This is just what happened in this case. There were in the army
Iberians and Celts, men from Liguria and the Balearic Islands, and
a considerable number of half-bred Greeks, mostly deserters and
slaves; while the main body consisted of Libyans. Consequently it was
impossible to collect and address them _en masse_, or to approach
them with this view by any means whatever. There was no help for it:
the general could not possibly know their several languages; and to
make a speech four or five times on the same subject, by the mouths
of several interpreters, was almost more impossible, if I may say so,
than that. The only alternative was for him to address his entreaties
and exhortations to the soldiers through their officers. And this Hanno
continually endeavoured to do. But there was the same difficulty with
them. Sometimes they failed to understand what he said: at others they
received his words with expressions of approval to his face, and yet
from error or malice reported them in a contrary sense to the common
soldiers. The result was a general scene of uncertainty, mistrust,
and misunderstanding. And to crown all, they took it into their heads
that the Carthaginian government had a design in thus sending Hanno to
them: that they purposely did not send the generals who were acquainted
with the services they had rendered in Sicily, and who had been the
authors of the promises made to them; but had sent the one man who had
not been present at any of these transactions. Whether that were so or
not, they finally broke off all negotiations with Hanno; conceived a
violent mistrust of their several commanders; and in a furious outburst
of anger with the Carthaginians started towards the city, and pitched
their camp about a hundred and twenty stades from Carthage, at the town
of Tunes, to the number of over twenty thousand.
[Sidenote: The mercenaries at Tunes.]
[Sidenote: Attempts to pacify them.]
[Sidenote: The demands of the mercenaries.]
[Sidenote: The dispute referred to the arbitration of Gesco.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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