Salammbo

G >> Gustave Flaubert >> Salammbo


The assault was renewed for several days in succession, the Mercenaries
hoping to triumph by extraordinary energy and audacity.

Sometimes a man raised on the shoulders of another would drive a
pin between the stones, and then making use of it as a step to reach
further, would place a second and a third; and, protected by the edge
of the battlements, which stood out from the wall, they would gradually
raise themselves in this way; but on reaching a certain height they
always fell back again. The great trench was full to overflowing;
the wounded were massed pell-mell with the dead and dying beneath the
footsteps of the living. Calcined trunks formed black spots amid opened
entrails, scattered brains, and pools of blood; and arms and legs
projecting half way out of a heap, would stand straight up like props in
a burning vineyard.

The ladders proving insufficient the tollenos were brought into
requisition,--instruments consisting of a long beam set transversely
upon another, and bearing at its extremity a quadrangular basket which
would hold thirty foot-soldiers with their weapons.

Matho wished to ascend in the first that was ready. Spendius stopped
him.

Some men bent over a capstan; the great beam rose, became horizontal,
reared itself almost vertically, and being overweighted at the end, bent
like a huge reed. The soldiers, who were crowded together, were hidden
up to their chins; only their helmet-plumes could be seen. At last when
it was twenty cubits high in the air it turned several times to the
right and to the left, and then was depressed; and like a giant arm
holding a cohort of pigmies in its hand, it laid the basketful of
men upon the edge of the wall. They leaped into the crowd and never
returned.

All the other tollenos were speedily made ready. But a hundred times
as many would have been needed for the capture of the town. They were
utilised in a murderous fashion: Ethiopian archers were placed in the
baskets; then, the cables having been fastened, they remained suspended
and shot poisoned arrows. The fifty tollenos commanding the battlements
thus surrounded Carthage like monstrous vultures; and the Negroes
laughed to see the guards on the rampart dying in grievous convulsions.

Hamilcar sent hoplites to these posts, and every morning made them drink
the juice of certain herbs which protected them against the poison.

One evening when it was dark he embarked the best of his soldiers
on lighters and planks, and turning to the right of the harbour,
disembarked on the Taenia. Then he advanced to the first lines of
the Barbarians, and taking them in flank, made a great slaughter. Men
hanging to ropes would descend at night from the top of the wall with
torches in their hands, burn the works of the Mercenaries, and then
mount up again.

Matho was exasperated; every obstacle strengthened his wrath, which led
him into terrible extravagances. He mentally summoned Salammbo to an
interview; then he waited. She did not come; this seemed to him like a
fresh piece of treachery,--and henceforth he execrated her. If he
had seen her corpse he would perhaps have gone away. He doubled the
outposts, he planted forks at the foot of the rampart, he drove caltrops
into the ground, and he commanded the Libyans to bring him a whole
forest that he might set it on fire and burn Carthage like a den of
foxes.

Spendius went on obstinately with the siege. He sought to invent
terrible machines such as had never before been constructed.

The other Barbarians, encamped at a distance on the isthmus, were amazed
at these delays; they murmured, and they were let loose.

Then they rushed with their cutlasses and javelins, and beat against
the gates with them. But the nakedness of their bodies facilitating the
infliction of wounds, the Carthaginians massacred them freely; and the
Mercenaries rejoiced at it, no doubt through jealousy about the plunder.
Hence there resulted quarrels and combats between them. Then, the
country having been ravaged, provisions were soon scarce. They grew
disheartened. Numerous hordes went away, but the crowd was so great that
the loss was not apparent.

The best of them tried to dig mines, but the earth, being badly
supported, fell in. They began again in other places, but Hamilcar
always guessed the direction that they were taking by holding his ear
against a bronze shield. He bored counter-mines beneath the path along
which the wooden towers were to move, and when they were pushed forward
they sank into the holes.

At last all recognised that the town was impregnable, unless a long
terrace was raised to the same height as the walls, so as to enable them
to fight on the same level. The top of it should be paved so that
the machines might be rolled along. Then Carthage would find it quite
impossible to resist.

The town was beginning to suffer from thirst. The water which was worth
two kesitahs the bath at the opening of the siege was now sold for
a shekel of silver; the stores of meat and corn were also becoming
exhausted; there was a dread of famine, and some even began to speak of
useless mouths, which terrified every one.

From the square of Khamon to the temple of Melkarth the streets were
cumbered with corpses; and, as it was the end of the summer, the
combatants were annoyed by great black flies. Old men carried off the
wounded, and the devout continued the fictitious funerals for their
relatives and friends who had died far away during the war. Waxen
statues with clothes and hair were displayed across the gates. They
melted in the heat of the tapers burning beside them; the paint flowed
down upon their shoulders, and tears streamed over the faces of the
living, as they chanted mournful songs beside them. The crowd meanwhile
ran to and fro; armed bands passed; captains shouted orders, while the
shock of the rams beating against the rampart was constantly heard.

The temperature became so heavy that the bodies swelled and would no
longer fit into the coffins. They were burned in the centre of the
courts. But the fires, being too much confined, kindled the neighbouring
walls, and long flames suddenly burst from the houses like blood
spurting from an artery. Thus Moloch was in possession of Carthage; he
clasped the ramparts, he rolled through the streets, he devoured the
very corpses.

Men wearing cloaks made of collected rags in token of despair, stationed
themselves at the corners of the cross-ways. They declaimed against the
Ancients and against Hamilcar, predicted complete ruin to the people,
and invited them to universal destruction and license. The most
dangerous were the henbane-drinkers; in their crisis they believed
themselves wild beasts, and leaped upon the passers-by to rend them.
Mobs formed around them, and the defence of Carthage was forgotten. The
Suffet devised the payment of others to support his policy.

In order to retain the genius of the gods within the town their images
had been covered with chains. Black veils were placed upon the Pataec
gods, and hair-cloths around the altars; and attempts were made to
excite the pride and jealousy of the Baals by singing in their ears:
"Thou art about to suffer thyself to be vanquished! Are the others
perchance more strong? Show thyself! aid us! that the peoples may not
say: 'Where are now their gods?'"

The colleges of the pontiffs were agitated by unceasing anxiety. Those
of Rabbetna were especially afraid--the restoration of the zaimph having
been of no avail. They kept themselves shut up in the third enclosure
which was as impregnable as a fortress. Only one among them, the high
priest Schahabarim, ventured to go out.

He used to visit Salammbo. But he would either remain perfectly silent,
gazing at her with fixed eyeballs, or else would be lavish of words, and
the reproaches that he uttered were harder than ever.

With inconceivable inconsistency he could not forgive the young girl
for carrying out his commands; Schahabarim had guessed all, and this
haunting thought revived the jealousies of his impotence. He accused her
of being the cause of the war. Matho, according to him, was besieging
Carthage to recover the zaimph; and he poured out imprecations and
sarcasms upon this Barbarian who pretended to the possession of holy
things. Yet it was not this that the priest wished to say.

But just now Salammbo felt no terror of him. The anguish which she used
formerly to suffer had left her. A strange peacefulness possessed her.
Her gaze was less wandering, and shone with limpid fire.

Meanwhile the python had become ill again; and as Salammbo, on the
contrary, appeared to be recovering, old Taanach rejoiced in the
conviction that by its decline it was taking away the languor of her
mistress.

One morning she found it coiled up behind the bed of ox-hides, colder
than marble, and with its head hidden by a heap of worms. Her cries
brought Salammbo to the spot. She turned it over for a while with the
tip of her sandal, and the slave was amazed at her insensibility.

Hamilcar's daughter no longer prolonged her fasts with so much fervour.
She passed whole days on the top of her terrace, leaning her elbows
against the balustrade, and amusing herself by looking out before her.
The summits of the walls at the end of the town cut uneven zigzags upon
the sky, and the lances of the sentries formed what was like a border
of corn-ears throughout their length. Further away she could see the
manoeuvres of the Barbarians between the towers; on days when the siege
was interrupted she could even distinguish their occupations. They
mended their weapons, greased their hair, and washed their bloodstained
arms in the sea; the tents were closed; the beasts of burden were
feeding; and in the distance the scythes of the chariots, which were all
ranged in a semicircle, looked like a silver scimitar lying at the base
of the mountains. Schahabarim's talk recurred to her memory. She was
waiting for Narr' Havas, her betrothed. In spite of her hatred she would
have liked to see Matho again. Of all the Carthaginians she was perhaps
the only one who would have spoken to him without fear.

Her father often came into her room. He would sit down panting on the
cushions, and gaze at her with an almost tender look, as if he found
some rest from her fatigues in the sight of her. He sometimes questioned
her about her journey to the camp of the Mercenaries. He even asked her
whether any one had urged her to it; and with a shake of the head she
answered, No,--so proud was Salammbo of having saved the zaimph.

But the Suffet always came back to Matho under pretence of making
military inquiries. He could not understand how the hours which she had
spent in the tent had been employed. Salammbo, in fact, said nothing
about Gisco; for as words had an effective power in themselves, curses,
if reported to any one, might be turned against him; and she was silent
about her wish to assassinate, lest she should be blamed for not having
yielded to it. She said that the schalischim appeared furious, that he
had shouted a great deal, and that he had then fallen asleep. Salammbo
told no more, through shame perhaps, or else because she was led by her
extreme ingenuousness to attach but little importance to the soldier's
kisses. Moreover, it all floated through her head in a melancholy and
misty fashion, like the recollection of a depressing dream; and she
would not have known in what way or in what words to express it.

One evening when they were thus face to face with each other, Taanach
came in looking quite scared. An old man with a child was yonder in the
courts, and wished to see the Suffet.

Hamilcar turned pale, and then quickly replied:

"Let him come up!"

Iddibal entered without prostrating himself. He held a young boy,
covered with a goat's-hair cloak, by the hand, and at once raised the
hood which screened his face.

"Here he is, Master! Take him!"

The Suffet and the slave went into a corner of the room.

The child remained in the centre standing upright, and with a gaze
of attention rather than of astonishment he surveyed the ceiling, the
furniture, the pearl necklaces trailing on the purple draperies, and the
majestic maiden who was bending over towards him.

He was perhaps ten years old, and was not taller than a Roman sword. His
curly hair shaded his swelling forehead. His eyeballs looked as if they
were seeking for space. The nostrils of his delicate nose were broad
and palpitating, and upon his whole person was displayed the indefinable
splendour of those who are destined to great enterprises. When he had
cast aside his extremely heavy cloak, he remained clad in a lynx skin,
which was fastened about his waist, and he rested his little naked feet,
which were all white with dust, resolutely upon the pavement. But he no
doubt divined that important matters were under discussion, for he
stood motionless, with one hand behind his back, his chin lowered, and a
finger in his mouth.

At last Hamilcar attracted Salammbo with a sign and said to her in a low
voice:

"You will keep him with you, you understand! No one, even though
belonging to the house, must know of his existence!"

Then, behind the door, he again asked Iddibal whether he was quite sure
that they had not been noticed.

"No!" said the slave, "the streets were empty."

As the war filled all the provinces he had feared for his master's son.
Then, not knowing where to hide him, he had come along the coasts in a
sloop, and for three days Iddibal had been tacking about in the gulf and
watching the ramparts. At last, that evening, as the environs of Khamon
seemed to be deserted, he had passed briskly through the channel and
landed near the arsenal, the entrance to the harbour being free.

But soon the Barbarians posted an immense raft in front of it in order
to prevent the Carthaginians from coming out. They were again rearing
the wooden towers, and the terrace was rising at the same time.

Outside communications were cut off and an intolerable famine set in.

The besieged killed all the dogs, all the mules, all the asses, and then
the fifteen elephants which the Suffet had brought back. The lions of
the temple of Moloch had become ferocious, and the hierodules no longer
durst approach them. They were fed at first with the wounded Barbarians;
then they were thrown corpses that were still warm; they refused
them, and they all died. People wandered in the twilight along the old
enclosures, and gathered grass and flowers among the stones to boil
them in wine, wine being cheaper than water. Others crept as far as the
enemy's outposts, and entered the tents to steal food, and the stupefied
Barbarians sometimes allowed them to return. At last a day arrived when
the Ancients resolved to slaughter the horses of Eschmoun privately.
They were holy animals whose manes were plaited by the pontiffs with
gold ribbons, and whose existence denoted the motion of the sun--the
idea of fire in its most exalted form. Their flesh was cut into equal
portions and buried behind the altar. Then every evening the Ancients,
alleging some act of devotion, would go up to the temple and regale
themselves in secret, and each would take away a piece beneath his tunic
for his children. In the deserted quarters remote from the walls, the
inhabitants, whose misery was not so great, had barricaded themselves
through fear of the rest.

The stones from the catapults, and the demolitions commanded for
purposes of defence, had accumulated heaps of ruins in the middle of
the streets. At the quietest times masses of people would suddenly rush
along with shouts; and from the top of the Acropolis the conflagrations
were like purple rags scattered upon the terraces and twisted by the
wind.

The three great catapults did not stop in spite of all these works.
Their ravages were extraordinary: thus a man's head rebounded from the
pediment of the Syssitia; a woman who was being confined in the street
of Kinisdo was crushed by a block of marble, and her child was carried
with the bed as far as the crossways of Cinasyn, where the coverlet was
found.

The most annoying were the bullets of the slingers. They fell upon the
roofs, and in the gardens, and in the middle of the courts, while people
were at table before a slender meal with their hearts big with sighs.
These cruel projectiles bore engraved letters which stamped themselves
upon the flesh;--and insults might be read on corpses such as "pig,"
"jackal," "vermin," and sometimes jests: "Catch it!" or "I have well
deserved it!"

The portion of the rampart which extended from the corner of the
harbours to the height of the cisterns was broken down. Then the people
of Malqua found themselves caught between the old enclosure of Byrsa
behind, and the Barbarians in front. But there was enough to be done in
thickening the wall and making it as high as possible without troubling
about them; they were abandoned; all perished; and although they were
generally hated, Hamilcar came to be greatly abhorred.

On the morrow he opened the pits in which he kept stores of corn,
and his stewards gave it to the people. For three days they gorged
themselves.

Their thirst, however, only became the more intolerable, and they could
constantly see before them the long cascade formed by the clear falling
water of the aqueduct. A thin vapour, with a rainbow beside it, went up
from its base, beneath the rays of the sun, and a little stream curving
through the plain fell into the gulf.

Hamilcar did not give way. He was reckoning upon an event, upon
something decisive and extraordinary.

His own slaves tore off the silver plates from the temple of Melkarth;
four long boats were drawn out of the harbour, they were brought by
means of capstans to the foot of the Mappalian quarter, the wall facing
the shore was bored, and they set out for the Gauls to buy Mercenaries
there at no matter what price. Nevertheless, Hamilcar was distressed at
his inability to communicate with the king of the Numidians, for he
knew that he was behind the Barbarians, and ready to fall upon them. But
Narr' Havas, being too weak, was not going to make any venture alone;
and the Suffet had the rampart raised twelve palms higher, all the
material in the arsenals piled up in the Acropolis, and the machines
repaired once more.

Sinews taken from bulls' necks, or else stags' hamstrings, were commonly
employed for the twists of the catapults. However, neither stags nor
bulls were in existence in Carthage. Hamilcar asked the Ancients for
the hair of their wives; all sacrificed it, but the quantity was not
sufficient. In the buildings of the Syssitia there were twelve hundred
marriageable slaves destined for prostitution in Greece and Italy, and
their hair, having been rendered elastic by the use of unguents, was
wonderfully well adapted for engines of war. But the subsequent loss
would be too great. Accordingly it was decided that a choice should
be made of the finest heads of hair among the wives of the plebeians.
Careless of their country's needs, they shrieked in despair when the
servants of the Hundred came with scissors to lay hands upon them.

The Barbarians were animated with increased fury. They could be seen in
the distance taking fat from the dead to grease their machines, while
others pulled out the nails and stitched them end to end to make
cuirasses. They devised a plan of putting into the catapults vessels
filled with serpents which had been brought by the Negroes; the clay
pots broke on the flag-stones, the serpents ran about, seemed to
multiply, and, so numerous were they, to issue naturally from the walls.
Then the Barbarians, not satisfied with their invention, improved upon
it; they hurled all kinds of filth, human excrements, pieces of carrion,
corpses. The plague reappeared. The teeth of the Carthaginians fell out
of their mouths, and their gums were discoloured like those of camels
after too long a journey.

The machines were set up on the terrace, although the latter did not
as yet reach everywhere to the height of the rampart. Before the
twenty-three towers on the fortification stood twenty-three others of
wood. All the tollenos were mounted again, and in the centre, a
little further back, appeared the formidable helepolis of Demetrius
Poliorcetes, which Spendius had at last reconstructed. Of pyramidical
shape, like the pharos of Alexandria, it was one hundred and thirty
cubits high and twenty-three wide, with nine stories, diminishing as
they approached the summit, and protected by scales of brass; they were
pierced with numerous doors and were filled with soldiers, and on the
upper platform there stood a catapult flanked by two ballistas.

Then Hamilcar planted crosses for those who should speak of surrender,
and even the women were brigaded. The people lay in the streets and
waited full of distress.

Then one morning before sunrise (it was the seventh day of the month
of Nyssan) they heard a great shout uttered by all the Barbarians
simultaneously; the leaden-tubed trumpets pealed, and the great
Paphlagonian horns bellowed like bulls. All rose and ran to the rampart.

A forest of lances, pikes, and swords bristled at its base. It leaped
against the wall, the ladders grappled them; and Barbarians' heads
appeared in the intervals of the battlements.

Beams supported by long files of men were battering at the gates; and,
in order to demolish the wall at places where the terrace was wanting,
the Mercenaries came up in serried cohorts, the first line crawling, the
second bending their hams, and the others rising in succession to the
last who stood upright; while elsewhere, in order to climb up, the
tallest advanced in front and the lowest in the rear, and all rested
their shields upon their helmets with their left arms, joining them
together at the edges so tightly that they might have been taken for an
assemblage of large tortoises. The projectiles slid over these oblique
masses.

The Carthaginians threw down mill-stones, pestles, vats, casks, beds,
everything that could serve as a weight and could knock down. Some
watched at the embrasures with fisherman's nets, and when the Barbarian
arrived he found himself caught in the meshes, and struggled like a
fish. They demolished their own battlements; portions of wall fell down
raising a great dust; and as the catapults on the terrace were shooting
over against one another, the stones would strike together and shiver
into a thousand pieces, making a copious shower upon the combatants.

Soon the two crowds formed but one great chain of human bodies; it
overflowed into the intervals in the terrace, and, somewhat looser at
the two extremities, swayed perpetually without advancing. They clasped
one another, lying flat on the ground like wrestlers. They crushed one
another. The women leaned over the battlements and shrieked. They
were dragged away by their veils, and the whiteness of their suddenly
uncovered sides shone in the arms of the Negroes as the latter buried
their daggers in them. Some corpses did not fall, being too much pressed
by the crowd, and, supported by the shoulders of their companions,
advanced for some minutes quite upright and with staring eyes. Some
who had both temples pierced by a javelin swayed their heads about like
bears. Mouths, opened to shout, remained gaping; severed hands flew
through the air. Mighty blows were dealt, which were long talked of by
the survivors.

Meanwhile arrows darted from the towers of wood and stone. The tollenos
moved their long yards rapidly; and as the Barbarians had sacked the
old cemetery of the aborigines beneath the Catacombs, they hurled the
tombstones against the Carthaginians. Sometimes the cables broke under
the weight of too heavy baskets, and masses of men, all with uplifted
arms, would fall from the sky.

Up to the middle of the day the veterans had attacked the Taenia
fiercely in order to penetrate into the harbour and destroy the fleet.
Hamilcar had a fire of damp straw lit upon the roofing of Khamon, and
as the smoke blinded them they fell back to left, and came to swell
the horrible rout which was pressing forward in Malqua. Some syntagmata
composed of sturdy men, chosen expressly for the purpose, had broken in
three gates. They were checked by lofty barriers made of planks studded
with nails, but a fourth yielded easily; they dashed over it at a
run and rolled into a pit in which there were hidden snares. At the
south-west gate Autaritus and his men broke down the rampart, the
fissure in which had been stopped up with bricks. The ground behind
rose, and they climbed it nimbly. But on the top they found a second
wall composed of stones and long beams lying quite flat and alternating
like the squares on a chess-board. It was a Gaulish fashion, and had
been adapted by the Suffet to the requirements of the situation; the
Gauls imagined themselves before a town in their own country. Their
attack was weak, and they were repulsed.

All the roundway, from the street of Khamon as far as the Green Market,
now belonged to the Barbarians, and the Samnites were finishing off
the dying with blows of stakes; or else with one foot on the wall were
gazing down at the smoking ruins beneath them, and the battle which was
beginning again in the distance.