Having read her father’s epistle, Elissa turned to her lover’s letter.
Within its pages Maharbal breathed forth such unswerving and straightforward devotion, such absolute faith and trust in herself and her integrity and honour, that before it was half finished she thanked the gods a thousand times that they had inspired her with sufficient strength to remain faithful to this man who had been such an invaluable aid to Hannibal in assisting him to maintain ever to the fore the honour and glory of Carthage. But her cheek burned with shame even as she read. For she realised to her sorrow that whatever honour had prompted her to do in the past or might prompt her to do in the future, she would nevertheless far rather have received those burning lines of love and devotion from the hand of Scipio, the enemy of her father and her country, than from the hand of Maharbal, the brave upholder of her country’s honour and her father’s life-long friend. But such is life, and such are the hearts of women, and despite her burning cheek Elissa knew that since she had ever behaved most straightforwardly and honourably by her absent lover she had done Maharbal no wrong.
Just after she received these letters, the investment of Syracuse by the Romans was commenced with great determination on the land side and the sea side alike. Thus was no opportunity given to Elissa for any reply, neither did she have any means at her command for establishing any understanding with Philip of Macedon.
CHAPTER II.
FROM SYRACUSE TO MACEDON.
Archimedes, the great mathematician, was a little old man, now nearly ninety years of age. He, however, maintained to the full all his powers, both physical and mental. He still seemed to have in his frame the strength of a man not much over fifty, while his brain was by far brighter and clearer than that of any of the young men of the more modern schools. In appearance his eye was bright, his cheek rosy, while his face, although wrinkled, was not by any means wrinkled to excess. He was alert and active on his feet, scarcely ever seemed to require any rest, and not only enjoyed a healthy appetite, but could, when occasion required, sit up late and join the young bloods of the day in a carouse, without seeming to feel any ill effects upon the morrow. He was, at the time of Elissa’s visit, married, for the third time, to a young wife, and he had sons well advanced in middle age, employed in every branch of the Government service.
He had been the counsellor of King Hiero during the whole of that monarch’s reign of fifty years’ duration, and, owing to his own abilities and the munificence of his royal master, Archimedes had, during that long period, been able to bring the defences of the city of Syracuse to a state of perfection little dreamt of by its enemies. Such was the old man whose abilities the Roman leaders had not taken into account before they so lightly entered upon the siege of the fairest city in the whole of Sicily. However, they soon found out, by experience, that one man’s genius is sometimes more effective than mere numbers.
A terrible plague had been raging for some time in both armies before the Romans attempted to push the attack home, and this plague had attacked the defenders and the outside Carthaginian troops far more severely than it had the Romans themselves, for the land forces of the latter were encamped upon higher and better ground, while the sailors on the ships, by keeping out to sea, did not suffer so severely. It had, nevertheless, been an awful time for both parties, and for a long while terror and absolute desolation had reigned supreme. At length, however, the plague abated, after committing the most awful ravages, during which the rotting dead lay piled in unburied heaps, alike in the streets of the city and the interior of the several camps. But before it had abated nearly all the Carthaginian land forces were dead, and both the generals, Himilco and Hippocrates, were among those who had been carried off.
Archimedes and Epicydes were untouched, nor did either Elissa or Cleandra suffer from the contagion. The husband of the latter, Ascanius, however, was among those who had succumbed, and thus was the fair Cleandra once again a widow.
Before long the old man, Archimedes, was left in sole command at Syracuse, for Epicydes, having embarked on board a ship, and joined the fleet with Bomilcar, the Carthaginian admiral, endeavoured to induce him to attack the Romans. But Bomilcar, instead of fighting, fled upon the first approach of the Romans, under Marcellus, off Cape Pachynum, without striking a single blow.
Hereupon Epicydes, being ashamed to return to Syracuse, took refuge in the town of Agrigentum, all his mighty hopes being foiled in a moment. And now some of those within the walls wished to deliver the town over to Marcellus. But Elissa stirred up the remaining Carthaginians in the garrison, and the Roman deserters and the mercenaries, so that they would not hear of surrender, and old Archimedes himself declared that he would destroy with infinite torture, by some newly-invented device of his own, any such as he should discover in treating with the enemy. No terms could be therefore made by the malcontents.