Resumption of the seat
For a few days it was more of a blockade than a siege. The Carthaginians were waiting for Hannibal's healing. So no fight; but the construction of the works and the fortifications continued with the same activity. Also the attacks started again with more vigor and on several points in spite of incredible obstacles, one made advance the galleries and the ram. The Carthaginian had a considerable army; it amounted, it is said, to one hundred and fifty thousand men. The besieged, to defend everything, to watch over everything, were forced to divide their forces very much:they were also going to succumb; for the ram beat the walls, and many parts were shaken. A large breach left the city uncovered on one side; then three towers and the wall between them had crumbled with a horrible crash, and the Carthaginians had believed that this collapse had put the city in their power. The two parties thus advance into combat, as if each had been equally protected by a rampart. It was not those irregular frays which take place in all sieges during a sudden attack, but two armies drawn up in battle array as in an open plain, between the rubble of the wall and the houses of the city placed at a short distance. . On the one hand hope, on the other despair, irritate courage. The Carthaginians believe themselves masters of the city if they make a last effort; the Saguntines cover with their bodies a country which no longer has any ramparts. None of them let go; for the enemy would seize the abandoned ground. Also, the tighter and more obstinate the fight, the bloodier it became:no line was out of line between the arms and the body. The Saguntines had a kind of line which they called falaric, whose shaft, of fir wood, was cylindrical in its entire length, with the exception of the side from which the iron came out. Square as in our pilum, the iron was stuffed with oakum and coated with pitch:it was three feet long, so that it could pierce the armor and the body. But, even when the falaric had stopped on the shield without penetrating to the body, it still spread fear, because it was only thrown ablaze from the middle, and the movement alone gave the flame such vivacity that the soldier, forced to throw down his arms, was exposed defenseless to the new blows that could assail him.