"Be on your guard with him, though that is easier to say than to do. He does not forget or forgive."
[CHAPTER XVI.]
BAAL HAMMON.
FOR some time after the events related in the last chapter the siege went on without any noticeable incidents. The fighting was nearly continuous, but there was nothing like a pitched battle. The besiegers did not again attempt an assault, nor did the besieged make a sally in force. Scipio's plan was to complete the blockade of the city, and then to await events, reserving his attack till famine and disease had exhausted the strength of the enemy.
The first step was to cut off all communication on the land side. Carthage stood on a peninsula, and Scipio's superiority in the field made him master of the isthmus by which this peninsula was joined to the mainland. This he covered from sea to sea by a huge fortification, which served at the same time for a camp. It had a ditch and a rampart both on the side that looked towards the city, from which it was distant little more than a bow-shot, and on that which faced the mainland. It was necessary, indeed, that it should be defensible both in the front and in the rear. It was one of the most formidable possibilities of the war that the Roman army might be attacked from behind by the native allies of Carthage. Scipio knew—it was a mark of his genius that he knew everything—that the emissaries of the city were unceasing in their efforts to raise an army of auxiliaries among the native tribes of Northern Africa. The wall had, as usual, towers at intervals over its whole length. One of these towers, built in the most solid fashion of stone, was carried up to such a height that it commanded a view of all that was being done within the city walls.
Of course the besieged did not allow this work, threatening as it was to the very existence of their city, to be carried on without interruption. Catapults, posted on the city walls, kept up a continuous discharge of missiles; unceasing showers of stones came from the archers and slingers, while bodies of infantry were kept in readiness to sally forth whenever and wherever they saw an opportunity of doing damage. The Romans had, so to speak, to build and dig with a workman's tool in the one hand and a weapon in the other, but they stuck to their task with indefatigable zeal and inexhaustible courage. The officers shared all the toils and dangers of their men, and the work progressed, not indeed without loss, but without interruption.
Meanwhile the city was in a state of constantly increasing excitement from another cause, not unconnected, however, with the war. The festival of Baal Hammon—otherwise Moloch—was approaching, and it was to be kept with unusual splendour, even, it was said, with rites of worship that had fallen into disuse for many years. For Carthage, though it had much of the unchanging temper of the East, was not wholly untouched by the spirit of progress, and some of the darker and more savage practices of her religion were no longer practised. But now again the fiercer instincts of the race were waking. It was a common topic of talk in the streets that the desperate fortunes of the state called for more effectual methods of propitiating the anger of heaven. Meetings of the Senate were held daily with closed doors, and it was known, though instant death was the appointed penalty of any indiscreet revelation by a senator, that the chief subject of debate was settling the details of the great Moloch feast.
Cleanor, in common with the other Greeks in the population, whether civil or military, heard but little of the matter. It was, in a way, kept from them by their companions and comrades, who knew that they regarded such proceedings without sympathy, not to say, with disgust. In the ordinary course the great day would have come and passed without his knowing anything about it beyond the fact that it was the chief festival of the Carthaginian year. But this was not to be.
He was returning to his quarters somewhat late in the evening, two days before the appointed time, when he felt a hand laid on the sleeve of his tunic, and heard himself called by his name in a voice which somehow seemed familiar, though he could not immediately connect it with any friend or acquaintance. He halted, and turned to the speaker.