When this he saw, the Sidonian chief was filled with double joy and cried, 'Fly, Varro, fly and survive defeat; enough that Paulus lieth low! Go, consul, tell all the tale of Cannae to the fathers, to laggard Fabius, to the people. If so thou long'st to live, I will grant thee, Varro, to flee once more as thou fleest to-day. But let him, whose heart was bold and worthy to be my foe, and all aflame with mighty valour, be honoured with the last rites of burial and all the honour of the tomb. How great, Paulus, art thou in the death! Thy fall alone gives greater cause for joy than the fall of so many thousands. Such, when the fates shall summon me, such I pray be my fate, so Carthage stand unshaken.' ... 'Go, Ausonia's glory, where the souls of those whom valour and noble deeds make proud may go. _Thou_ hast won great glory by thy death. For _us_, Fortune still tosses us to and fro in weltering labour and forbids us to see what chance the future hath in store.' So spake the Libyan, and straightway from the crackling flame the exulting spirit soared skyward through the air. The picture of the soul of Paulus soaring heavenward from the funeral pyre, exultant at the honour paid him by his great foe, is the nearest approach to pure poetic imagination in the whole weary length of the _Punica_.[623] But the pedestrian muse of Silius is more at home in the ingenious description of the manoeuvres and counter-manoeuvres of Fabius and Hannibal in the seventh book; the similes with which the passage closes are hackneyed, but their application is both new and clever: