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Updated: June 20, 2025
The five servants and the messenger brought up the rear, armed with long lances, driving the mules laden with Alorcus' clothing and provisions. Throughout the afternoon they traveled upon the roads, being still in the Saguntine domain, and they passed cultivated and fruitful fields, beautiful villas and compact little towns clinging close around the tower which served them as defense.
Flocks of gulls whirled around them, darting down upon the spoils which floated on the water, while along the bank crowded women, old men, and boys, awaiting the arrival of the barks with fish from the Sucronian Gulf, which were sold in the interior to the more advanced tribes of Celtiberia. The arrival of the Saguntine ship had drawn all the people of the port away from their tasks.
At the other extreme of the table two citizens of advanced age, and Alcon the pacific Saguntine, with whom Actæon had spoken that morning on the esplanade of the Acropolis, were carrying on a quiet conversation.
An escort of citizens of Saguntum surrounded the ambassadors, making their shaggy Celtiberian horses caracole, waving their lances, their heads covered with triple-crested helmets which still bore the dents from blows received in their latest skirmishes with the Turdetani. Some old men of the Saguntine senate rode sedately on heavy horses, their long beards covering their breasts.
The slight chance of a peace was then tried by two persons; Alcon a Saguntine, and Alorcus a Spaniard.
It was the devastating work of a continually swelling army composed of a hundred and eighty thousand men and of many thousands of horses. In a short time they had devoured the Saguntine domain. The soldiers after destroying all that was not of immediate use, extended their rapacity to surrounding zones, constantly broadening their radius of destruction as the siege was prolonged.
He then introduced into the senate the Saguntine ambassadors, the eldest of whom thus spoke: "Although there remains no degree of suffering, conscript fathers, beyond what we have endured, in order that we might keep our faith towards you to the last; yet such are the benefits which we have received both from yourselves and your generals, that we do not repent of the calamities to which we have ourselves been exposed.
The fertile fields of the immense domain were flooded by a golden shower of morning sunshine. From the villages, from the country-houses, from the innumerable dwellings scattered throughout the extensive valley, streamed people to the Road of the Serpent, traveling toward the city. The majority of the Saguntine people lived in the country, cultivating the soil. The city was relatively small.
Now and again Actæon went to the city in the morning to stroll through the porticos of the Forum listening to the newsmongers with the curiosity of a Greek accustomed to the grumblings in the Agora. He noticed extraordinary stir in the great Saguntine market-square.
Actæon recognized Polyanthus, the Saguntine pilot, and also the perfumed young gallant who had been on the wharf with another horseman when the ship came in, standing near the handsome patrician. The Greek arose, amazed at the beautiful apparition smiling upon him. "Athenian," she said in Greek of the purest accent, "I am Sónnica, the mistress of the ship which brought you hither.
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