History of Rome (Ab Urbe Condita)

...either locked themselves up with their wives and children and burned their houses over themselves, or, being armed, made no end to the fight other than death?

XV. The town was captured with immense booty. Although most things had been deliberately ruined by their owners, and anger had made hardly any distinction of age in the slaughter, and the captives had been the booty of the soldiers, nevertheless, it is agreed that a considerable amount of money was collected from the price of the things sold, and much precious furniture and clothing was sent to Carthage.

Some have written that Saguntum was captured in the eighth month after the siege began: that from there Hannibal retreated to New Carthage for winter quarters, and then, in the fifth month after he set out from Carthage, arrived in Italy. If these things are so, it could not have been that P. Cornelius and Tib. Sempronius were the consuls to whom the Saguntine envoys were sent at the beginning of the siege, and who, during their magistracy, fought with Hannibal—the one at the Ticinus river, and both a little later at the Trebia. Either all events were somewhat shorter, or Saguntum was not begun to be besieged, but captured, in the beginning of the year in which P. Cornelius and Tib. Sempronius were consuls. For the battle at the Trebia cannot have crossed into the year of Cn. Servilius and C. Flaminius, because C. Flaminius entered his consulship at Ariminum, having been elected by the consul Tib. Sempronius, who, having come to Rome to elect the consuls after the battle at the Trebia, returned to the army in winter quarters after the elections were finished.

XVI. Around the same time, the envoys who had returned from Carthage reported to Rome that all things were hostile, and the destruction of Saguntum was announced; and such great grief seized the fathers, along with pity for the allies destroyed unworthily, shame for not having brought aid, anger against the Carthaginians, and fear for the final outcome of the matter, as if the enemy were already at the gates, that they were more disturbed than able to consult. For neither had a sharper or more warlike enemy ever engaged with them, nor had the Roman state ever been so sluggish and unwarlike. They believed the Roman arms had rather provoked than exercised the Sardinians, Corsicans, Histrians, and Illyrians, and that they had skirmished rather than warred with the Gauls: while the Carthaginian enemy was a veteran, hardened by twenty-three years of the most difficult military service among the Spanish tribes, always victorious, accustomed to the sharpest leader, and fresh from the destruction of a most wealthy city, he was crossing the Ebro, bringing with him so many stirred-up Spanish peoples, and would incite the Gallic tribes always greedy for arms: that a war with the whole world had to be fought in Italy and before the walls of Rome.

XVII. The provinces had already been named for the consuls before, and they were then ordered to draw lots: Spain fell to Cornelius, Africa with Sicily to Sempronius. Six legions were decreed for that year and as many of the allies as they saw fit, and as large a fleet as could be prepared. Twenty-four thousand Roman infantry were enrolled and eighteen hundred cavalry; of the allies, forty thousand infantry and four thousand four hundred cavalry: two hundred and twenty quinqueremes and twenty light frigates were launched. It was then proposed to the people whether they willed and ordered that war be declared against the Carthaginian people: and for the sake of that war, supplications...