The last rays of the setting sun lingered on the towers of Carthage, and tinged with a warm flush the snowy crests of the waves that flung their gray foam to its very ramparts. Laughing maidens, bearing their pitchers from the fountains, assembled at the gates; tired camels that all day long had borne from distant and tributary realms vestments of purple, fragrant gums, and dust of gold, released from their burdens, were feeding beneath the walls; while from the deck of many a galley the slave’s rude song floated on the evening air.
In a quiet vale, secluded, yet not distant from the city, beneath the shadow of a palm, reclines a lovely woman; the low-voiced summer wind, stirring the citron groves, has lulled her to rest. The ripe grapes from a pendent vine almost touch her swelling breast. The spray of a neighboring fountain falls in minute drops, like tears of pearl, on her cheek, while a beautiful boy, tired with play, has nestled to her side, half hidden by her flowing locks.
Hurried footsteps are heard in the distance, a heavy hand puts aside the branches, and Hamilcar, the chieftain of the Carthaginian armies, stands beneath the shadow of the palm; as he bends forward to look upon his slumbering wife, a ripe grape, shaken by the plume of his helmet from the cluster, falls upon the face of the sleeper, and she awakes. Bright tears of pride and joy glitter in her dark eyes, as, seated at his feet among the flowers, her white arm flung in careless happiness across his sinewy knees and throbbing in his gauntleted grasp, she gazes on the towering form and noble brow on which the stern traces of recent conflict still linger. Tempests have bronzed his cheek, desperate and bloody conflicts left their scars upon him; yet is he not less dear to her than when in joy of youth they crowned the altars of the gods with flowers, sporting among the sheaves at harvest home. Thus she speaks:—
“My lord, is it disaster or business of the State that brings you here? Your eye is troubled, and these iron fingers too rudely press my flesh, as though your thoughts were dark and fraught with doubt or danger.”
“I have left the camp to make good a purpose long since known to thee, to devote with sacred rites this boy at the altar of Mars, and pledge him to eternal enmity with Rome.”
“Is this the weighty business which brings thee at this twilight and unaccustomed hour, thine armor soiled with dust, thy brow with sweat, in such fierce haste to pluck this fair child from his mother’s breast, and train him up to slaughter? Strange that this great empire, so full of men and arms and fleets of war, should need the arm of childhood to protect it. Stern man, thou lovest me not.”
“Why question thus my love? For as this breastplate does my heart defend, so have I cherished and protected thee, while in thy fragile beauty thou hast clung around the warrior’s stubborn strength, even as that wreathing vine doth yonder citron clasp, adorning its protector; but little dost thou know, fair wife, of the affairs of nations and of camps. Beneath these shades where the cool zephyr from Trinacrian hills breathes through spicy groves thou hast reposed; no tear has stained thy cheek except the fountain’s pearly drops that glistened there when I thy sleep disturbed.
“Not thus my path has lain; too well I know the Roman’s iron strength; in times of truce and intervals of conflict I have seen his daily life and marked his customs well. Poverty, at Carthage a disgrace, he but rejoices in. The water of the brook to quench his thirst, the dry leaves for his bed, and bread of simplest preparation supply his wants. Then, as the fierce she-wolf whose dugs nourished his ancestors doth raven for her whelps, so goes he forth to plunder and to prey among the nations, and, for the sake of stealing that which stolen is not worth the keeping, will life and fortune set upon a cast. Show to a Roman senate some patch of sand within mid-Africa, some waste of Alpine rocks, white with eternal snows, where, famished peasants watch their starving flocks and wrestle with the avalanche for life; did Phlegethon with all his burning waves the wretched pittance guard, and fierce Eumenides beleaguer all the shore, yet would a Roman consul dare the flood, do battle with the lion for his sands, and slay the shivering goatherd for his rocks.
“The Romans turn their greedy eyes toward these fair realms; they seek to lay in ashes these ancestral towers, where whatsoever piety reveres, memory recalls, or old affection cherishes, is garnered and bestowed, nor will they pause till every wave of this encircling sea, crimsoned with the gore of matrons, of aged men, and even of the laughing and unconscious babe, shall roll its bloody burden to the shore.