[10] Conceiving that if he should cross the Iberus that would constitute a brilliant beginning, he suborned the Turbuletes, neighbors of the Saguntines, that they should complain to him that the latter were overrunning their country and doing them many other wrongs. They made this complaint. Then Hannibal sent their ambassadors to Carthage, and wrote private letters saying that the Romans were inciting Carthaginian Spain to revolt, and that the Saguntines were cooperating with the Romans for this purpose. Nor did he desist from this deception, but kept sending messages of this kind until the Carthaginian Senate authorized him to deal with the Saguntines as he saw fit. Since he had a pretext, he arranged that the Turbuletes should come again to make complaints against the Saguntines, and that the latter should send legates also. When Hannibal commanded them to explain their differences to him, they replied that they should refer the matter to Rome. Hannibal thereupon ordered them out of his camp, and the next night crossed the Iberus with his whole army, laid waste the Saguntine territory, and planted engines against their city. Not being able to take it, he surrounded it with a wall and ditch, stationed plenty of guards, and pushed the siege at intervals.

[11] The Saguntines, oppressed by this sudden and unheralded attack, sent an embassy to Rome. The Senate commissioned its own ambassadors to go with them. They were instructed first to remind Hannibal of the agreement and -if he should not obey- to proceed to Carthage and complain against him. When they arrived in Spain and were approaching his camp from the sea, Hannibal forbade their coming.

Accordingly they sailed for Carthage with the Saguntine ambassadors, and reminded the Carthaginians of the agreement. The latter accused the Saguntines of committing many wrongs on their subjects. When the Saguntines offered to submit the whole question to the Romans as arbitrators, the Carthaginians replied that there was no use of an arbitration because they were able to avenge themselves.

When this reply was brought to Rome some advised sending aid to the Saguntines. Others favored delay, saying that the Saguntines were not inscribed as allies in the agreement with them, but merely as free and autonomous, and that they were still free although besieged. The latter opinion prevailed.

[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.