and Syr'a - cuse were the only places of importance that would form an alliance with him, and the alliance with Capua proved in some ways an injury . He spent the winter within its walls . His soldiers drank and feasted ; and when spring came, they were not so ready to continue the war as they would have been in the previous autumn. The Romans, however, would not give him the chance that he wanted to continue the war, for they
not meet him in the open field . They were also becoming stronger ; but the longer the Carthaginian army waited , the weaker it became.
The alliance with Syracuse did not last long , for the ( It was used by the Romans in besieging a town ) Romans laid siege to the city . On the land side they moved up wooden towers higher than the city walls , and from these
soon
Fon's had become wiser than at first and would
soldiers could shoot , or they could throw out a sort of draw bridge and cross over to the top of the walls . They had battering -rams, long beams with iron heads,
that swung against the
walls with ter rible force . They also used machines for throwing darts, and others for hurling great stones . On the other hand , the people in the town defended themselves by letting down monstrous pin cers to catch hold of the Roman battering -rams, and tongs to seize the men who were climbing up on the scaling ladders , and they threw darts and stones and firebrands. On the ocean side was a fleet of Roman vessels which carried wooden towers and battering-rams like those of the land forces. There was small chance for a town besieged by land and by sea ; but a wise man named Ar-chi-me'des, who lived in Syra
a
cuse , invented many machines to defend the city . The description of one , given by the Latin author Liv'y, who was born a century and a half later, sounds much like a chapter from Jules Verne . According to Livy , this machine acted somewhat like the old - fashioned well-sweep , only instead of a bucket it had a heavy iron grapple . If a ship came a little too near the walls , the beam bent over it , and the grapple caught up its prow , then suddenly dropped it . When at tacked in this fashion , the ship usually took in so great a quantity of water as to swamp it . The tradition has been handed down that Archimedes set the Roman fleet afire by arranging mirrors to reflect the sun's rays . In spite of his masterly defense , the Romans captured the city. The Ro man commander had great respect for the ability of Archime des ; and to make sure that he would not be harmed , he sent a soldier to bring him to the camp . In the midst of ruin and massacre, the philo sopher sat calmly working on a problem in geometry . Don't disturb my circles, he said to the sol dier, hardly deigning even to look up . The soldier was angry
and killed him . The Romans also regained Capua . In pun ishment for its joining Hannibal, they beheaded fifty -three citizens and sold many others as slaves and took away its privilege of self-government.
The loss of Capua was only the beginning of Hannibal's misfortunes . The other cities that had joined him were alarmed when they saw that he did not conquer Italy so rapidly as they had expected , and one after another they began to do their best to induce Rome to pardon them for revolting against her. A second misfortune for Carthage came when the Romans, meeting Hannibal's brother on his way from Spain to Italy with more troops , defeated the troops at the Me-tau'rus River and killed the commander. Third , Publius Cornelius Scipio , son of the Scipio who fought at the Trebia , was sent to Spain . It is said that at that time there was so little hope of success in Spain that no Roman general of reputation was willing to go there ; so Scipio , a young man of twenty-seven years , offered himself. However that may be , he drove the Carthaginians out of the country and induced the Spaniards to stand by the Romans .
Meanwhile , little was being done in Italy . The wise men of the olden times used to argue about what would happen if an irresistible force should meet an immovable body . This seemed to be the state of affairs in Italy , with the Romans as the irresistible force and the Carthaginians as the immovable body ; for the Romans could not drive out Hannibal , and he could not conquer Rome . Even Hannibal saw , after his brother had failed to reach him with more troops , that he had no further hope of conquest. He had little more opportunity ,
