agreements rendered them all the more ready to promise anything. [Sidenote: B.C. 149 (_a.u._ 605)] When the senate called a meeting to consider the matter, Scipio Nasica advised receiving the Carthaginian embassy and making a truce with them, but Marcus Cato declared that no truce ought to be arranged nor the decree of war rescinded. The senators accepted the supplication of the envoys, promised to grant them a truce, and asked for hostages as an earnest of these conditions. These hostages were sent to Sicily and Lucius Marcius and Marcus Manilius went there, took charge of them, and sent them on to Rome. They themselves made haste to occupy Africa. After encamping they summoned the magistrates of Carthage to appear before them. When these officials arrived they did not unmask all their demands at once, for they feared that if the Carthaginians understood them in season they would plunge into war with resources unimpaired. So first they asked for and received grain, next the triremes, and after that the engines; and then they demanded the arms besides. They secured the entire visible supply (but the Carthaginians had a great deal of other equipment safely hidden) and at length ordered them to raze their city and to build in its place an unwalled town inland, eighty stades distant from the sea. At that the Carthaginians were dissolved in tears, acknowledged that they were trapped, and bewailed their fate, begging the consuls not to compel them to act as the assassins of their country. They soon found that they could accomplish nothing and had to face the repeated command either to execute the order or to cast the die of war. Many of the people then remained there on the Roman side, tacitly admitting their success: the remainder withdrew, and after killing some of their rulers for not having chosen war in the first place and after murdering such Romans as were discovered within the fortification they turned their attention to war. Under these circumstances they liberated all the slaves, restored the exiles, chose Hasdrubal once more as leader, and made ready arms, engines, and triremes. With war at their doors and the danger of slavery confronting them they prepared in the briefest possible time everything that they needed. They spared nothing, but melted down the statues for the sake of the bronze in them and used the hair of their women for ropes. The consuls at first, thinking them unarmed, expected to overcome them speedily and merely prepared ladders, with which they expected to scale the wall at once. As the assault showed their enemies to be armed and they saw that they possessed means for a siege, the Romans, before approaching close to the city again, devoted themselves to the manufacture of engines. The construction of these machines was fraught with danger, since Hasdrubal set ambuscades for those who were gathering the wood and annoyed them considerably, but in time they were able to assail the town. Now Manilius in his assault