She had but just finished a long struggle with the Gaulish tribes of Northern Italy, and was anxious to recover her strength before she engaged in another war.  It was for this very reason that Hannibal desired to force on the struggle.  His friends at Carthage persuaded the senate to refuse to listen to the envoys of Rome.  Another embassy was sent to Hannibal, but the general would not give them an interview, and, following the instructions they had received, the ambassadors then sailed to Carthage to make a formal demand for reparation, and for the person of Hannibal to be delivered over to them for punishment.

But the Barcine party were for the moment in the ascendancy; long negotiations took place which led to nothing, and all this time the condition of the Saguntines was becoming more desperate.  Five new ambassadors were therefore sent from Rome to ask in the name of the republic whether Hannibal was authorized by the Carthaginians to lay siege to Saguntum, to demand that he should be delivered to Rome, and, in case of refusal, to declare war.  The Carthaginian senate met in the temple of Moloch and there received the Roman ambassadors.  Q. Fabius, the chief man of the embassy, briefly laid the demands of Rome before the senate.  Cestar, one of the Barcine leaders, replied, refusing the demands.  Fabius then rose.

“I give you the choice —­ peace or war?”

“Choose yourself,” the Carthaginians cried.

“Then I choose war,” Fabius said.

“So be it,” the assembly shouted.

And thus war was formally declared between the two Republics.  But Saguntum had now fallen.  The second wall had been breached by the time Hannibal had returned from his expedition, and an assault was ordered.  As before, the Saguntines fought desperately, but after a long struggle the Carthaginians succeeded in winning a footing upon the wall.

The Saguntines, seeing that further resistance was vain, that the besiegers had already won the breach, that there was no chance of assistance from Rome, and having, moreover, consumed their last provisions, sought for terms.  Halcon, the Saguntine general, and a noble Spaniard named Alorcus, on the part of Hannibal, met in the breach.  Alorcus named the conditions which Hannibal had imposed —­ that the Saguntines should restore to the Torbolates the territory they had taken from them, and that the inhabitants, giving up all their goods and treasures, should then be permitted to leave the town and to found a new city at a spot which Hannibal would name.

The Saguntines, who were crowding round, heard the terms.  Many of the principal senators at once left the place, and hurrying into their houses carried the gold and silver which they had there, and also some of that in the public treasury, into the forum, and piling up a vast heap of wood set it alight and threw themselves into the flames.  This act caused a tremendous commotion in the city.  A general