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[1]
Scipio, observing that the field of operations was widely extended, and that to attack the cities one after another would be a protracted task, if not a great one, turned back.
[2] Not to leave the region, however, to the enemy, he sent his brother Lucius Scipio with ten thousand infantry and a thousand
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cavalry to besiege the wealthiest city in that country —Orongis
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the barbarians called it. It is situated in the territory of the Maesesses,
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a Bastetanian tribe. Its land is fruitful; the inhabitants mine silver also.
[3] That city had been a stronghold for Hasdrubal in making-raids among the tribes of the interior.
[4] Scipio pitched his camp near the city and before investing it sent men up to the gates to sound the inhabitants by speaking to them from a short distance, urging them to test the friendship of the Romans rather than their power.
[5] When no peaceable replies were forthcoming, he surrounded the city with a trench and a double earthwork and divided his army into three parts, so that one third should always be attacking while two thirds in the meantime were resting.
[6] When the first third essayed an attack there was, to be sure, a fierce battle and indecisive. It was not easy to come near the walls for the shower of missiles, nor to bring up ladders.
[7] Some who had succeeded in raising their ladders against the walls were pushed down by forks made for that very purpose, others had iron grappling-hooks lowered upon them from above, so that they were in danger of being caught up and dragged to the top of the wall.
[8] When Scipio noted that owing to the greatly inferior number of his men the struggle was evenly balanced, and that the enemy had an advantage already in fighting from the wall, he attacked the city with two thirds of his men at the same time, having recalled the first third.
[9] This inspired so much alarm among men already spent in
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fighting with the first to attack them that the townsmen in sudden flight abandoned the walls and for fear the city had been betrayed the Carthaginian garrison also left their posts and gathered in one place.
[10] Then the men of the town were possessed by the fear that, if the enemy should enter the city, those whom they happened to meet anywhere would be slain with no distinction between Carthaginian and Spaniard.
[11] Accordingly they suddenly opened a gate and dashed out of the town in large numbers, holding their shields in front of them for fear weapons might be hurled at long range, but displaying their right hands empty, so that it should be clear that they had thrown away their swords.
[12] Whether this was not seen owing to distance, or whether some ruse was suspected, has not been ascertained. The Romans, making an attack upon the deserters, cut them down like an opposing battle-line; and by the same gate hostile units entered the city.
[13] Elsewhere also gates were being hewed to pieces and broken open with hatchets and pickaxes, while a cavalryman on entering would ride ahead at full speed to seize the forum; for such were their orders. A detachment of
triarii
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also had been assigned to support the cavalry.
[14] The legionaries made their way through the other quarters of the city. They refrained from plundering and from slaying those they met, except when men defended themselves with arms.
[15] The Carthaginians were all put under guard, also about three hundred of the citizens who had closed the gates.
[16] The town was handed over to the rest and their property restored. About two thousand of the enemy were slain in the siege of the city, of the
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Romans not more than ninety.
Ab urbe condita. Titus Livius (Livy). Benjamin Oliver Foster, Ph.D. (Editor), Frank Gardener Moore (Editor), Evan T. Sage, Ph.D. (Editor), Alfred C. Schlesinger, Ph.D. (Editor). Medford, MA. .
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