Money was lavishly distributed, and the judges, who were devoted to Hanno's party, set their machinery to work to strike terror among their opponents.

Their modes of procedure were similar to those which afterwards made Venice execrable in the height of her power.
Arrests were made secretly in the dead of night.

Men were missing from their families, and none knew what had become of them.
Dead bodies bearing signs of strangulation were found floating in the shallow lakes around Carthage; and yet, so great was the dread inspired by the terrible power of the judges, that the friends and relations of those who were missing dared make neither complaint nor inquiry.

It was not against the leaders of the Barcine party that such measures were taken.

Had one of these been missing the whole would have flown to arms.
The dungeons would have been broken open, and not only the captives liberated, but their arrest might have been made the pretext for an attack upon the whole system under which such a state of things could exist.
It was chiefly among the lower classes that the agents of Hanno's vengeance operated.