med the
vagueness of a dream.

Perhaps Hannibal's words were only the arrogant boasts of youth. Hated
by the rich of his country, and with no better followers than those he
himself could procure, he was surely not going to attempt the audacious
enterprise of attacking a city allied to Rome, thus violating the
treaties with Carthage.

Besides, the Greek was living in a period of sweet intoxications; ever
in Sonnica's arms in the shade of the peristyle; listening to the lyres
of the slaves and the flutes of the flute players, and watching the
dancers from Gades, while his beloved crowned him with flowers, or
sprinkled costly perfumes upon him.

Sometimes the restless spirit of the wanderer and man of war, trained to
action and strife, manifested itself in the midst of this effeminacy.
Then he would flee to the city. There he conversed with Mopsus, the
archer, and listened to the grumblers in the Forum, who, not suspecting
that Hannibal had passed through Saguntum, jested at the possibility of
the African chief attempting anything against them, and gloated in their
power, trusting in the strength of their walls, and still more in the
protection of Rome, which would repeat on the coasts of Iberia their
triumphs over the Carthaginians in Sicily.

Actaeon contracted a great friendship with Alorcus the Celtiberian. He
admired the fiery pride of the barbarian, his nobility of sentiment, and
the almost religious respect he displayed for the cultured Grecian
woman. His father, now old and sick, was a petty king reigning over some
tribes which pastured great flocks of horses and cattle in the mountains
of Celtiberia. He was the sole heir, and some day would be obliged to
rule that rude people with their ferocious customs, who, in perpetual
brigandage, made war for the sake of stealing horses, and in years of
famine came down from the mountains to despoil the farmers on the
plains. His father had brought him to Saguntum when a child, and the
Grecian customs produced such an effect in him that, when he had grown
to manhood it became his most earnest desire to return to the city on
the coast, and there he lived with a few servants of his tribe and his
magnificent horses, deaf to the affectionate calls of the old chieftain
drawing near to death, and being esteemed by the Saguntines as almost a
fellow citizen.

He was eager to figure in the festival of the Panathenaea that the Greeks
of the city should admire him galloping in the