On the walls, as well as on the Acropolis, all gazed impatiently out to sea. When would the auxiliaries come from Rome? What were the legates from Saguntum to the great Republic doing?
Frequently impatience caused the whole city to be cruelly deceived. Some mornings the lookouts posted in the tower of Hercules on the Acropolis raised a furious clangor of cymbals on spying sails upon the horizon. The people rushed to the crest of the hill, following with anxious eyes the course of the white or red sails over the blue surface of the Sucronian gulf. It was they! The Romans! The advance ships of the succoring fleet bound for the port! But after hours of anguishing expectancy, their hopes were crushed on seeing that they were passing merchant ships from Massilia or Emporion, or hostile triremes which Hasdrubal, the brother of Hannibal, was sending from New Carthage with provisions for the army.
Each disappointment increased the melancholy of the Saguntines. The enemy's ranks were ever swelling, and the allies failed to come! The city would be lost! The enthusiasm of the defenders was revived only when they found old Mopsus on the walls, who because of his sure aim at Hannibal was the hero of the city, and the valorous Actæon, who with the light spirits of an Athenian, jesting and merry in the presence of danger, knew how to inspire fresh courage.
Sónnica also appeared among them at the points of combat. She ran along the walls amidst the hissing arrows, and the poor citizens marveled at the bravery of the opulent Greek woman who scorned the missiles of the enemy.
Love for Actæon and hatred of the besiegers made her bold. She was enraged at the Carthaginians. From the height of the Acropolis one afternoon she had seen the flames pouring from the roof of her villa. She saw the red tower of the dovecote topple, the beautiful groves which surrounded her house cut down, leaving nothing but a mound of rubbish and charred trunks; and she longed to be avenged, not for her lost riches, but for the destruction of the secluded retreat sacred to her love, and of the sumptuous dwelling crowded with memories. Moreover, she was nervous from the insufferable deprivation of this new life within the beleaguered city, where she was obliged to eat coarse food and to sleep in a room in her warehouse among the valuables piled together in the disorder of flight, almost mingling with her slaves, and deprived of her bath. There was no water in the city, except that in the cisterns which the magistrates distributed with great parsimony, foreseeing an approaching scarcity.
This wretched life excited her, making her distinguished for warlike audacity. Occasionally she saw her lover, the soul of the defense; sometimes on the walls directing the slaves who were repairing them, at others on the Acropolis with Mopsus to examine the situation of the enemy. He wished to take advantage of the lull caused by Hannibal's wound to put the city into a better state of defense, and meanwhile Sónnica strolled along the wall talking with the young men, promising handsome rewards to those who most distinguished themselves, and exciting them to make an extraordinary sally in which the city should hurl itself en masse beyond the walls, crushing the enemy and sweeping them onward into the sea.
She went everywhere escorted by Erotion and Rhanto. Life in the narrow limits, and a community of danger, had drawn her to the two children, and they followed in her wake listening to her words with enthusiastic smiles, and applauding the rich woman's warlike suggestions.
Rhanto was no longer a shepherdess. One after another her goats had been devoured in Sónnica's house, and with no other occupation than following her mistress, clinging always to Erotion's hand, she regarded the situation as one of joy, and had no desire that it should ever cease. Even the frowning Mopsus, the father of her beloved, unprotesting found them together, and often smiled at seeing them tranquil and happy, walking along the walls without fear of the besiegers.
Danger had developed kindness in the people. Rich merchants elbowed slaves as they shot their arrows from the cover of the merlons; more than one opulent Grecian woman was seen to tear her linen tunic to bind the wounds of rude mercenaries, and Sónnica the rich, she who used to scorn the women of the city, now talked of forming a troop like that of the Amazons who followed Hannibal. Rhanto, content with this new situation, so blinded by joy that she could not see the anguish and misery which the town endured, pulled her lover away in moments of combat, snatched the bow from his hands, and dragging him from the battlements, they hid beneath the hollow of a stairway at the foot of the rampart, and made love with fresh ardor, their pleasure seeming the more intense because threatened by the singing arrows and the cries and exclamations of pain and fury overhead.
The respite lasted only twenty days. Breaking the silence of the camp the carpenters' hammers rung ceaselessly and the besieged saw gradually rising a great wooden tower several stories high, taller than the walls of the city.