Nearly about the same time, both the ambassadors who had returned from Carthage
brought intelligence to Rome that all appearances were hostile, and the destruction
of Saguntum was announced. Then such grief, and pity for allies so undeservingly
destroyed, and shame that aid was withheld, and rage against the Carthaginians,
and fear for the issue of events, as if the enemy were already at the gates,
took at once possession of the senators, that their minds, disturbed by so many
simultaneous emotions, trembled with fear rather than deliberated. For they
considered that neither had a more spirited or warlike enemy ever encountered
them nor had the Roman state been ever so sunk in sloth, and unfit for war:
that the Sardinians, the Corsicans, the Istrians, and the Illyrians, had rather
kept in a state of excitement than exercised the Roman arms; and with the Gauls
it had been more properly a tumult than a war. That the Carthaginian, a veteran
enemy, ever victorious during the hardest service for twenty-three years among
the tribes of Spain, first trained to war under Hamilcar, then Hasdrubal, now
Hannibal, a most active leader, and fresh from the destruction of a most opulent
city, was passing the Iberus; that along with them he was bringing the numerous
tribes of Spain, already aroused, and was about to excite the nations of Gaul,
ever desirous of war; and that a war against the world was to be maintained
in Italy and before the walls of Rome.
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