understood from the facts that
they pulled down their roofs and houses for the equipment of a new
fleet; that gold and silver, instead of brass and iron, were melted in
their forges for the construction of arms; and that the women parted
with their hair to make cordage for the engines of war.

Under the command of the consul Mancinus, the siege was warmly conducted
both by land and sea. The harbor was dismantled of its works, and a
first, second, and even third wall taken, while nevertheless the Byrsa,
which was the name of the citadel, held out like another city. But
though the destruction of the place was thus very far advanced, it was
the name of the Scipios only that seemed fatal to Africa. The
Government, accordingly, applying to another Scipio, desired from him a
termination of the war. This Scipio, the son of Paulus Macedonicus, the
son of the great Africanus had adopted as an honor to his family, and,
as it appeared, with this destiny, that the grandson should overthrow
the city which the grandfather had shaken. But as the bites of dying
beasts are wont to be most fatal, so there was more trouble with
Carthage half-ruined than when it was in its full strength. The Romans
having shut the enemy up in their single fortress, had also blockaded
the harbor; but upon this they dug another harbor on the other side of
the city, not with a design to escape, but because no one supposed that
they could even force an outlet there. Here a new fleet, as if just
born, started forth; and, in the mean while, sometimes by day and
sometimes by night, some new mole, some new machine, some new band of
desperate men perpetually started up, like a sudden flame from a fire
sunk in ashes. At last, their affairs becoming desperate, forty thousand
men, and (what is hardly credible) with Hasdrubal at their head,
surrendered themselves. How much more nobly did a woman behave, the wife
of the general, who, taking hold of her two children, threw herself from
the top of her house into the midst of the flames, imitating the queen
that built Carthage. How great a city was then destroyed is shown, to
say nothing of other things, by the duration of the fire, for the flames
could scarcely be extinguished at the end of seventeen days; flames
which the enemy themselves had raised in their houses and temples, that,
since the city could not be rescued from the Romans, all matter for
triumph might at least be burned.

BATTLE OF THE METAURUS

B.C