ad made these regulations, which cost him but little time and
pains, because he himself first set the example, he was persuaded that
those under him were soldiers, and thereupon he prepared to carry on the
siege with vigour. Having ordered his troops to provide themselves with
axes, levers, and scaling-ladders, he led them in the dead of the night,
and without the least noise, to a district of the city, called Megara;
when ordering them to give a sudden and general shout, he attacked it with
great vigour. The enemy, who did not expect to be attacked in the night,
were at first in the utmost terror; however, they defended themselves so
courageously, that Scipio could not scale the walls. But perceiving a
tower that was forsaken, and which stood without the city, very near the
walls, he detached thither a party of intrepid and resolute soldiers, who,
by the help of pontons,(892) got from the tower on the walls, and from
thence into Megara, the gates of which they broke down. Scipio entered it
immediately after, and drove the enemies out of that post; who, terrified
at this unexpected assault, and imagining that the whole city was taken,
fled into the citadel, whither they were followed even by those forces
that were encamped without the city, who abandoned their camp to the
Romans, and thought it necessary for them to fly to a place of security.

Before I proceed further, it will be proper to give some account of the
situation and dimensions of Carthage, which, in the beginning of the war
against the Romans, contained seven hundred thousand inhabitants.(893) It
stood at the bottom of a gulf, surrounded by the sea, and in the form of a
peninsula, whose neck, that is, the isthmus which joined it to the
continent, was twenty-five stadia, or a league and a quarter in breadth.
The peninsula was three hundred and sixty stadia, or eighteen leagues
round. On the west side there projected from it a long neck of land, half
a stadium, or twelve fathoms broad; which, advancing into the sea, divided
it from a morass, and was fenced on all sides with rocks and a single
wall. On the south side, towards the continent, where stood the citadel
called Byrsa, the city was surrounded with a triple wall, thirty cubits
high, exclusive of the parapets and towers, with which it was flanked all
round at equal distances, each interval being fourscore fathoms. Every
tower was four stories high, and the stalls but two; they were arched, and
in the lowe