;
but neither could even he sustain the sally of the cohorts. Lastly,
Hannibal, fixing his camp directly before the walls, prepared to
assault this paltry city and garrison, with every effort and all his
forces, and having completely surrounded the city with a line of
troops, lost a considerable number of men, including all the most
forward, who were shot from the walls and turrets, while he pressed on
and provoked the enemy. Once he was very near cutting them off, by
throwing in a line of elephants, when aggressively sallying forth, and
drove them in the utmost confusion into the town; a good many, out of
so small a number, having been slain. More would have fallen had not
night interrupted the battle. On the following day, the minds of all
were possessed with an ardent desire to commence the assault,
especially after a golden mural crown had been promised, and the
general himself had reproached the conquerors of Saguntum with the
slowness of their siege of a little fort situated on level ground;
reminding them, each and all, of Cannae, Trasimenus, and Trebia. They
then began to apply the vineae and to spring mines: nor was any
measure, whether of open force or stratagem, unemployed against the
various attempts of the enemy. These allies of the Romans erected
bulwarks against the vineae, cut off the mines of the enemy by
cross-mines, and met their efforts both covertly and openly, till, at
last, shame compelled Hannibal to desist from his undertaking; and,
fortifying a camp in which he placed a small guard, that the affair
might not appear to have been abandoned, he retired into winter
quarters to Capua. There he kept, under cover, for the greater part of
the winter, that army, which, though fortified by frequent and
continued hardships against every human ill, had yet never experienced
or been habituated to prosperity. Accordingly, excess of good fortune
and unrestrained indulgence were the ruin of men whom no severity of
distress had subdued; and so much the more completely, in proportion
to the avidity with which they plunged into pleasures to which they
were unaccustomed. For sleep, wine, feasting, women, baths, and ease,
which custom rendered more seductive day by day, so completely
unnerved both mind and body, that from henceforth their past victories
rather than their present strength protected them; and in this the
general is considered by those who are skilled in the art of war to
have committed a greater erro