His royal
fillet, which was half unfastened, trailed with his white hair in the
dust.
They thought that they had no ropes strong enough to haul him up to the
top of the cross, and they nailed him upon it, after the Punic fashion,
before it was erected. But his pride awoke in his pain. He began to
overwhelm them with abuse. He foamed and twisted like a marine monster
being slaughtered on the shore, and predicted that they would all end
more horribly still, and that he would be avenged.
He was. On the other side of the town, whence there now escaped jets of
flame with columns of smoke, the ambassadors from the Mercenaries were
in their last throes.
Some who had swooned at first had just revived in the freshness of the
wind; but their chins still rested upon their breasts, and their bodies
had fallen somewhat, in spite of the nails in their arms, which were
fastened higher than their heads; from their heels and hands blood
fell in big, slow drops, as ripe fruit falls from the branches of a
tree,--and Carthage, gulf, mountains, and plains all appeared to them
to be revolving like an immense wheel; sometimes a cloud of dust, rising
from the ground, enveloped them in its eddies; they burned with horrible
thirst, their tongues curled in their mouths, and they felt an icy sweat
flowing over them with their departing souls.
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