Arrival of the Roman Embassy
The fight had been undecided for a long time. The Saguntines felt their ardor redoubled, because they resisted against all hope; and the Carthaginians believed themselves defeated, because they had not been able to conquer, (2) when suddenly the besieged uttered a cry, and made the enemy retreat to the ruins of the wall. Disorder, confusion is in its ranks; he moves; finally he fled, he was routed and driven out in his lines. However, the arrival of the Roman deputation is announced. Hannibal sends to meet her as far as the sea, to tell her that it is not safe for her to advance in the midst of a crowd of savage nations who have arms in their hands; that, for him, in such a critical situation, he cannot give audience to ambassadors. It was clear that after this refusal, they would go straight to Carthage:also, to warn them, a letter, a courier, is sent to the leaders of the Barcine faction, who, in advance, must dispose the minds to reject all the concessions that the opposite party could make to the Romans.
Audience at the Roman Embassy in Carthage
This time the deputies were admitted and heard, but still without fruit and without success. Hanno alone, in spite of the opposition of the senate, spoke in favor of the treaty:there was a great silence, so imposing was the orator on the assembly, which did not share his opinion. "In the name of the gods, arbiters and guarantors of treaties, he had warned them, conjured not to send the son of Amilcar to the army. The ghosts, the offspring of such a man, are indignant at rest; and never, so long as there remains one of the race or name of Barca, will the alliance with Rome be peaceful. A young man burned with the desire to reign; only one way, in his eyes, could lead him to the throne "was to sow wars upon wars, to live always surrounded by arms and legions. Well! you have fed this terrible hearth; Hannibal is at the head of your armies. You alone have therefore kindled the fire which devours. Your soldiers have laid siege to Saguntum, from which they are expelled by a solemn treaty. Soon Carthage will see under its walls the Roman legions, guided by the same gods, who, in the preceding war, avenged the breaches of the treaties. Do you misunderstand, then, both yourself and your enemy, and the fortunes of both peoples? your camp for allies and on behalf of allies; your worthy general has refused to receive them; he trampled on the rights of nations. However, driven out as the envoys of even an enemy people have never been, they come to you; they demand satisfaction from you according to the treaty. They do not accuse the nation; they charge only one man; they claim a single culprit. The more gently they act, the more slowly they proceed, the more it is to be feared that they will subsequently display an inflexible rigor. Remember the Aegates Islands, Mount Eryx, and all the disasters, which for twenty-four years overwhelmed you on land and sea. Then you had no child like Hannibal for your leader, but an Amilcar, his father, another Mars to speak the language of his followers. Taranto, or rather Italy, was attacked by us against the sworn faith; Saguntum is the same today. So men and gods united against us; quarrels over words raised over the first offenders of the treaty yielded to the event of the war, which, judged equitable, tipped the victory on the side of justice. It is against Carthage that Hannibal today advances his towers and mantlets; it is the walls of Carthage that beat his rams. The ruins of Sagunto (may the gods avert this omen!) will fall on our heads, and the war that we declare against it, we will have to maintain against Rome. Is it then necessary to deliver Hannibal, one will say to me? I know that the enmity I bore to the father can make my allegations against the son futile. But I did not see the end of Amilcar without pleasure, because, if he still existed, we would already have war with the Romans; and therefore, this young Hannibal, this kind of fury which agitates the torch of the combats, I hate it and detest it? Let us deliver him up, believe me, as an expiatory victim of an attack on sworn faith; and even if no one claimed him, we would still have to exile him to the far ends of the world, and relegate him so far away that his name and his fame could not reach us, and disturb the rest of the country. My advice is therefore that an embassy should be sent immediately to Rome, to give satisfaction to the senate; another to Hannibal, to tell him to raise the siege of Sagunto, and to deliver him himself to the Romans, in execution of the treaty; a third finally, to give back to the Saguntines all that was taken from them. "
Negotiations failed
After Hanno's speech, no one tried to answer him formally, so much was the majority of the senate for Hannibal! Hanno was even reproached for having spoken with more bitterness than Flaccus Valerius, the Roman deputy. Here is the answer the embassy received:"The war came from the Saguntines, and not from Hannibal. The people of Rome would be committing an injustice if they preferred the Saguntines to the Carthaginians, their oldest allies." While the Romans were wasting time sending deputations, Hannibal, whose troops were fatigued by fighting and work, granted a few days of rest, after having entrusted several detachments with the guarding of the mantlets and other works. However, it excites courage, both by hatred of the enemy, and by the hope of rewards. Soon he declared in an assembly that all the booty, after the capture of Sagunto, would belong to the soldiers; then such was their ardor that, if the signal had been given at once, no obstacle would have seemed capable of stopping them. (5) The Saguntines, during the suspension of arms, which stopped for some time any attack on either side, did not stop working day and night to raise a new wall at the place where the breach had left their city open. . From then on the siege began again with more fury; but where to get first aid? this side ? of this other? A thousand confused cries prevented the Saguntines from knowing it. A mobile tower, whose height surpassed all the fortifications of the city, advanced, and Hannibal was there to enliven everything with his presence:Arrived at the foot of the wall, the tower, by means of catapults and ballistae placed at all floors, had soon overthrown the combatants and stripped the ramparts; so Hannibal seized the opportunity, and sent about five hundred Africans with axes to undermine the wall from below, a work not very difficult, because the stones were not united by hardened lime, but only by sodden earth , following the old method of construction. So it was not only the undermined place that crumbled, and large openings vomited into Saguntum the Carthaginian battalions. They seize a height, place catapults and ballistae on it, and, in order to make for themselves, in the square itself, a kind of boulevard which dominates all the rest, they raise a wall around the height. For their part, the Saguntines build a wall in the inner part of the city, which is not yet in the power of Hannibal. On both sides, extreme activity to defend, to fight; but these interior ramparts, with which the besieged surround themselves, tighten, day by day, Sagunto in the narrowest space. In the grip of terrible destitution, following a long siege, they see the hope of foreign help vanish; Rome, their only resource, is so far from them; all the surrounding country belongs to the enemy. However, a little courage revived the downcast spirits, at the news of the hasty departure of Hannibal who was marching against the Oretans and the Carpetans. These two peoples, terrified at the rigor with which the levies were pushed, had arrested Hannibal's agents. He feared an uprising; his speed warned him, and the rebels soon laid down their arms.