HANNO
“I ought to have carried her off!” Matho said in the evening to Spendius. “I should have seized her, and torn her from her house! No one would have dared to touch me!”
Spendius was not listening to him. Stretched on his back he was taking delicious rest beside a large jar filled with honey-coloured water, into which he would dip his head from time to time in order to drink more copiously.
Matho resumed:
“What is to be done? How can we re-enter Carthage?”
“I do not know,” said Spendius.
Such impassibility exasperated Matho and he exclaimed:
“Why! the fault is yours! You carry me away, and then you forsake me, coward that you are! Why, pray, should I obey you? Do you think that you are my master? Ah! you prostituter, you slave, you son of a slave!” He ground his teeth and raised his broad hand above Spendius.
The Greek did not reply. An earthen lamp was burning gently against the tent-pole, where the zaïmph shone amid the hanging panoply. Suddenly Matho put on his cothurni, buckled on his brazen jacket of mail, and took his helmet.
“Where are you going?” asked Spendius.