thinking that there ought to be no delay at such an opportunity, having attacked the city with his whole forces, took it in a moment, command being given that all the adults should be put to death; which command, though cruel, was proved in the issue to have been almost necessary.  For to whom of those men could mercy have been shown, who, either shut up with their wives and children, burned their houses over their own heads, or abroad in arms made no end of fighting, except in death.

15.  The town was taken, with immense spoil.  Though the greater part of the goods had been purposely damaged by their owners, and resentment had made scarce any distinction of age in the massacre, and the captives were the booty of the soldiers; still it appears that some money was raised from the price of the effects that were sold, and that much costly furniture and garments were sent to Carthage.  Some have written that Saguntum was taken in the eighth month after it began to be besieged; that Hannibal then retired to New Carthage, into winter quarters; and that in the fifth month after he had set out from Carthage he arrived in Italy.  If this be so, it was impossible that Publius Cornelius and Tiberius Sempronius could have been consuls, to whom both at the beginning of the siege the Saguntine ambassadors were despatched, and who, during their office, fought with Hannibal; the one at the river Ticinus, and both some time after at the Trebia.  Either all these events took place in a somewhat shorter period, or Saguntum was not begun to be besieged, but taken at the beginning of the year in which Publius Cornelius and Tiberius Sempronius were consuls.  For the battle at Trebia could not have been so late as the year of Cneius Servilius and Caius Flaminius, since Flaminius entered on the office at Ariminum, having been created by the consul Tiberius Sempronius; who, having repaired to Rome after the battle at Trebia for the purpose of creating consuls, returned when the election was finished to the army into winter quarters.

16.  Nearly about the same time, both the ambassadors who had returned from Carthage brought intelligence to Rome that all appearances were hostile, and the destruction of Saguntum was announced.  Then such grief, and pity for allies so undeservingly destroyed, and shame that aid was withheld, and rage against the Carthaginians, and fear for the issue of events, as if the enemy were already at the gates, took at once possession of the senators, that their minds, disturbed by so many simultaneous emotions, trembled with fear rather than deliberated.  For they considered that neither had a more spirited or warlike enemy ever encountered them nor had the Roman state been ever so sunk in sloth, and unfit for war:  that the Sardinians, the Corsicans, the Istrians, and the Illyrians, had rather kept in a state of excitement than exercised the Roman arms; and with the Gauls it had been more properly a tumult than a war.  That