The end of Saguntum (March 218)
While Alorcus was speaking, the crowd had insensibly penetrated, and the people had mingled with the senate. Suddenly the principal senators leave the assembly before an answer has been given, collect in the forum all the gold, all the silver of the public buildings, of the private houses, throw it into a hastily lit pyre, and most rush into the flames themselves. This spectacle had spread consternation and terror throughout the city, when a new tumult is heard from the side of the citadel. A tower, battered for a long time, had just collapsed; a cohort of Carthaginians rushes through the rubble, and warns Hannibal that the city has no more posts or sentries. Thinking that such an opportunity would allow no delay, he hastily advanced with all his forces, and in an instant the place was taken. The order is given to put to the sword all those who are able to bear arms, a cruel measure, but which the event justifies; for what is the way to spare those who, shut up in their homes with their children and their wives, set them on fire to find their own death, or those who, arms in hand, did not stop fighting until exhaling?
An immense booty was made in the city:in vain the inhabitants had purposely destroyed almost all their treasures; the angry conqueror's sword had scarcely made any distinction of age; the prisoners had become the prey of the soldier; the proceeds of the sales still gave a rather considerable sum; many luxury items and precious fabrics were sent to Carthage. The siege of Sagunto lasted eight months, according to some historians. Hannibal, they add, then went to take up his winter quarters in Cartagena, and arrived in Italy five months after his departure from that city. If this account is correct, it is impossible that the consuls Publius Cornelius and Tiberius Sempronius received the deputation of the Saguntines, at the beginning of the siege, and that, during their consulship, they gave battle to Hannibal, one near Ticino, and both together on the banks of the Trebia, shortly afterwards. Either the progress of these events was much more rapid, or the taking, and not the beginning, of the siege of Sagunto dates from the first days of the year in which Publius Cornelius and Tiberius Sempronius entered the magistracy; for the affair of Trebia cannot be dismissed in the year of Cneius Servilius and Caius Flaminius, because the latter took possession of the consulship at Ariminum, after having been appointed to that dignity by Tiberius Sempronius, who, after the battle of Trebia, came to Rome for the election of consuls, and then returned to join the army in winter quarters.