nd two thousand military
engines for hurling beams of wood and stones. Thus Carthage was
disarmed.

All these demands, however unreasonable and cruel as the
Carthaginians deemed them, were only preliminary to the great final
determination, the announcement of which the consuls had reserved for
the end. When the arms had all been delivered, the consuls announced
to their now defenseless victims that the Roman senate had come to the
determination that Carthage was to be destroyed. They gave orders,
accordingly, that the inhabitants should all leave the city, which, as
soon as it should be thus vacated, was to be burned. They might take
with them such property as they could carry; and they were at liberty
to build, in lieu of this their fortified sea-port, an inland town,
not less than ten miles' distance from the sea, only it must have no
walls or fortifications of any kind. As soon as the inhabitants were
gone, Carthage, the consuls said, was to be destroyed.

The announcement of this entirely unparalleled and intolerable
requisition threw the whole city into a phrensy of desperation. They
could not, and would not submit to this. The entreaties and
remonstrances of the friends of the hostages were all silenced or
overborne in the burst of indignation and anger which arose from the
whole city. The gates were closed. The pavements of the streets were
torn up, and buildings demolished to obtain stones, which were
carried up upon the ramparts to serve instead of weapons. The slaves
were all liberated, and stationed on the walls to aid in the defense.
Every body that could work at a forge was employed in fabricating
swords, spear-heads, pikes, and such other weapons as could be formed
with the greatest facility and dispatch. They used all the iron and
brass that could be obtained, and then melted down vases and statues
of the precious metals, and tipped their spears with an inferior
pointing of silver and gold. In the same manner, when the supplies of
flax and hempen twine for cordage for their bows failed, the beautiful
sisters and mothers of the hostages cut off their long hair, and
twisted and braided it into cords to be used as bow-strings for
propelling the arrows which their husbands and brothers made. In a
word, the wretched Carthaginians had been pushed beyond the last limit
of human endurance, and had aroused themselves to a hopeless
resistance in a sort of phrensy of despair.

The reader will recollect that, aft