the covering force which ran off in such a
manner that Scipio was obliged to make his own troopers cut them
down, and destroyed the machines. In this way they gained time to
close the breach. Scipio, however, again established the machines
and set on fire the wooden towers of the enemy; by which means he
obtained possession of the quay and of the outer harbour along
with it. A rampart equalling the city wall in height was here
constructed, and the town was now at length completely blockaded
by land and sea, for the inner harbour could only be reached through
the outer. To ensure the completeness of the blockade, Scipio
ordered Gaius Laelius to attack the camp at Nepheris, where Diogenes
now held the command; it was captured by a fortunate stratagem,
and the whole countless multitude assembled there were put to
death or taken prisoners. Winter had now arrived and Scipio
suspended his operations, leaving famine and pestilence to
complete what he had begun.

Capture of the City

How fearfully these mighty agencies had laboured in the work of
destruction during the interval while Hasdrubal continued to vaunt
and to gormandize, appeared so soon as the Roman army proceeded in
the spring of 608 to attack the inner town. Hasdrubal gave orders
to set fire to the outer harbour and made himself ready to repel
the expected assault on the Cothon; but Laelius succeeded in scaling
the wall, hardly longer defended by the famished garrison, at a point
farther up and thus penetrated into the inner harbour. The city
was captured, but the struggle was still by no means at an end.
The assailants occupied the market-place contiguous to the small
harbour, and slowly pushed their way along the three narrow streets
leading from this to the citadel--slowly, for the huge houses of
six stories in height had to be taken one by one; on the roofs or
on beams laid over the street the soldiers penetrated from one of
these fortress-like buildings to that which was adjoining or opposite,
and cut down whatever they encountered there. Thus six days
elapsed, terrible for the inhabitants of the city and full of
difficulty and danger also for the assailants; at length they
arrived in front of the steep citadel-rock, whither Hasdrubal and
the force still surviving had retreated. To procure a wider approach,
Scipio gave orders to set fire to the captured streets and to level
the ruins; on which occasion a number of persons unable to fight, who
wer