the Romans tried to storm, but were beaten back. The country in the neighbourhood of the city was left to Hasdrubal, the general who had fought against Masinissa, and whom they had been obliged to sacrifice. This Hasdrubal, with an army of twenty thousand men, formed of outcasts and refugees, and acting independently, had ravaged the country, and at the same time had waged a war of pillage against Masinissa. He and all the rest who had been banished were reinstated, and Carthage appointed him as her general without the city. This war is so dismal, that I can hardly bear to think of it, and still less to tell of it at any length. There is nothing more heartrending than this struggle of despair, which indeed could not end otherwise than in the destruction of the whole people, and that most miserably, but which yet must be gone through. At first, one is glad to see the discomfiture of the Romans, the whole might of the unskilful consuls being baffled by the despair of the besieged. The Carthaginians defended themselves bravely within the city: their commander is unknown; without, there were Hasdrubal and Himilco Phameas as partisans. The way in which the latter carried on the war, so as by means of diversions to give the town a free opening to provision itself, strongly reminds one of the achievements of Francesco Ferrucci at the siege of Florence by Charles V., in the years 1529 and 1530; who was at last taken prisoner and hanged by the Spaniards, whose behaviour there was like that of the French in Tyrol. But although Phameas distinguished himself very much as a military man, yet his end shows how great was the corruption of those times. After having done things which were so brilliant, that he ought to have felt called upon indeed to remain true, he entered into negotiations with the Roman consul; and he told his men that the fate of Carthage was decided, that every one must now take care of himself, and that he could pledge himself for the safety of all those who should join him. A few thousand men went over. The Roman senate did not blush to give this traitor splendid garments, money, landed estates, and other things of the same kind. This was a heavy blow for Carthage; and yet at this very time it seemed as if its fate was about to take a more propitious turn.