Kitap 21
11
When Hanno sat down no one deemed it necessary to make any reply, so completely was the senate, as a body, on the side of Hannibal. They accused Hanno of speaking in a tone of more uncompromising hostility than Flaccus Valerius, the Roman envoy, had assumed. The reply which it was decided to make to the Roman demands was that the war was started by the Saguntines not by Hannibal, and that the Roman people would commit an act of injustice if they took the part of the Saguntines against their ancient allies, the Carthaginians. Whilst the Romans were wasting time in despatching commissioners, things were quiet round Saguntum. Hannibal's men were worn out with the fighting and the labours of the siege, and after placing detachments on guard over the vineae and other military engines, he gave his army a few days' rest. He employed this interval in stimulating the courage of his men by exasperating them against the enemy, and firing them by the prospect of rewards. After he had given out in the presence of his assembled troops that the plunder of the city would go to them, they were all in such a state of excitement that had the signal been given then and there it seemed impossible for anything to withstand them. As for the Saguntines, though they had a respite from fighting for some days, neither meeting attacks nor making any, they worked at their defences so continuously by day and night that they completed a fresh wall at the place where the fall of the former wall had laid the town open.
