Scipio, was the only one of the hunters who, save Elissa, had in the bushy country managed to follow the chase. He came upon the body of the horse, the now lifeless boar, and the seemingly lifeless form of Elissa, all three close together. When she came partly to her senses again, she found herself closely clasped in the arms of the young Roman warrior. His lips were upon her lips, his breath mingled with her breath; her senses had not yet completely come back to her, she was in a dream. Passionately he clasped her to his bosom; wildly too, in a paroxysm of grief, he cried:
“Die not, beloved, for oh, I love thee—I love thee, Elissa! Say, dost thou love me?”
“Ay,” she replied, with swimming eyes; “ay, I love thee, and that right truly—Maharbal!”
Then she closed her eyes once more, and became again insensible in the arms of Scipio.
Young Scipio, gnashing his teeth with rage, laid her inert body on the ground. Then he rode off, and finding some of the beaters, told them to seek her and bring her back to the palace. He himself, cursing the very name of Maharbal, rode moodily home, avoiding the remainder of the hunting party, whom he observed in the distance.
CHAPTER XIII.
ON THE BRINK.
When we last left Maharbal upon the shores of the Adriatic he was a prey to great sorrow at the loss of his dear friend Mago. But soon he had no time for any personal feelings, for the army was once more in motion. Hannibal, ever mindful of his dream, proceeded to follow out the plan that the dream had suggested, namely, the devastation of Italy. Accordingly, ever leaving a destroyed territory in his wake, he marched onward and southward. Every village that he came across he pillaged and burned, every town or walled city that he met he laid siege to, captured, and destroyed. It was not a part of his plan of campaign to allow his followers to hamper themselves with the quantities of female slaves that they took prisoners, as there could be no means of exportation for them. Therefore, merely delaying for a few days’ repose after the capture of each place, he caused the army to relinquish all the women they had taken, and so to march on, ever forward, unhampered save by the enormous booty they had acquired.
The power of Rome having been apparently paralysed, he, for a considerable space, wandered whither he would, utterly unopposed. Having traversed, from end to end, the countries of Picenum, Campania, Samnium, and Apulia; having for months and months devastated all the richest country in Italy, under the very eyes of the following force of Romans, under the Dictator Fabius, surnamed Cunctator or the Lingerer, he seized upon and carried by assault the citadel and town of Cannæ, where there was an immense store of provisions and materials of war belonging to the Romans. There he rested for a time, and armed all his Libyan infantry with Roman armour and Roman weapons. What a delight must not the Carthaginian chief have felt, as he dealt out by the thousand to his followers the suits of armour that he had taken from the Roman warriors even in their own country. He now had, however, not only the most absolute confidence in himself and his mission, but a sarcastic delight in thus arming his forces with Roman harness to fight against the Romans themselves. And this feeling was shared by the men of mixed nationalities in his army, who, with feelings of triumph, arrayed themselves in the trappings of the enemy whom they were commencing to despise.
Meanwhile, the members of the Senate at Rome were tearing their hair. They determined that an effort must be made, and this puny invader, who, with such a ridiculously small force, had dared to affront all the might of Rome, must be crushed forthwith. Despite, therefore, the previous disasters, they girt their loins together most manfully, and prepared for new and more determined efforts to wipe Hannibal and all his crew off the face of the earth.
What the power of the Roman Senate, what the resolution of the Roman people must have been, is exemplified by the fact that, despite previous losses, they soon had in the field an army amounting in number to more than four times the usual annual levy of legions. For it consisted, counting horse and foot, of nearly ninety-eight thousand men! And the Dictator, the lingerer Fabius, having been proved a failure, and he and his master of the horse, and sometimes co-dictator, Minucius, having been repeatedly defeated in various small actions and skirmishes, this enormous force was placed under the command of the two new consuls for the year, Paullus Æmilius, and Terentius Varro, the former being a patrician of great fame, the latter a popular demagogue of plebeian origin. Æmilius had already greatly distinguished himself in the Illyrian war, for which he had celebrated a splendid triumph; but as for Varro, he was, although the representative of the people, nothing but a vulgar and impudent bully, with no other knowledge of war than his own unbounded assurance. When Hannibal, with his usual military genius, had seized upon the citadel of Cannæ, these two consuls, burning to retrieve the frequent recent disasters, arrived upon the scene and took over the command. But after all that had gone before, they were not sure of themselves, and therefore persuaded the out-going consuls, Cnœus Servilius and Marcus Atillus, to remain and join in the battle. Marcus Minucius likewise, who had been co-dictator with Fabius, returned to the army to take part in the great fight which, with all his rashness, he had not himself been able to precipitate during his own term of office, but which he knew to be imminent. He had already suffered a defeat at the hands of Hannibal, and was burning to gain his revenge. And now he knew that he had his chance against the comparatively small force of the presumptuous invader, for never, in all her history, had Rome put such an enormous army in the field.