Hannibal's daughter

by Andrew Haggard

Hamilcar was now angry, but he answered in apparent politeness and good humour:

“There are some bodies that will frizzle far better than such a morsel, Hanno; but since thou wouldst see some frizzling, thou shalt even now accompany me as far as the temple of Baal. I have plenty of room on the elephant.”

“Come hither, Idherbal,” he cried, the chief of the Sacred Band having taken up a position near him, “tell some of thy men to assist the noble Suffete on to the car beside me. He is anxious to see some burning done to-day. He shall not be deprived of the pleasure of assisting in person at the burnt sacrifices.”

Hanno turned pale. He tried to retract his words. The large tears fell down his flabby cheeks. He attempted to resist. But resistance was useless. In a few seconds the soldiers of Idherbal very roughly forced “the soldier’s enemy,” as he was rightly termed, upon the car beside Hamilcar, and the procession again started, leaving the hundred senators and all the women on the balcony, not that these latter cared much, trembling with fear; for they imagined, and with apparent reason, that Hamilcar was about to offer Hanno as a burnt sacrifice to Moloch, and the senators did not know if their own turn might not come next. Therefore, raising their robes in dismay, they all rushed into the Forum, not caring in the least as to what might be the fate of Hanno, but only trembling for their own skins. Might not the time have really come when Hamilcar was about to revenge himself upon all the ancients for their long-continued neglect of him and all the best interests of Carthage? And was not all the power in his hands? Thus they reasoned.

There was no doubt about it that all the power was in the hands of Hamilcar, and that, if he had been only a self-seeking man, he could easily that day and at that hour have seized and burnt not only Hanno, but also all those of the rich and ancients of Carthage, whom he knew to be inimical to himself. He could with the greatest ease have shattered the constitution, denounced the captured senators to the people as equally responsible with the mercenaries for all the miseries they had suffered, and caused them to be offered up wholesale to Baal in that very same holocaust with Matho and Hanno. But Hamilcar was not a self-seeking man, or he would that day, after first removing all his enemies from his path, have declared himself King of Carthage. And the people would have applauded him, and he would have ruled wisely, and probably saved Carthage from the terrible destruction which awaited her later as a reward for treating his son Hannibal, in after years, with the same culpable neglect that she had shown himself.

Hamilcar, however, did not imagine that his duty to his country lay in making himself king. Nevertheless, he determined to show his power, and to establish it over the senators, at least until such time as he should have obtained from them what he wanted—what he considered needful for his country’s welfare merely, and not for his own.

To the young Hannibal, who had from the time of earliest youth been brought up to look upon his father’s foes as his own, every word of what had taken place was full of meaning. Looking disdainfully at the pale-faced Suffete, who, with the tears flowing down his fat cheeks, looked the image of misery, he asked:

“Father, is it true that this man wanted you to offer me up as a sacrifice to Baal? I have heard so before!”

“Yes, it is true, my son, and I should, owing to the pressure put on me, doubtless have done so had I not thought that thou wouldst be of far more use to thy country living than dead.”

“Ah! well,” replied Hannibal complacently, “now we will burn him instead, and he will deserve it, and someone else will get all his young wives. I am glad! But if I were going to be burned I would not have blubbered as he is doing like a woman. Just look at his disgusting tears! I suppose it is all the fat running out. Pah! how soft he is!” and the boy disdainfully dug his finger into the soft cheek of Hanno, just below the eye, where it sunk in the fat nearly up to the knuckle.