The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 05

by Unknown

A Roman Standard

When Scipio thought the discipline of his men sufficiently revived, he resolved to attempt a night attack on the Megara; but being perceived by the defenders, the Romans could not scale the walls. Scipio then observing a turret (probably a garden one) which belonged to some private person, and was close to the wall, and of the same height with it, made some of his men ascend it. These drove down with their missiles those on the walls opposite them, and then laying planks and boards across got on the wall, and jumping down opened a gate to admit Scipio, who entered with four thousand men. The Punic soldiers fled to the Byrsa, thinking that the rest of the town was taken, and those in the camp hearing the tumult ran thither also; but Scipio, finding the Megara full of gardens with trees and hedges and ditches filled with water, and therefore unsafe for an invader, withdrew his men and went back to his camp. In the morning Hasdrubal, to satiate his rage, took what Roman prisoners he had, and placing them on the walls in sight of the Roman camp, mutilated them in a most horrible manner, and then flung them down from the lofty battlements. When the senators blamed him, he put some of them to death, and he made himself in effect the tyrant of the city.

Scipio having taken and burned the deserted camp of the enemy, formed a camp within a dart’s cast of their wall, running from sea to sea across the isthmus, and strongly fortified on all sides. By this means he cut them off from the land; and as the only way in which provisions could now be brought into the city was by sea, when vessels, taking advantage of winds that drove off the Roman ships, ran into the harbour, he resolved to stop up its mouth by a mole. He commenced from the belt, forming the mole of great breadth and with huge stones. The besieged at first mocked at the efforts of the Romans; but when they saw how rapidly the work advanced they became alarmed, and instantly set about digging another passage out of the port into the open sea; they at the same time built ships out of the old materials; and they wrought so constantly and so secretly, that the Romans at length saw all their plans frustrated, a new entrance opened to the harbour, and a fleet of fifty ships of war and a great number of smaller vessels issue from it. Had their evil destiny now allowed the Carthaginians to take advantage of the consternation of the Romans, and fall at once on their fleet, which was utterly unprepared, they might have destroyed it; but they contented themselves with a bravado and then returned to port. On the third day the two fleets engaged from morn till eve with various success. The small vessels of the enemy annoyed the Romans very much in the action; but in the retreat they got ahead of their own ships, and blocking up the mouth of the harbour, obliged them to range themselves along a quay which had been made without the walls for the landing of goods, whither the Roman ships followed them and did them much mischief. During the night they got into port, but in the morning Scipio resolved to try to effect a lodgment on the quay which was so close to the harbour. He assailed the works that were on it with rams, and threw down a part of them; but in the night the Carthaginians came, some swimming, some wading through the water, having combustibles with them, to which they set fire when near the machines, and thus burned them. They then repaired the works; but Scipio finally succeeded in fixing a corps of four thousand men on the quay.

During the winter Scipio took by storm the Punic camp before Nepheris, and that town surrendered after a siege of twenty-two days. As it was from Nepheris that Carthage received almost the whole of its supplies, they now failed, and famine was severely felt.[c]

APPIAN’S ACCOUNT OF THE DESTRUCTION OF CARTHAGE

[146 B.C.]

As soon as spring came on, Scipio assaulted the citadel called Byrsa and the gate called Cothon at the same time, which caused Hasdrubal to set on fire that part of the gate which was square; but whilst he expected Scipio should make a new attempt on that side, and stood firm with the inhabitants, Lælius mounted privately by the other side of the gate which was of a round figure, and making himself master of it, the shouts of those that were already got up so dismayed the enemies that the other soldiers now contemning the besieged, and having filled all the places difficult to pass with beams, engines, and planks, they leaped in on all sides in spite of all the resistance of the guards oppressed with hunger and lost to all courage; Scipio thus possessed of the wall that encompassed the gate called Cothon, got thence into the great place of the city which was nigh unto it, where night coming on, and not suffering him to go farther, he kept there in arms with those soldiers he had with him, and as soon as day broke, caused four thousand fresh men to come thither, who being got into Apollo’s temple, plundered his statue which was all of gold, and all the inside of the temple, which was covered with plates of gold of a thousand talents’ weight. They cut in pieces the plates with their swords, do what their captains could to hinder them, till such time as having got what they could they pursued their enterprise.

Meanwhile Scipio’s chief design was against the place called Byrsa, for that was the strongest of all the city, and a world of people were retreated thither. The way from the great place thither was up hill through three streets, on each side of which there was a continuance of very high houses, whose upper stories, jetting somewhat over into the street, whole showers of darts flew from thence upon the Romans, who were constrained before they passed farther to force the first houses and there post themselves, that from thence they might drive out those that fought in the neighbouring houses, and after they had driven them out, they laid beams and planks from one side of the street to the other, on which, as on bridges, they passed across the streets; thus they maintained war in the chambers whilst as fast as they met they fought more cruelly below in the streets.

All places were filled with cries and groans, people dying a thousand different sorts of deaths, some at sword’s point, some thrown headlong down from the tops of the houses upon the pavement, others falling upon javelins, pikes, and swords presented against them, however none durst yet set fire because of those who maintained the fight in the lofts; but when Scipio had gained the foot of the fortress all the three streets were immediately in a flame, and the soldiers had charge to hinder the ruins of the houses caused by the fire from falling into the street, that the whole army might have the more convenient passage; and now were new spectacles of calamity to be seen, the fire devouring and overturning the houses, and the Roman soldiers all about so far from hindering it, that they endeavoured to involve the rest in the same ruin. The miserable Carthaginians in despair falling confusedly with the stones and bricks on the pavement, dead bodies, nay, people yet living, and especially old men, women, and children, who had hidden themselves in the most secret places of the houses, some laden with wounds, others half burnt, and all crying out in a deplorable manner, others tumbling headlong from the upper stories of the houses among the mass of stones and wood were in their falls torn in pieces.

Nor was this the end of their miseries, for the pioneers, who to make way for the soldiers, removed the rubbish out of the middle of the streets, tossed with their hooks and forks the bodies, as well of the dead as living, into the vaults, turning them with their iron instruments as if they had been pieces of wood or stones, so that there might be seen holes full of heaps of men, of which some having been headlong thrown in, yet breathed a long time and lay with their legs above ground, and others interred up to the neck were exposed to the cruelty of the masons and pioneers, who took pleasure to see their heads and brains crushed under the horses’ feet, for these sort of people placed not those wretches so by chance but of set purpose.