after a siege of three years.  In the tumult occasioned by taking the city, Archimedes is killed while intently occupied on some figures which he had drawn in the sand.  Publius and Cornelius Scipio, after having performed many eminent services in Spain, are slain, together with nearly the whole of their armies, eight years after their arrival in that country; and the possession of that province would have been entirely lost, but for the valour and activity of Lucius Marcius, a Roman knight, who, collecting the scattered remains of the vanquished armies, utterly defeats the enemy, storming their two camps, killing thirty-seven thousand of them, and taking eighteen hundred together with an immense booty.

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1.  Hannibal passed the summer during which these events occurred in Africa and Italy, in the Tarentine territory, with the hope of having the city of the Tarentines betrayed to him.  Meanwhile some inconsiderable towns belonging to them, and to the Sallentines, revolted to him.  At the same time, of the twelve states of the Bruttians, which had in a former year gone over to the Carthaginians, the Consentians and Thurians returned to the protection of the Roman people.  And more would have done the same, had not Titus Pomponius Veientanus, praefect of the allies, having acquired the appearance of a regular general, in consequence of several successful predatory expeditions in the Bruttian territory, got together a tumultuary band, and fought a battle with Hanno.  In that battle, a great number of men, consisting, however, of a disorderly rabble of slaves and rustics, were slain or captured.  The least part of the loss was, that the praefect himself was taken prisoner; for he was not only in the present instance guilty of having rashly engaged the enemy, but previously, in the capacity of farmer of the revenue, by iniquitous practices of every description, had shown himself faithless and injurious to the state, as well as the companies.  Among the Lucanians, the consul, Sempronius, fought several small battles, but none worthy of being recorded, he also took several inconsiderable towns.  In proportion as the war was protracted, and the sentiments no less than the circumstances of men fluctuated accordingly as events flowed prosperously or otherwise, the citizens were seized with such a passion for superstitious observances, and those for the most part introduced from foreign countries, that either the people or the gods appeared to have undergone a sudden change.  And now the Roman rites were growing into disuse, not only in private, and within doors, but in public also; in the forum and Capitol there were crowds of women sacrificing, and offering up prayers to the gods, in modes unusual in that country.  A low order of sacrificers and soothsayers had enslaved men’s understandings, and the numbers of these were increased by the country people, whom want and terror had driven into the city,