. The military council was assembled to
receive them. The old men saluted the Roman ensigns, and bowed low to
the consuls, placing their hands upon their breasts. The orders of the
consuls, they said, had been obeyed. Was there anything more that their
lords had to command?
The senior consul rose up and said that there was something more. He
was instructed by the Roman senate to inform the senators of Carthage
that the city must be destroyed, but that in accordance with the promise of
the Roman senate their country, their laws, their sepulchres, their
liberties, and their estates would be preserved, and they might build
another city. Only it must be without walls, and at a distance of at least
ten miles from the sea.
The Carthaginians cast themselves upon the ground, and the whole
assembly fell into confusion. The consul explained that he could exercise
no choice: he had received his orders, and they must be carried out. He
requested them to return and apprise their fellow-townsmen. Some of the
senators remained in the Roman camp; others ventured to go back. When
they drew near the city the people came running out to meet them, and
asked them the news. They answered only by weeping and beating their
foreheads, and stretching out their hands and calling on the gods. They
went on to the senate house; the members were summoned; an enormous
crowd gathered in the market-place. Presently the doors opened; the
senators came forth, and the orders of the consuls were announced.
And then there rose in the air a fierce, despairing shriek, a yell of agony
and rage. The mob rushed through the city and tore limb from limb the
Italians who were living in the town. With one voice it was resolved that
the city should be defended to the last. They would not so tamely give up
their beautiful Carthage, their dear and venerable home beside the sea. If
it was to be burnt to ashes, their ashes should be mingled with it, and their
enemiesβ as well.
All the slaves were set free. Old and young, rich and poor, worked
together day and night forging arms. The public buildings were pulled
down to procure timber and metal. The women cut off their hair to make
strings for the catapults. A humble message was sent in true Oriental
style to the consul, praying for a little time. Days passed, and Carthage
gave no signs of life. Tired of waiting, the consul marched towards the
city, which he expected to enter like an open village. He found, to his
horror, the gates closed, and the battlements bristling with artillery.
Carthage was strongly fortified, and it was held by men who had
abandoned hope. The siege lasted more than three years. Cato did not
live to see his darling wish fulfilled. Masinissa also died while the siege
was going on, and bitter was his end. The policy of the Romans had been
death to all his hopes. His dream of a great African empire was
dissolved. He sullenly refused to co-operate with the Romans-βit was
his Carthage which they had decreed should be levelled to the ground.
There was a time when it seemed as if the great city would prove itself to
be impregnable; the siege was conducted with small skill or vigour by the
Roman generals. More than one reputation found its grave before the
walls of Carthage. But when Scipio Aemilianus obtained the command
he at once displayed the genius of his house. Perceiving that it would be
impossible to subdue the city as long as smuggling traders could run into
the port with provisions, he constructed a stone mole across the mouth of
the harbour. Having thus cut off the city from the sea, he pitched his
camp on the neck of the isthmusβfor Carthage was built on a
peninsulaβand so cut it off completely from the land. For the first time
in the siege the blockade was complete: the city was enclosed in a stone
and iron cage. The Carthaginians in their fury brought forth the prisoners
whom they had taken in their sallies, and hurled them headlong from the
walls. There were many in the city who protested against this outrage.
They were denounced as traitors; a reign of terror commenced; the men
of the moderate party were crucified in the streets. The hideous idol of
Moloch found victims in that day; children were placed on its
outstretched and downward sloping hands and rolled off them into the
fiery furnace which was burning at its feet. Nor were there wanting
patriots who sacrificed themselves upon the altars that the gods might
have compassion upon those who survived. But among these pestilence
and famine had begun to work, and the sentinels could scarcely stand to
their duty on the walls. Gangs of robbers went from house to house and
tortured people to make them give up their food; mothers fed upon their
children; a terrible disease broke out; corpses lay scattered in the streets;
men who were burying the dead fell dead upon them; others dug their
own graves and laid down in them to die; houses in which all had
perished were used as public sepulchres, and were quickly filled.
And then, as if the birds of the air had carried the news, it became known
all over Northern Africa that Carthage was about to fall. And then from
the dark and dismal corners of the land, from the wasted frontiers of the
desert, from the snow lairs, and caverns of the Atlas, there came creeping
and crawling to the coast the most abject of the human raceβblack,
naked, withered beings, their bodies covered with red paint, their hair cut
in strange fashions, their language composed of muttering and whistling
sounds. By day they prowled round the camp and fought with the dogs
for the offal and the bones. If they found a skin they roasted it on ashes
and danced round it in glee, wriggling their bodies and uttering
abominable cries. When the feast was over they cowered together on
their hams, and fixed their gloating eyes upon the city, and expanded their
blubber lips, and showed their white fangs.
At last the day came. The harbour walls were carried by assault, and the
Roman soldiers pressed into the narrow streets which led down to the
water side. The houses were six or seven storeys high, and each house
was a fortress which had to be stormed. Lean and haggard creatures, with
eyes of flame, defended their homesteads from room to room, onwards,
upwards, to the death struggle on the broad, flat roof.
Day followed day, and still that horrible music did not ceaseβthe shouts
and songs of the besiegers, the yells and shrieks of the besieged, the
moans of the wounded, the feeble cries of children divided by the sword.
Night followed night, and still the deadly work went on; there was no
sleep and no darkness; the Romans lighted houses that they might see to
kill.
Six days passed thus, and only the citadel was left. It was a steep rock in
the middle of the town; a temple of the God of Healing crowned its
summit.
The rock was covered with people, who could be seen extending their
arms to heaven and uniting with one another in the last embrace. Their
piteous lamentations, like the cries of wounded animals, ascended in the
air, and behind the iron circle which enclosed them could be heard the
crackling of the fire and the dull boom of falling beams.
The soldiers were weary with smiting: they were filled with blood. Nine-tenths of the inhabitants had been already killed. The people on the rock
were offered their lives; they descended with bare hands and passed
under the yoke. Some of them eneded their days in prison; the greater
part were sold as slaves.
But in the temple on the summit of the rocky hill nine hundred Roman
deserters, for whom there could be no pardon, stood at bay. The trumpets
sounded; the soldiers, clashing their bucklers with their swords and
uttering the war-cry alala! alala! Advanced to the attack. Of a sudden
the sea of steel recoiled, the standards reeled; a long tongue of flame
sprang forth upon them through the temple door. The deserters had set
the building on fire that they might escape the ignominious death of
martial law.
A man dressed in purple rushed out of the temple with an olive-branch in
his hand. This was Hasdrubal, the commander-in-chief, and the
Robespierre of the reign of terror. His life was given him; he would do
for the triumph. And as he bowed the knee before the consul a woman
appeared on the roof of the temple with two children in her arms. She
poured forth some scornful words upon her husband, and then plunged
with her children into the flames.
Carthage burned seventeen days before it was entirely consumed. Then
the plough was passed over the soil to put an end in legal form to the
existence of the city. House might never again be built, corn might never
again be sown, upon the ground where it had stood. A hundred years
afterwards Julius Caesar founded another Carthage and planted a Roman
colony therein. But it was not built upon the same spot. The old site
remained accursed; it was a browsing ground for cattle, a field of blood.
When recently the remains of the city walls were disinterred they were
found to be covered with a layer of ashes from four to five feet deep.
Filled with half-charred pieces of wood, fragments of iron, and
projectiles.
The possessions of the Carthaginians were formed into a Roman province
which was called Africa. The governor resided at Utica, which with the
other old Phoenician towns received municipal rights, but paid a fixed
stipend to the state exchequer. The territory of Carthage itself became
Roman domain land, and was let on lease. Italian merchants flocked to
Utica in great numbers and reopened the inland trade, but the famous sea
trade was not revived. The Britons of Cornwall might in vain gather on
high places and strain their eyes towards the west. The ships which had
brought them beads and purple cloth would come again no more.
A descendant of Masinissa, who inherited his genius, defied the Roman
power in a long war. He was finally conquered by Sylla and Marius,
caught, and carried off to Rome. Apparelled in barbaric splendour, he
was paraded through the streets. But when the triumph was over his
guards rushed upon him and struggled for the finery in which he had been
dressed. They tore the rings from his ears with such force that the flesh
came away; they cast him naked into a dungeon under ground. βO
Romans, you give me a cold bath!β were the last words of the valiant
Jugurtha.
The next Numidian prince who appeared at a triumph was the young
Juba, who had taken the side of Pompey against Caesar. βIt proved to be
a happy captivity for him,β says Plutarch, βfor from a barbarous and
unlettered Numidian he became an historian worthy to be numbered
amongst the learned men of Greece.β
When the empire became established the kingdoms of Numidia, of
Cyrene, and of Egypt were swept away. Africa was divided into seven
fruitful provinces ranging along the coast from Tripoli to Tangiers. Egypt
was made a province, with the tropical
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