s own children; and then gave himself the
fatal stroke, in compliance with a practice to which the heathens falsely
gave the name of courage, though it was, in reality, no other than a
cowardly despair.

But the calamities of this unhappy city did not stop here; for the
Africans, who had ever borne an implacable hatred to the Carthaginians,
but were now exasperated to fury, because their countrymen had been left
behind, and exposed to the murdering sword of the Syracusans, assemble in
the most frantic manner, sound the alarm, take up arms, and, after seizing
upon Tunis, march directly to Carthage, to the number of more than two
hundred thousand men. The citizens now gave themselves up for lost. This
new incident was considered by them as the sad effect of the wrath of the
gods, which pursued the guilty wretches even to Carthage. As its
inhabitants, especially in all public calamities, carried their
superstition to the greatest excess, their first care was to appease the
offended gods. Ceres and Proserpine were deities who, till that time, had
never been heard of in Africa. But now, to atone for the outrage which had
been done them in the plundering of their temples, magnificent statues
were erected to their honour; priests were selected from among the most
distinguished families of the city; sacrifices and victims, according to
the Greek ritual, (if I may use that expression,) were offered up to them;
in a word, nothing was omitted which could be thought conducive in any
manner to appease and propitiate the angry goddesses. After this, the
defence of the city was the next object of their care. Happily for the
Carthaginians, this numerous army had no leader, but was like a body
uninformed with a soul; no provisions nor military engines; no discipline
nor subordination, was seen among them: every man setting himself up for a
general, or claiming an independence on the rest. Divisions therefore
arising in this rabble of an army, and the famine increasing daily, the
individuals of it withdrew to their respective homes, and delivered
Carthage from a dreadful alarm.

The Carthaginians were not discouraged by their late disaster, but
continued their enterprises on Sicily. Mago, their general, and one of the
Suffetes, lost a great battle, in which he was slain. The Carthaginian
chiefs demanded a peace, which was granted, on condition of their
evacuating all Sicily, and defraying the expenses of the war. They
pretended to accep