The answer had scarcely been spoken before a huge multitude, to whom its purport had probably been communicated by some preconcerted signal, poured out from the gates. Seldom has a more piteous sight been seen. With faces wan with famine, and clothed, for the most part, in squalid rags, the long lines of old men, women, and children defiled before the Roman general as he stood surrounded by his staff. True to his gentle and kindly nature, he busied himself in making provision for their immediate wants. The whole number—there were fifty thousand in all, a great crowd, it is true, but pitiably small in comparison with the supposed total of non-combatants when the siege began—was divided into companies, each of which was assigned to the commissariat department of one or other of the legions. At the same time instructions were given to the officers in charge of the stores that their immediate necessities—and many of them were actually starving—should be relieved.
The non-combatants thus disposed of, the soldiers that had surrendered followed. There may have been some six thousand in all, of whom five-sixths were mercenaries, one-sixth only native Carthaginians. They were in much better case than the rest of the population; in fact, as far as provisions were concerned, they had not been subjected to any hardship. The mercenaries had, for the most part, an indifferent look. It was depressing, doubtless, to have been serving for now three years an unsuccessful master, and to have missed the good pay which they might have earned elsewhere. But this was one of the chances of their profession, and they might hope to recoup themselves for their loss by another and more fortunate speculation. The Carthaginian minority were in a different temper. There was no future for them. Their country was gone, and if the love of life, which asserts itself even over the fiercest and bitterest pride, had bent their haughty temper to supplicate for mercy, it could do nothing more. Each man as he passed in front of the general laid down his arms upon the ground. These, again, were piled in heaps, to be carried off in due time to the stores in the Roman camp.
This business was just completed when a solitary figure was seen to issue from one of the gates in the citadel walls, and hurriedly to approach the Roman lines. As he ran he was struck by a missile from the walls. The blow levelled him to the ground, but he regained his feet in the course of one or two minutes, and hastened on, though with a somewhat limping gait. It was observed that he was dressed as a slave, and, as he came nearer, that his face was so closely muffled that his features could not be recognized. Nevertheless, his figure, which was short and corpulent, seemed to many to be familiar. Reaching the Roman lines, he threw himself at Scipio's feet, caught him by the knees, and in broken Greek begged for his life. The general, stretching forth his hand, raised him from the ground. It was Hasdrubal, the commander-in-chief of the armies of Carthage.
A murmur of disgust at his poltroonery ran through the ranks. Here and there the kinsmen or comrades of the unhappy prisoners whom he had done to death in so barbarous a fashion a few months before gave vent to more menacing expressions of anger. Scipio silenced these manifestations of feeling by an imperative gesture of command.
"Your life is spared," he said. "See that you make a due return for the boon."
It must not be supposed that the Roman general was disposed to regard with any kind of leniency Hasdrubal's baseness and barbarity. It was from policy that he spared the miserable creature's life. In the first place, it was the custom, from which it would be injudicious to depart, to make the king or chief general of a conquered people an essential part of the triumph which would celebrate the victory. Secondly, he was aware that the prisoner would be useful in many ways, that there were important matters about which he could give the best, or, it might be, the only available information.
As to the boon of life, it seemed to his own noble nature to be a very small thing indeed. For himself he felt that, had such a situation been possible, he would far sooner have died than survive to face such shame and ignominy: the craven clinging to life which dominates such mean natures as Hasdrubal's was simply incomprehensible to Scipio. But if he despised Hasdrubal while he spared him, there were others among the Carthaginian leaders for whom he felt a genuine admiration and respect, and to whom he was willing to offer honourable terms of surrender.
"Where," he asked Hasdrubal, "are your colleagues in command, and the chief magistrates?"
"They are in the temple of Æsculapius," replied the Carthaginian.
"Think you that they will be willing to surrender? They are brave men, and have done their best, and they shall be honourably treated."