statues, and vases were melted down for weapons. Material was torn from
the buildings of the city for the construction of military engines. The
women cut off their hair and braided it into strings for the catapults. By
such labor, and through such means, the city was soon put in a state to
withstand a siege.

When the Romans advanced to take possession of the place, they were
astonished to find the people they had just treacherously disarmed, with
weapons in their hands, manning the walls of their capital, and ready to
bid them defiance.

THE DESTRUCTION OF CARTHAGE.--It is impossible for us here to give the
circumstances of the siege of Carthage. For four years the city held out
against the Roman army. At length the consul Scipio AEmilianus succeeded in
taking it by storm. When resistance ceased, only 50,000 men, women, and
children, out of a population of 700,000, remained to be made prisoners.
The city was fired, and for seventeen days the space within the walls was
a sea of flames. Every trace of building which the fire could not destroy
was levelled, a plough was driven over the site, and a dreadful curse
invoked upon any one who should dare attempt to rebuild the city.

Such was the hard fate of Carthage. It is said that Scipio, as he gazed
upon the smouldering ruins, seemed to read in them the fate of Rome, and,
bursting into tears, sadly repeated the lines of Homer:

"The day shall come in which our sacred Troy,
And Priam, and the people over whom
Spear-bearing Priam rules, shall perish all."

The Carthaginian territory in Africa was made into a Roman province, with