She adored the city, not only for its splendors, but far more because it harbored partisans of the Barcas, the supporters of the heroic family whose deeds the Numidian warriors recounted in the moonlight, and of whom Hannibal, who added renown to his name in the wars of Iberia when still a boy, was the glorious descendant.
"My people ever loved your people," continued the Amazon. "If my father Iarbas submitted to the domination of Carthage, it was because at the head of it was Hamilcar, an African, a Numidian like ourselves. I hate the Carthaginian merchants as bitterly as you do--those ancient Phoenicians from the rock-bound Aradus who prospered and reproduced like worms, afterwards to cross the sea and take possession of our beautiful soil of Africa. I hate the ship figured upon so many of your coins and temples, because it is the sign of the avaricious people who came to exploit us, but I adore the Carthaginian charger, the Numidian horse, the symbol of our past."
Then she spoke of the charm which the glory of the Barcas had exercised over her mind from afar. She had loved Hannibal without realizing it, influenced by tales of his achievements which had reached her ears. She imagined him fighting like a young lion at his father's side, among herds of bulls with flaming horns, and among burning chariots which the Iberians drove against the Carthaginian invader; she thought of him, mad with fury, before the body of Hamilcar, and then languishing from inaction beside the beautiful Hasdrubal, conciliatory and pacific, until the moment when, his brother being assassinated by the dagger of a Gaul, the whole army acclaimed the youth as chieftain.
Her father Iarbas had just died, and she, now become queen of her tribes, heard that Hannibal, thirsting for glory and for combat, was isolated in the fortress of New Carthage, with no other troops than the remnant of the army which Hamilcar had taken to Iberia. The rich of Carthage, enemies of the Barcas, fearing the populace, dared not deprive Hamilcar's son of the chieftancy which his soldiers tendered him; they confirmed it by their silence, but they kept him isolated, without resources, left to his own devices, so that the natives should put an end to him, or at the most, that he might conquer a small territory on the Iberian coast in which the ambition of the Barcas would gradually become extinguished.