21.15
An
enormous amount of booty was found in the captured city. Although most of
it had been deliberately destroyed by the owners, and the enraged soldiers
had observed hardly any distinctions of age in the universal slaughter, whilst
all the prisoners that were taken were assigned to them, still, it is certain that
a considerable sum was realised by the sale of the goods that were seized,
and much valuable furniture and apparel was sent to Carthage. Some writers
assert that Saguntum was taken in the eighth month of the siege, and that
Hannibal led his force from there to New Carthage for the winter, his arrival
in Italy occurring five months later. In this case it is impossible for P.
Cornelius and Ti. Sempronius to have been the consuls to whom the
Saguntine envoys were sent at the beginning of the siege and who
afterwards, whilst still in office, fought with Hannibal, one of them at the
Ticinus, both shortly afterwards at the Trebia. Either all the incidents
occurred within a much shorter period or else it was the capture of
Saguntum, not the beginning of the siege, which occurred when those two
entered upon office. For the battle of the Trebia cannot have fallen so late as
the year when Cn. Servilius and C. Flaminius were in office, because C.
Flaminius entered upon his consulship at Ariminum, his election taking place
under the consul Tiberius Sempronius, who came to Rome after the battle of
the Trebia to hold the consular elections, and, after they were over, returned
to his army in winter quarters.
