5.42
Now -whether it was that
the Gauls were not all animated by a passion for the
destruction of the City, or whether their chiefs had
decided on the one hand to present the spectacle of
a few fires as a means of intimidating the besieged
into surrender from a desire to save their homes,
and on the other, by abstaining from a universal
conflagration, hold what remained of the City as a
pledge by which to weaken their enemies'
determination -certain it is that the fires were
far from being so indiscriminate or so extensive as
might be expected on the first day of a captured
city. As the Romans beheld from the Citadel the City
filled with the enemy who were running about in all
the streets, while some new disaster was constantly
occurring, first in one quarter then in another,
they could no longer control their eyes and ears,
let alone their thoughts and feelings. In whatever
direction their attention was drawn by the shouts of
the enemy, the shrieks of the women and boys, the
roar of the flames, and the crash of houses falling
in, thither they turned their eyes and minds as
though set by Fortune to be spectators of their
country's fall, powerless to protect anything left
of all they possessed beyond their lives. Above all
others who have ever stood a siege were they to be
pitied, cut off as they were from the land of their
birth and seeing all that had been theirs in the
possession of the enemy. The day which had been
spent in such misery was succeeded by a night not
one whit more restful, this again by a day of
anguish, there was not a single hour free from the
sight of some ever fresh calamity. And yet, though,
weighed down and overwhelmed with so many
misfortunes, they had watched everything laid low in
flame and ruin, they did not for a moment relax
their determination to defend by their courage the
one spot still left to freedom, the hill which they
held, however small and poor it might be. At length,
as this state of things went on day by day, they
became as it were hardened to misery, and turned
their thoughts from the circumstances round them to
their arms and the sword in their right hand, which
they gazed upon as the only things left to give them
hope.
