21.8
For a few
days, until the general's wound was healed, there was a blockade rather than
an active siege, and during this interval, though there was a respite from
fighting, the construction of siege works and approaches went on
uninterruptedly. When the fighting was resumed it was fiercer than ever. In
spite of the difficulties of the ground the vineae were advanced and the
battering rams placed against the walls. The Carthaginians had the
superiority in numbers -there were said to have been 150,000 fighting men -whilst the defenders, obliged to keep watch and ward everywhere, were
dissipating their strength and finding their numbers unequal to the task. The
walls were now being pounded by the rams, and in many places had been
shaken down. One part where a continuous fall had taken place laid the city
open; three towers in succession, and the whole of the wall between them
fell with a tremendous crash. The Carthaginians looked upon the town as
already captured after that fall, and both sides rushed through the breach as
though the wall had only served to protect them from each other. There was
nothing of the desultory fighting which goes on when cities are stormed, as
each side gets an opportunity of attacking the other. The two bodies of
combatants confronted one another in the space between the ruined wall and
the houses of the city in as regular formation as though they had been in an
open field. On the one side there was the courage of hope, on the other the
courage of despair. The Carthaginians believed that with a little effort on
their part the city would be theirs; the Saguntines opposed their bodies as a
shield for their fatherland now stripped of its walls; not a man relaxed his
foothold for fear of letting an enemy in through the spot which he had left
open. So the hotter and closer the fighting became the greater grew the
number of wounded, for no missile fell ineffectively amongst the crowded
ranks. The missile used by the Saguntines was the phalarica, a javelin with a
shaft smooth and round up to the head, which, as in the pilum, was an iron
point of square section. The shaft was wrapped in tow and then smeared
with pitch; the iron head was three feet long and capable of penetrating
armour and body alike. Even if it only stuck in the shield and did not reach
the body it was a most formidable weapon, for when it was discharged with
the tow set on fire the flame was fanned to a fiercer heat by its passage
through the air, and it forced the soldier to throw away his shield and left
him defenceless against the sword thrusts which followed.