Their families used to come to see them and pity them.
He ordered shorter swords and stronger buskins. He fixed the number of
serving-men, and reduced the amount of baggage; and as there were three
hundred Roman pila kept in the temple of Moloch, he took them in spite
of the pontiff's protests.
He organised a phalanx of seventy-two elephants with those which
had returned from Utica, and others which were private property, and
rendered them formidable. He armed their drivers with mallet and chisel
to enable them to split their skulls in the fight if they ran away.
He would not allow his generals to be nominated by the Grand Council.
The Ancients tried to urge the laws in objection, but he set them aside;
no one ventured to murmur again, and everything yielded to the violence
of his genius.
He assumed sole charge of the war, the government, and the finances;
and as a precaution against accusations he demanded the Suffet Hanno as
examiner of his accounts.
He set to work upon the ramparts, and had the old and now useless inner
walls demolished in order to furnish stones. But difference of fortune,
replacing the hierarchy of race, still kept the sons of the vanquished
and those of the conquerors apart; thus the patricians viewed the
destruction of these ruins with an angry eye, while the plebeians,
scarcely knowing why, rejoiced.
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