Then, at last, came a pause in the slaughter, but not until the proudest city in the world had been transformed into a shambles, a human abattoir. Hasdrubal, the Carthaginian commander, agreed to surrender on the sole condition that the lives of the survivors should be spared. Scipio accepted, and fifty thousand half-naked, starving wretches—all that were left alive out of the city’s seven hundred thousand—emerged from the citadel to claim such mercy as the blood-drunk victors might show. They were sent to Rome in chains and sold in the market-place as slaves. But nine hundred fighting-men, deserters to whom Scipio sternly refused amnesty, barricaded themselves in the great temple and, setting it on fire, perished in the flames. With them died Hasdrubal’s wife and children, Hasdrubal himself, a prisoner of the Romans, being an eye-witness of their heroic end. The work of Scipio was accomplished, and he returned to Rome. When consulted by the Senate as to the future of Carthage he declined to express an opinion, though he is said to have opposed the wanton destruction of what remained of the city. But the Romans closed their ears to the counsels of moderation and reason. Too proud to admit it, they knew in their hearts that fear would haunt them as long as one stone of Carthage remained upon another. It was decreed, therefore, that the city should be razed to the ground, the ruins plowed under, and a solemn curse laid upon any one who should venture to build upon or cultivate the site. Ten commissioners were appointed to execute the decree. But they were forestalled in this final act of spite and hatred, in their craving to wreak vengeance on a corpse, for when the residents of the suburb of Megara learned that the obliteration of the city had been determined upon they themselves set the torch to what remained. The conflagration raged for seventeen days, and when at last it died for want of something further to consume the once-proud Empress of the Seas lay in ashes. Cato’s demand had been complied with. _Carthago deleta est._ But the site of Carthage was too important to remain unoccupied for long, or to be permitted to fall into other and perhaps hostile hands, and, within less than a quarter of a century of its destruction by Scipio, Caius Gracchus was despatched with six thousand settlers to establish there a Roman colony. The project failed to meet with success, however—perhaps the curse of Rome was still in working order—and, though Julius Cæsar, sleeping on the Byrsa for a night after the battle of Thapsus, dreamed of rebuilding the city, the work was not undertaken until Augustus had ascended the imperial throne.