In the centre of the square swarmed the multitude, buying and dickering, dressed in a thousand colors, and speaking diverse tongues. The virtuous women of the city, simply dressed in white, passed along, followed by slaves who deposited in netted sacks the provision for the week; the Greeks, in long, saffron-colored chlamydes investigated everything, haggling tediously before making an insignificant purchase; the Saguntine citizens, Iberians who had lost their primitive rudeness through infinite intermarriages, imitated the manner and bearing of the Romans who were at the moment the people in highest esteem. Mingled with these were natives from the interior, bearded, begrimed, with long dishevelled hair, attracted by the market in spite of their dislike for the city, and particularly for the Greeks on account of their refinement and riches. Some Celtiberians, chiefs of the tribes nearest to Saguntum, remained on horseback in the centre of the Forum, without putting aside their lances, and still clinging to their shields of woven bull-sinews. They wore triple-crested helmets and leather cuirasses, as if they were on hostile soil and feared treachery. Meanwhile their women, agile, brown, and masculine, moved from place to place, their ample vestments, embroidered in gayly colored flowers, fluttering as they walked, and anon they stopped with childish admiration before the table of some Greek selling crystal beads and coarsely engraved necklaces and trinkets of bronze. Mantles of finest linen and costly purple brushed against the naked limbs of slaves or against the Celtiberian sagum of black wool buckled at the shoulder. Coiffures in Grecian style with red ribbons plaited in, the tuft of curls at the back of the head resembling the flame of a torch, the forehead small as a sign of supreme beauty, mingled with coiffures of the Celtiberian women, who wore their foreheads shaven and shiny to make them larger, their hair curled around a little stick placed on their heads, forming a sharp horn from which hung a black veil. Other Celtiberian women wore strong steel collars with little wires which were brought together above the coiffure, and from this cage, which enclosed the head, hung the veil, proudly displaying their enormous foreheads, brilliant and luminous as the moon in her first quarter. Actæon lingered wondering at the costumes of these women, and at their masculine and warlike aspect. His quick Grecian perceptions divined danger as he contemplated the barbarians motionless on their steeds in the centre of the Forum, from that height dominating with looks of hatred this nation of merchants and farmers. They were like birds of prey that were compelled to come down to the plain as thieves in order to find food for existence in their arid mountains. Saguntum surrounded by such peoples would some day have to struggle for supremacy against them.