“You are weakening them!” said the Suffet.
Giddenem replied that such treatment was necessary in order to subdue them.
“It was scarcely worth while sending you to the slaves’ school at Syracuse. Fetch the others!”
And the cooks, butlers, grooms, runners, and litter-carriers, the men belonging to the vapour-baths, and the women with their children, all ranged themselves in a single line in the garden from the mercantile house to the deer park. They held their breath. An immense silence prevailed in Megara. The sun was lengthening across the lagoon at the foot of the catacombs. The peacocks were screeching. Hamilcar walked along step by step.
“What am I to do with these old creatures?” he said. “Sell them! There are too many Gauls: they are drunkards! and too many Cretans: they are liars! Buy me some Cappadocians, Asiatics, and Negroes.”
He was astonished that the children were so few. “The house ought to have births every year, Giddenem. You will leave the huts open every night to let them mingle freely.”
He then had the thieves, the lazy, and the mutinous shown to him. He distributed punishments, with reproaches to Giddenem; and Giddenem, ox-like, bent his low forehead, with its two broad intersecting eyebrows.
“See, Eye of Baal,” he said, pointing out a sturdy Libyan, “here is one who was caught with the rope round his neck.”
“Ah! you wish to die?” said the Suffet scornfully.
“Yes!” replied the slave in an intrepid tone.