2.12
The Saguntines, when they despaired of help from Rome, and when famine weighed heavily upon them, and Hannibal kept up the siege without intermission (for he had heard that the city was very prosperous and wealthy, and for this reason relaxed not the siege), issued an edict to bring all the silver and gold, public and private, to the forum, where they melted it with lead and brass, so that it should be useless to Hannibal. Then, thinking that it was better to die fighting than starve to death, they made a sally by night upon the besiegers while they were asleep and not expecting an attack, and killed some as they were getting out of bed, others as they were clumsily arming themselves, and still others who were actually fighting. The battle continued until many of the Africans and all the Saguntines were slain. When the women witnessed the slaughter of their husbands from the walls, some of them threw themselves from the housetops, others hanged themselves, and others slew their children and then themselves. Such was the end of Saguntum, once a great and powerful city. When Hannibal learned what had been done with the gold he was angry, and put all the surviving adults to death with torture. Observing that the city was not far from Carthage and with good land about it situated on the sea, he rebuilt it and made it a Carthaginian colony, and I think it is now called Spartarian Carthage. ἣν νῦν οἶμαι Καρχηδόνα καλεῖσθαι τὴν Σπαρταγενήν. This sentence has given rise to many conjectures as to the significance of the word Spartagena. Schweighäuser, relying on a passage in Strabo (iii. iv. 10), which speaks of the Spartarian plain near New Carthage (the present Carthagena) concludes that the word Σπαρταγενήν is another Greek form of the word used by Strabo. A Spartarian plain means a plain covered with the fibrous plant spartum — the Esparto grass of modern commerce.
