|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: in his oak forest, to the Ethiopian amid his sands. But there was a
nation always ready to turn courage to account; and the robber driven
from his tribe, the patricide wandering on the roads, the perpetrator
of sacrilege pursued by the gods, all who were starving or in despair
strove to reach the port where the Carthaginian broker was recruiting
soldiers. Usually the Republic kept its promises. This time, however,
the eagerness of its avarice had brought it into perilous disgrace.
Numidians, Libyans, the whole of Africa was about to fall upon
Carthage. Only the sea was open to it, and there it met with the
Romans; so that, like a man assailed by murderers, it felt death all
around it.
Salammbo |
