“Ay, it will probably rain bullocks and babies about that period!” retorted Chœras, “a very good omen for Carthage whenever that happens!”
At this remark even the unhappy Maharbal grimly smiled. Then the meeting broke up, Chœras repeating a verse aloud to Sosilus as they rose to go.
“With bullocks raining over head,
While babies strew the soil;
No matter then how thick his head,
’Twill squash like olive oil.
“There! learned man! I make thee a present of that verse for thy history of the war, which contains, I fear me, far too much of bald prose. A verse or two of such singular merit will far increase the value of thy work. Therefore take it gratis; ’tis a present, I say.”
“With many thanks, I gladly accept the gift,” replied the sage with a merry twinkle in his eye. “And now I in return will make thee also a present, oh Chœras, and one which will greatly increase the value of thy brains, no less a present, indeed, than the relation of that story about Ulysses that I began just now. It will not take me much more than an hour and a half to give it thee from end to end, with all the references.”
“Oh, but I have business with the horses,” exclaimed Chœras, with a look of horror, and gathering up his sword and buckler, he made for the door of the tent. But the sage was not to be defrauded of his revenge this time. He seized the escaping poet by his armour cuirass at the back of the neck, and held him firmly.
“I too will come and see the horses, and can tell thee the history as we go; but of one thing be assured. I leave thee not until thou hast heard it all—ay, until the very last word. Thinkest thou that I am so mean as to accept a valuable present from thee for nothing? Nay, indeed, on the contrary. For as Achilles, when disguised as a woman at the Court of Lycomedes, remarked one day to the fair Deidamia—”
What Achilles said to Deidamia none of the laughing onlookers present ever knew, for at this moment the struggling Chœras broke out of the tent, the pedant, who was a small man, still clinging to the back of his neck with all the tenacity of a weasel clinging to a rabbit. He was determined to be fairly revenged upon the poet at last, and he had got his opportunity, and did not intend to relinquish his victim!
Next day the Carthaginian army commenced to march southward through Etruria, and, just as in Hannibal’s dream, the monster of the devastation of Italy followed in their wake. Every person they met was slaughtered, every building put to the flames.
Making a detour, Flaminius and his army were avoided, but the Roman Consul was soon aware of his adversary’s passage from the thick clouds of smoke with which the whole countryside was filled. Furious at this, he, as Hannibal had anticipated, without waiting for any aid to come to him from Ariminum, hurried blindly in pursuit. And Hannibal, laughing in his sleeve, quietly lay in wait for him in the mountain passes by the northern shores of Lake Thrasymene.