nes defended their beleaguered city
for weeks, hurling javelins, thrusting their lances, and beating
down the besiegers from the walls. They had no repeating rifles nor
dynamite guns, but they had the terrible _falaric_, a shaft of fir
with an iron head a yard long, at the point of which was a mass of
burning tow, which had been dipped in pitch. When a breach was made
in the walls, the inflowing army would be met by a rain of this deadly
falaric, which was hurled with telling power and precision. Then, in
the short interval of rest this gave them, men, women, and children
swiftly repaired the broken walls before the next assault.

But at last the resourceful Hannibal abandoned his battering rams, and
with pickaxes undermined the wall, which fell with a crash. When asked
to surrender, the chief men of the city kindled a great fire in the
market-place, into which they then threw all the silver and gold in
the treasury, their own gold and silver and garments and furniture,
and then cast themselves headlong into the flames. This was their
answer.

Saguntum, which for more than a thousand years had looked from its
elevation out upon the sea, was no more, and its destruction was
one of the thrilling tragedies of ancient history. On its site there
exists to-day a town called _Mur Viedro_ (old walls), and these old
walls are the last vestige of ancient Saguntum.

In order to understand the indifference of Rome to the Spanish
Peninsula at this time, it must be remembered that Spain was then
the uttermost verge of the known world, beyond which was only a dread
waste of waters and of mystery. To the people of Tyre and of Greece,
the twin "Pillars of Hercules" had marked the limit beyond which there
was nothing; and those two columns, Gibraltar and Ceuta, with the
legend _ne plus ultra_ entwined about them, still survive, as a
symbol, in the arms of Spain and upon the Spanish coins; and what is
still more interesting to Americans, in the familiar mark ($) which
represents a dollar. (The English name for the Spanish _peso_ is
_pillar-dollar_.)

Now Rome was aroused from its apathy. It sent an army into Spain, led
by Scipio the Elder, known as Scipio Africanus. When he fell, his son,
only twenty-four years old, stood up in the Roman Forum and offered to
fill the undesired post; and, in 210 B.C., Scipio "the Younger"--and
the greater--took the command--as Livy eloquently says--"between the
tombs of his father and his uncle", who