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4 4 Imaginary Conversation^ ciency of brass and iron for arms ; that palaces the most mag- nificent should have been demolished by the proprietor for their beams and rafters, in order to build a fleet agamst us ; that the ropes whereby the slaves hawled them down to the new harbour, should in part be composed of hair, for one lock of which the neighbouring kings would have laid down their diadems; that Asdrubal should have found equals, his wife none. . my mind, my very limbs, are unsteddy with admiration. O Liberty ! what art thou to the valiant and brave, when thou art thus to the weak and timid ! dearer than life, stronger than death, higher than purest love. Never will I call upon thee where thy name can be profaned ; and never shall my soul acknowledge a more exalted power than thee. PANETIUS. The Carthaginians and Moors have beyond other nations a delicate feeling on female chastity. Rather than that their women should become slaves and concubines, they slay them : is it certain that Asdrubal did not observe or cause to be ob- served the custom of his country ? POLYBIUS. Certain : on the surrender of his army his wife threw herself and her two infants into the flames. Not only memor- able acts, of what the dastardly will call desperation, were performed, but some also of deliberate and signal justice. Avaricious as we called the people, and unjustly, as you have proved, Emilianus, I will relate what I myself was witness to. In a part of the city where the fire had subsided, we were excited by loud cries, rather of indignation, we thought, than of such as fear or lament or threaten or exhort ; and we pressed forward to disperse the multitude. Our horses often plunged in the soft dust, and in the holes whence the pave- ment had been removed for missiles, and often reared up and snorted violently at smells which we could not perceive, but which we discovered to rise from bodies, mutilate and half- burnt, of soldiers and horses, laid bare, some partly, some wholly, by the march of the troop. Altho the distance from the place whence we parted to that where we heard the cries, was very short, yet from the incumbrances in that street, and