the citizens,
vied with each other in the salutary labor; and Gelimer, who had feared
to trust his person in an open town, beheld with astonishment and
despair, the rising strength of an impregnable fortress.

[Footnote 19: The neighborhood of Carthage, the sea, the land, and the
rivers, are changed almost as much as the works of man. The isthmus, or
neck of the city, is now confounded with the continent; the harbor is a
dry plain; and the lake, or stagnum, no more than a morass, with six
or seven feet water in the mid-channel. See D'Anville, (Geographie
Ancienne, tom. iii. p. 82,) Shaw, (Travels, p. 77--84,) Marmol,
(Description de l'Afrique, tom. ii. p. 465,) and Thuanus, (lviii. 12,
tom. iii. p. 334.)]

[Footnote 20: From Delphi, the name of Delphicum was given, both
in Greek and Latin, to a tripod; and by an easy analogy, the same
appellation was extended at Rome, Constantinople, and Carthage, to the
royal banquetting room, (Procopius, Vandal. l. i. c. 21. Ducange, Gloss,
Graec. p. 277., ad Alexiad. p. 412.)]

[Footnote 2011: And a few others. Procopius states in his work De Edi
Sciis. l. vi. vol i. p. 5.--M]

That unfortunate monarch, after the loss of his capital, applied himself
to collect the remains of an army scattered, rather than destroyed, by
the preceding battle; and the hopes of pillage attracted some Moorish
bands to the standard of Gelimer. He encamped in the fields of Bulla,
four days' journey from Carthage; insulted the capital, which he
deprived of the use of an aqueduct; proposed a high reward for the
head of every Roman; affected to spare the persons and property of his
African subjects, and secretly negotiated with the Arian sectaries
and the confederate Huns. Under these circumstances, the conquest of
Sardinia served only to aggravate his distress: he reflected, with the
deepest anguish, that he had wasted, in that useless enterprise, five
thousand of his bravest troops; and he read, with grief and shame, the
victorious letters of his brother Zano, [2012] who expressed a sanguine
confidence that the king, after the example of their ancestors, had
already chastised the rashness of the Roman invader. "Alas! my brother,"
replied Gelimer, "Heaven has declared against our unhappy nation. While
you have subdued Sardinia, we have lost Africa. No sooner did Belisarius
appear with a handful of soldiers, than courage and prosperity deserted
the cause of the Vandals. Your nephew Gibamund, your brother