Traders, scribes, workers in the arsenal, and whole families visited the
Barbarians.

The soldiers allowed all the Carthaginians to come in, but by a single
passage so narrow that four men abreast jostled one another in it.
Spendius, standing against the barrier, had them carefully searched;
facing him Matho was examining the multitude, trying to recognise some
one whom he might have seen at Salammbo's palace.

The camp was like a town, so full of people and of movement was it. The
two distinct crowds mingled without blending, one dressed in linen or
wool, with felt caps like fir-cones, and the other clad in iron and
wearing helmets. Amid serving men and itinerant vendors there moved
women of all nations, as brown as ripe dates, as greenish as olives,
as yellow as oranges, sold by sailors, picked out of dens, stolen from
caravans, taken in the sacking of towns, women that were jaded with love
so long as they were young, and plied with blows when they were old, and
that died in routs on the roadsides among the baggage and the abandoned
beasts of burden. The wives of the nomads had square, tawny robes of
dromedary's hair swinging at their heels; musicians from Cyrenaica,
wrapped in violet gauze and with painted eyebrows, sang, squatting on
mats; old Negresses with hanging breasts gathered the animals' dung
that was drying in the sun to light their fires; the Syracusan women had
golden plates in their hair; the Lusitanians had necklaces of shells;
the Gauls wore wolf skins upon their white bosoms; and sturdy children,
vermin-covered, naked and uncircumcised, butted with their heads against
passers-by, or came behind them like young tigers to bite their hands.

The Carthaginians walked through the camp, surprised at the quantities