would furnish to the consuls who had just departed for Sicily within the space of a month at Lilybaeum 300 hostages from the children of the leading families, and would fulfil the further orders which the consuls in conformity with their instructions should issue to them.  The reply has been called ambiguous; but very erroneously, as even at the time clearsighted men among the Carthaginians themselves pointed out.  The circumstance that everything which they could ask was guaranteed with the single exception of the city, and that nothing was said as to stopping the embarkation of the troops for Africa, showed very clearly what the Roman intentions were; the senate acted with fearful harshness, but it did not assume the semblance of concession.  The Carthaginians, however, would not open their eyes; there was no statesman found, who had the power to move the unstable multitude of the city either to thorough resistance or to thorough resignation.  When they heard at the same time of the horrible decree of war and of the endurable demand for hostages, they complied immediately with the latter, and still clung to hope, because they had not the courage fully to realize the import of surrendering themselves beforehand to the arbitrary will of a mortal foe.  The consuls sent back the hostages from Lilybaeum to Rome, and informed the Carthaginian envoys that they would learn further particulars in Africa.  The landing was accomplished without resistance, and the provisions demanded were supplied.  When the gerusia of Carthage appeared in a body at the head-quarters in Utica to receive the further orders, the consuls required in the first instance the disarming of the city.  To the question of the Carthaginians, who was in that case to protect them even against their own emigrants—­ against the army, which had swelled to 20,000 men, under the command of Husdrubal who had saved himself from the sentence of death by flight—­it was replied, that this would be the concern of the Romans.  Accordingly the council of the city obsequiously appeared before the consuls, with all their fleet-material, all the military stores of the public magazines, all the arms that were found in the possession of private persons—­to the number of 3000 catapults and 200,000 sets of armour—­and inquired whether anything more was desired.  Then the consul Lucius Marcius Censorinus rose and announced to the council, that in accordance with the instructions given by the senate the existing city was to be destroyed, but that the inhabitants were at liberty to settle anew in their territory wherever they chose, provided it were at a distance of at least ten miles from the sea.

Resistance of the Carthaginians