One by one all the houses on the three roads that led to Byrsa had
been taken by force. All the men, women, old men, children that they
contained had been thrown pell mell into pits, the dead along with the
living. This advance hindered by human obstacles that were burned or
butchered in order to pass through had lasted six days and six nights. On
the seventh day the Carthaginians taking refuge in Byrsa had obtained the
promise from the victor that their lives would be spared and to the number
of fifty thousand they had left, their arms laid down. Finally the
fugitives who had nothing more to hope from the victor had fallen back
upon the temple of Aesculapius, and seeing themselves abandoned by
Asdrubal, set on fire their last sanctuary and preceded by the wife and
children of their unfaithful chief threw themselves into the midst of the
flames heaping terrible curses on his name.
This stupendous resistance had just melted away in a whirlwind of
flames and smoke. All combat had come to an end. Only the pillage by the
Roman soldiers continued, voracious, ferocious, unpitying. The lust of
those vile legionaries had hardly been satisfied. A people who have just
destroyed their own homes to halt the enemy's advance, whose womenfolk
have cut off their long hair to weave ropes from it, who have just
resisted three years of hunger and misery in dark and heroic despair do
not leave a great booty behind. All had been employed making arms and the
bloodthirsty rage of the soldiers soon had to settle for insults to the
dead and hymns to their vanquishing general.
But this general was a sensitive philosopher rather than a fierce
warrior, a fine, elegant, coldly cruel man who exactly represented that
corrupted, civilized, polite, superficial society that had borrowed its
distinguished and educated elegance from Greece and its refined cruelty
from Asia. Escaping from the shouts and clamorous demonstrations of those
thugs and barbarians, the young conqueror, followed by a few of his
friends, climbed up onto a piece of high ground that looked out over the
harbour and the town.
His vision encompassed a gloomy, immense, indistinct expanse, with
flaming ruins, a flock of birds of prey on the mounds of corpses and
debris, here and there a voracious and blasphemous legionary insulting a
corpse as he plundered it. This dismal scene was illuminated by a sinister
glimmer into which were melting the last rays of the setting sun and the
tawny reflections of the conflagration. It was here that a few years
previously Scipio had first set eyes on powerful Carthage out of which
ships exported their riches from the foggy isles of Britain to the
scorching lands of Arabia. Of that brilliant civilization, of that
prodigious fortune behold what is left: a day's worth of food for the
vultures and a few letters for the children of Rome and Ostia to learn
their spellings. There, in front of him, this smoke disappearing into the
winds and the ruins tumbling into dust were carrying away the last vestige
of great Carthage and her industrious and heroic children. Hardly hearing
the polite compliments or the vile flatteries that his Greek friends were
lavishing on him, lulled by the distant murmur of the ocean whose august
serenity contrasted majestically with this horrible scene of desolation,
Scipio Aemilianus, leaning melancholically against an ancient ruin, was
dreaming - "Scipio," one of his friends said, "behold at last this
military science worthily crowned and which will never be equalled. Your
triumph is the most glorious that could be seen. - In the name of Bacchus
let us rejoice, you the new Alexander! - eh! what are you doing my young
hero? why this philosophical attitude? This bloody ruin is the beautiful
scenery for your triumphal departure."
School composition c. 1884. BNF NAF 16611.
Updated 27.02.19