Accordingly it was decided that a choice should be made of the finest heads of hair among the wives of the plebeians.
Careless of their country's needs, they shrieked in despair when the servants of the Hundred came with scissors to lay hands upon them.
The Barbarians were animated with increased fury.

They could be seen in the distance taking fat from the dead to grease their machines, while others pulled out the nails and stitched them end to end to make cuirasses.

They devised a plan of putting into the catapults vessels filled with serpents which had been brought by the Negroes; the clay pots broke on the flag-stones, the serpents ran about, seemed to multiply, and, so numerous were they, to issue naturally from the walls.
Then the Barbarians, not satisfied with their invention, improved upon it; they hurled all kinds of filth, human excrements, pieces of carrion, corpses.

The plague reappeared.

The teeth of the Carthaginians fell out of their mouths, and their gums were discoloured like those of camels after too long a journey.
The machines were set up on the terrace, although the latter did not as yet reach everywhere to the height of the rampart.