hem out with their faces towards the rising sun; the Cantabrians
buried them beneath a heap of pebbles; the Nasamonians bent them double
with ox-leather thongs, and the Garamantians went and interred them on
the shore so that they might be perpetually washed by the waves. But the
Latins were grieved that they could not collect the ashes in urns; the
Nomads regretted the heat of the sands in which bodies were mummified,
and the Celts, the three rude stones beneath a rainy sky at the end of
an islet-covered gulf.

Vociferations arose, followed by the lengthened silence. This was to
oblige the souls to return. Then the shouting was resumed persistently
at regular intervals.

They made excuses to the dead for their inability to honour them as the
rites prescribed: for, owing to this deprivation, they would pass for
infinite periods through all kinds of chances and metamorphoses; they
questioned them and asked them what they desired; others loaded them
with abuse for having allowed themselves to be conquered.

The bloodless faces lying back here and there on wrecks of armour showed
pale in the light of the great funeral-pile; tears provoked tears, the
sobs became shriller, the recognitions and embracings more frantic.
Women stretched themselves on the corpses, mouth to mouth and brow to
brow; it was necessary to beat them in order to make them withdraw when
the earth was being thrown in. They blackened their cheeks; they cut off
their hair; they drew their own blood and poured it into the pits; they
gashed themselves in imitation of the wounds that disfigured the dead.
Roarings burst forth through the crashings of the cymbals. Some snatched
off their amulets and spat upon them. The dying rolled in the bloody
mire biting their mutilated fists in their rage; and forty-three
Samnites, quite a "sacred spring," cut one another's throats like
gladiators. Soon wood for the funeral-piles failed, the flames were
extinguished, every spot was occupied; and weary from shouting,
weakened, tottering, they fell asleep close to their dead brethren,
those who still clung to life full of anxieties, and the others desiring
never to wake again.

In the greyness of the dawn some soldiers appeared on the outskirts of
the Barbarians, and filed past with their helmets raised on the points
of their pikes; they saluted the Mercenaries and asked them whether they
had no messages to send to their native lands.

Others approached, and the Barbarian