ance I should not have had to come to
you as the legate of Hannibal, nor as a deserter. Since he has
remained with your enemies, either through your fault or his own,
(through his own, if he counterfeited fear; through yours, if among
you there be danger to those who tell the truth,) that you may not be
ignorant that there are some terms of safety and peace for you, I have
come to you in consideration of the ancient ties of hospitality which
subsist between us. But that I speak what I address to you for your
sake and that of no other, let even this be the proof: that neither
while you resisted with your own strength, nor while you expected
assistance from the Romans, did I ever make any mention of peace to
you. But now, after you have neither any hope from the Romans, nor
your own arms nor walls sufficiently defend you, I bring to you a
peace rather necessary than just: of effecting which there is thus
some hope, if, as Hannibal offers it in the spirit of a conqueror, you
listen to it as vanquished; if you will consider not what is taken
from you as loss, (since all belongs to the conqueror,) but whatever
is left as a gift. He takes away from you your city, which, already
for the greater part in ruins, he has almost wholly in his possession;
he leaves you your territory, intending to mark out a place in which
you may build a new town; he commands that all the gold and silver,
both public and private, shall be brought to him; he preserves
inviolate your persons and those of your wives and children, provided
you are willing to depart from Saguntum, unarmed, each with two
garments. These terms a victorious enemy dictates. These, though harsh
and grievous, your condition commends to you. Indeed I do not despair,
when the power of every thing is given him, that he will remit
something from these terms. But even these I think you ought rather to
endure, than suffer, by the rights of war, yourselves to be
slaughtered, your wives and children to be ravished and dragged into
captivity before your faces."

14. When an assembly of the people, by the gradual crowding round of
the multitude, had mingled with the senate to hear these proposals,
the chief men suddenly withdrawing before an answer was returned, and
throwing all the gold and silver collected, both from public and
private stores, into a fire hastily kindled for that purpose, the
greater part flung themselves also into it. When the dismay and
agitation produced by this d