"To the citadel, or what was the citadel. The chief told me that he should be there at sunset. I must own that I am very curious to see how he takes it. This, you must know, is not his doing. His friends fought hard in the Senate against the decree of destruction; but the majority would have it, and there was nothing for him but to carry it out."
When the two friends reached the citadel the chief was already there, surrounded by his staff, his generals of division, and the chief officers of the legions. The spectacle of the burning city was magnificently terrible. The wind was blowing from behind them, and rolled away the smoke in huge volumes towards the sea. Now and then it lulled, and then a dense cloud covered the whole place, save some tower or spire which rose here and there out of it. As the light rapidly failed, for the sun was just setting when the two friends reached the height, the heavy smoke clouds became more and more penetrated with a fiery glow, and this again grew into one universal, all-embracing blaze of light, as the flames gained a more commanding hold on the doomed city. Everything was as plainly to be seen as if it had been noonday. All the while a confused roar came up to the height where the spectators stood, varied now and then by the tremendous crash of some huge structure falling in sudden ruin to the earth.
The general stood intently watching the scene, but without a word, and the group surrounding him, overawed by the solemnity of his mood, maintained a profound silence, broken only by some almost involuntary cry, when a burst of fiercer flame rose to the heavens. When the second watch was about half spent[56]—for the hours had seemed to pass as minutes, so overpowering was the interest of the spectacle—he turned away. Some awful vision of the future seemed to reveal itself to his soul. He caught Polybius by the hand and said:
"Will anyone do for Rome what I have been doing for Carthage?"
And as he turned away he was heard to murmur to himself the line in which Hector, touched in the midst of his triumph by a dark prevision of the future, foretold the fall of his country,
"Some day e'en holy Troy herself shall fall",[57]
Then, throwing a fold of his toga over his face, Scipio burst into a passion of tears.
"SCIPIO, THROWING HIS TOGA OVER HIS FACE, BURST INTO A PASSION OF TEARS."