ct. The streets were
illuminated with bonfires. Pine torches burned in doorways and windows,
and the multitude of fugitives huddled in the public squares, filling
the porticos, and lying on the thresholds. All the Saguntines had
streamed into the city.

The Forum was a camp. The flocks and herds were crowded between the four
colonnades without space to move, stamping and bellowing; sheep sprang
about on the steps of the temples; families of rustics boiled pots on
the Attic bases of the marble columns, and the glow of so many fires,
flickering on the facades of the houses, seemed to communicate a thrill
of alarm to the entire city. The magistrates ordered the fugitives lying
in the streets obstructing traffic to get up, and lodged them in the
slaves' quarters of the dwellings of the rich, or had them conducted to
the Acropolis to camp in its innumerable buildings. The herds also were
driven thither by the light of torches, between a double row of almost
naked men who beat the oxen when they tried to escape down the sides of
the sacred mountain.

Rising above the murmur of the multitude sounded blasts from trumpets
and conch shells calling the citizens to form ready for defending the
walls. Merchants, dressed in bronze loricas, their faces covered by the
Grecian helmet crested with an enormous brush of horsehair, issued from
their houses, tearing themselves from the arms of wives and children,
and strode majestically through the crowds of rustics, bow in hand,
their spears over their shoulders, and their swords clanking against
their nude thighs, their limbs covered to the knees with the copper
greaves. The young men dragged to the walls enormous stones to hurl
down upon the besiegers, and they laughed on being assisted by the
women who were eager to take part in the combat. Old men with venerable
beards, rich members of the Senate, opened passage, followed by slaves
with great bundles of spears and swords, distributing the arms among the
strongest country people, first making sure if they were freemen.

The city seemed to rejoice. Hannibal was coming! The more enthusiastic
had actually been anxious lest the African would not dare to present
himself before their walls; but there he was, and all laughed, thinking
that Carthage would perish in the fall of Hannibal here at the feet of
Saguntum, as soon as Rome should rally to the aid of the city.

The Saguntine ambassadors were already in Rome, and her legions would
soon