on. He had hardly arrived when he despatched the
troops which he had brought with him and the militia of Utica by sea
to the threatened point, and succeeded in saving its garrison and
holding the cliff itself. After this danger was averted, the general
proceeded to the camp of Piso to take over the army and bring it back
to Carthage. Hasdrubal and Bithyas availed themselves of his absence
to move their camp immediately up to the city, and to renew the
attack on the garrison of the cliff before Magalia; but even now
Scipio appeared with the vanguard of the main army in sufficient time
to afford assistance to the post. Then the siege began afresh and
more earnestly. First of all Scipio cleared the camp of the mass of
camp-followers and sutlers and once more tightened the relaxed reins
of discipline. Military operations were soon resumed with increased
vigour. In an attack by night on the suburb the Romans succeeded in
passing from a tower--placed in front of the walls and equal to them
in height--on to the battlements, and opened a little gate through
which the whole army entered. The Carthaginians abandoned the
suburb and their camp before the gates, and gave the chief command
of the garrison of the city, amounting to 30,000 men, to Hasdrubal.
The new commander displayed his energy in the first instance by
giving orders that all the Roman prisoners should be brought to the
battlements and, after undergoing cruel tortures, should be thrown
over before the eyes of the besieging army; and, when voices were
raised in disapproval of the act, a reign of terror was introduced
with reference to the citizens also. Scipio, meanwhile, after having
confined the besieged to the city itself, sought totally to cut off
their intercourse with the outer world. He took up his head-quarters
on the ridge by which the Carthaginian peninsula was connected with
the mainland, and, notwithstanding the various attempts of the
Carthaginians to disturb his operations, constructed a great camp
across the whole breadth of the isthmus, which completely blockaded
the city from the landward side. Nevertheless ships with provisions
still ran into the harbour, partly bold merchantmen allured by the
great gain, partly vessels of Bithyas, who availed himself of every
favourable wind to convey supplies to the city from Nepheris at the
end of the lake of Tunes; whatever might now be the sufferings of the
citizens, the garrison was still sufficiently