exile, for many
years; in danger, too, continually, of the most cruel treatment, and
even of death itself, to revenge some alleged governmental wrong.

Of course, the embassadors knew, when they returned to Carthage with
these terms, that they were bringing heavy tidings. The news, in fact,
when it came, threw the community into the most extreme distress. It
is said that the whole city was filled with cries and lamentations.
The mothers, who felt that they were about to be bereaved, beat their
breasts, and tore their hair, and manifested by every other sign their
extreme and unmitigated woe. They begged and entreated their husbands
and fathers not to consent to such cruel and intolerable conditions.
They could not, and they would not give up their children.

The husbands and the fathers, however, felt compelled to resist all
these entreaties. They could not now undertake to resist the Roman
will. Their army had been well-nigh destroyed in the battle with
Masinissa; their city was consequently defenseless, and the Roman
fleet had already reached its African port, and the troops were
landed. There was no possible way, it appeared, of saving themselves
and their city from absolute destruction, but entire submission to the
terms which their stern conquerors had imposed upon them.

The hostages were required to be sent, within thirty days, to the
island of Sicily, to a port on the western extremity of the island,
called Lilybaeum. Lilybaeum was the port in Sicily nearest to Carthage,
being perhaps at a distance of a hundred miles across the waters of
the Mediterranean Sea. A Roman escort was to be ready to receive them
there and conduct them to Rome. Although thirty days were allowed to
the Carthaginians to select and send forward the hostages, they
determined not to avail themselves of this offered delay, but to send
the unhappy children forward at once, that they might testify to the
Roman senate, by this their promptness, that they were very earnestly
desirous to propitiate their favor.

The children were accordingly designated, one from each of the leading
families in the city, and three hundred in all. The reader must
imagine the heart-rending scenes of suffering which must have
desolated these three hundred families and homes, when the stern and
inexorable edict came to each of them that one loved member of the
household must be selected to go. And when, at last, the hour arrived
for their departure, and they asse