against the wall and the citadel: the harrowing description of this fire is evidently from Polybius, the unfortunate eye-witness of the horrors which now took place. The soldiers deliberately buried the wounded alive under the ruins! Thus the old town was reached, and now every one tried only to save himself; the priests went as suppliants with signs of truce, and begged for mercy: Scipio then caused it to be announced that the lives of those who would come out should be spared. On this, the people which still survived, fifty thousand in number, came forth; the Roman deserters only, with Hasdrubal and his family, retreated to the highest part of the citadel, a most hallowed place which was called Ἀσκληπιεῖον. Hasdrubal was base enough to sue for his life; but his wife slew her children, and cursing him, even from the pinnacle of the temple, threw herself into the flames, an example which was followed by the deserters. Thus Scipio became master of a heap of smouldering ruins drenched with blood. Much must, however, have been preserved, as he took from the temples many Sicilian trophies, which he sent back to that island. Neither Tarentum nor Capua had been destroyed by the senate; but Scipio had to raze Carthage to the ground at their command. He now completed the work already begun, and drove a plough-share across the site as a sign of its everlasting desolation: the army, when it went away, left only that utter wilderness in the midst of which Marius seated himself sixty years afterwards. The prisoners were treated with more or less humanity: most of them were sold for slaves, some also were slain; a few of those of higher rank met with a better fate, and were distributed among the Italian towns. Bithyas was one of these; their race and their name perished from the earth. The Romans, whose forefathers had put to death the great C. Pontius, spared the life of Hasdrubal: he was kept for the triumph. Carthage had stood for seven hundred years. Part of its territory was given to the Numidian kings, the three sons of Masinissa; the rest became a Roman province, under the rule of a proconsul or prætor. THE PSEUDO-PHILIP. THE ACHÆAN WAR. DESTRUCTION OF CORINTH.