Unhappily, they slackened after their more than human effort, and, lingering for some days, irretrievably lost time, and with it all the fruits of their labour: the Romans got their ships ready as well as they could, and thus the Carthaginians were driven back, particularly by the Græco-Asiatic ships of Sida, which fought quite in a way of their own. Four of these small vessels would cast anchor, on which they swung round as on a pivot, and thus defended themselves against the Carthaginians, an example which was followed by the others. The Carthaginians retreated. The next day, they wished to renew the attack: but they got foul of each other in the narrow entrance, the canal, which they had dug, being unfortunately not wide enough, and the Romans bore down upon them, and drove them against the wall of the harbour; so that this gigantic undertaking was again baffled. The Carthaginians now saw nothing but ruin before their eyes. Scipio first took the harbour for merchantmen, and from thence he advanced through the canal against the arsenal. Thus the city was conquered bit for bit, and the Romans made their way as far as the arsenal; as this could not have been held, the Carthaginians, perhaps too hastily, at once set fire to it, and then to the storehouses for the ships. The Romans were in possession of both harbours, and the fight was for the old city, Bozra (Byrsa), which had no walls on that side, but only leant upon the threefold wall on the isthmus: from the harbour, three large streets led up to the Byrsa, and in these the rich and the old families seem to have lived:--one may still trace in the description the gradual development of the city. The houses there were most of them seven or eight stories high, with flat roofs. (We must look upon Carthage as having been with regard to art and beauty like the fine towns of Greece, but with much more of Roman grandeur and massiveness: the building of stately streets is ascribed to them by the Romans as a thing peculiarly their own; the Greeks knew nothing of it.) There was now the same struggle as at Saragossa. House after house was defended and taken; the enemy broke through the party-walls, they fought from room to room, and when they had forced their way up the stairs, and driven the unfortunate inmates from the last stories, they tried to throw bridges from the roofs across the streets. The superior strength of the Romans assured them the victory, besides which, a most fearful famine was raging in the city where people were already feeding on dead bodies: and yet the besieged would not hear of surrender, though indeed such a thing could hardly have been mooted, as Hasdrubal had treated the Roman prisoners with the most horrible barbarity. When, after much bloodshed, part of the city was already taken, the Romans stopped short, and set fire to the buildings; on which the Carthaginians, fleeing before the flames, pulled up the houses, and thus raised up a huge mound of rubbish