ard at the same time of the
horrible decree of war and of the endurable demand for hostages, they
complied immediately with the latter, and still clung to hope, because
they had not the courage fully to realize the import of surrendering
themselves beforehand to the arbitrary will of a mortal foe.
The consuls sent back the hostages from Lilybaeum to Rome, and informed
the Carthaginian envoys that they would learn further particulars in
Africa. The landing was accomplished without resistance, and the
provisions demanded were supplied. When the gerusia of Carthage
appeared in a body at the head-quarters in Utica to receive the
further orders, the consuls required in the first instance the
disarming of the city. To the question of the Carthaginians, who
was in that case to protect them even against their own emigrants--
against the army, which had swelled to 20,000 men, under the command
of Husdrubal who had saved himself from the sentence of death by
flight--it was replied, that this would be the concern of the Romans.
Accordingly the council of the city obsequiously appeared before the
consuls, with all their fleet-material, all the military stores of the
public magazines, all the arms that were found in the possession of
private persons--to the number of 3000 catapults and 200,000 sets of
armour--and inquired whether anything more was desired. Then the
consul Lucius Marcius Censorinus rose and announced to the council,
that in accordance with the instructions given by the senate the
existing city was to be destroyed, but that the inhabitants were
at liberty to settle anew in their territory wherever they chose,
provided it were at a distance of at least ten miles from the sea.

Resistance of the Carthaginians

This fearful command aroused in the Phoenicians all the--shall
we say magnanimous or frenzied?--enthusiasm, which was displayed
previously by the Tyrians against Alexander, and subsequently by the
Jews against Vespasian. Unparalleled as was the patience with which
this nation could endure bondage and oppression, as unparalleled was
now the furious rising of that mercantile and seafaring population,
when the things at stake were not the state and freedom, but the
beloved soil of their ancestral city and their venerated and dear
home beside the sea. Hope and deliverance were out of the question;
political discretion enjoined even now an unconditional submission.
But the voice of the few who counselled the ac