When the Romans received the news of the destruction of Saguntum, they dispatched another embassy to Carthage (as Polybius relates) with the utmost expedition;[229] their orders were to insist that Hannibal and all who advised him to commit hostilities against the Saguntines should be delivered up to the Romans, and in case of a refusal, to declare immediate war. Their demand was received by the Carthaginian senate with the utmost indignation, and one of the senators, who was appointed to speak in the name of the rest, begun in an artful speech to recriminate upon the Romans, and offered to prove, that the Saguntines were not allied to the Romans when the peace was made between the two nations, and consequently could not be included in the treaty. But the Romans cut the affair short, and told them that they did not come there to dispute, but only to insist upon a categorical answer to this plain question: whether they would give up the authors of the hostilities, which would convince the world that they had no share in the destruction of Saguntum, but that Hannibal had done it without their authority; or, whether by protecting them, they chose to confirm the Romans in the belief, that Hannibal had acted with their approbation? As their demand of Hannibal was refused, war was declared by the Romans,[230] and accepted with equal alacrity and fierceness by the majority of the Carthaginian senate. Livy affirms that the first embassy was decreed by the Roman senate,[231] but not sent until Hannibal had actually invested Saguntum, and varies from Polybius in his relation of the particulars. For according to Livy,[232] Hannibal received intelligence of the Roman embassy, but he sent them word, that he had other business upon his hands at that time than to give audience to ambassadors, and that he wrote at the same time to his friends of the Barcan faction to exert themselves, and prevent the other party from carrying any point in favour of the Romans.