REIGN OF TERROR. 151 



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 fron- 

 tiers 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 race — black, 

 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 abo- 

 minable cries. When the feast was over, they cowered 

 together on their hams, and fixed their gloating eyes 



