While the Romans thus prepare and deliberate, Saguntum was already besieged with the utmost vigour.

That city, situated about a mile from the sea, was by far the most opulent beyond the Iberus.

Its inhabitants are said to have been sprung from the island Zacynthus, and some of the Rutulian race from Ardea to have been also mixed with them; but they had risen in a short time to great wealth, either by their gains from the sea or the land, or by the increase of their numbers, or the integrity of their principles, by which they maintained their faith with their allies, even to their own destruction.

Hannibal having entered their territory with a hostile army, and laid waste the country in every direction, attacks the city in three different quarters.

There was an angle of the wall sloping down into a more level and open valley than the other space around; against this he resolved to move the vineae, by means of which the battering-ram might be brought up to the wall.