Punic Wars (13.91-13.92)

Meanwhile some of the Carthaginians were watching from the walls the return of the ambassadors, and tore their hair with impatience at their delay. Others, not waiting, ran to meet them in order to learn the news; and when they saw them coming with downcast eyes they smote their own foreheads and questioned them, now all together, now one by one, as each chanced to meet a friend or acquaintance, seizing hold of them and asking questions. When no one answered they wept aloud as though certain destruction awaited them. When those on the walls heard them they joined in the lamentations, not knowing why, but as though some great evil were impending. At the gates the crowd almost crushed the envoys, rushing upon them in such number. They would have been torn in pieces had they not said that they must make their first communication to the senate. Then some of the crowd turned aside, and others opened a path for them, in order to learn the news sooner. When they were come into the senate-chamber the senators turned the others out and sat down alone by themselves, and the crowd remained standing outside. Then the envoys announced first of all the order of the consuls. Immediately there was a great outcry in the senate which was echoed by the people outside. When the envoys went on to tell what arguments and prayers they had used to get permission to send an embassy to Rome, there was again profound silence among the senators, who listened to the end; and the people kept silence also. When they learned that they were not even allowed to send an embassy, they raised a loud and mournful outcry, and the people rushed in among them.

Then followed a scene of indescribable fury and madness such as the Mænads are said to enact in the Bacchic mysteries. Some fell upon those senators who had advised giving the hostages and tore them in pieces, considering them the ones who had led them into the trap. Others treated in a similar way those who had favored giving up the arms. Some stoned the ambassadors for bringing the bad news and others dragged them through the city. Still others, meeting certain Italians, who were caught among them in this sudden and unexpected mischance, maltreated them in various ways, saying that they would make them suffer for the fraud practised upon them in the matter of the hostages and the arms. The city was full of wailing and wrath, of fear and threatenings. People roamed the streets invoking whatever was most dear to them and took refuge in the temples as in asylums. They upbraided their gods for not being able to defend themselves. Some went into the arsenals and wept when they found them empty. Others ran to the dockyards and bewailed the ships that had been surrendered to perfidious men. Some called their elephants by name, as though they had been present, and reviled their own ancestors and themselves for not perishing, sword in hand, with their country, instead of paying tribute and giving up their elephants, their ships, and their arms. Most of all was their anger kindled by the mothers of the hostages who, like Furies in a tragedy, accosted those whom they met with shrieks and accused them of giving away their children against their protest, or mocked at them, saying that the gods were now taking vengeance on them for the lost children. A few kept their wits about them, closed the gates, and brought stones upon the walls to be used in place of catapults.