1While the Romans were preparing and deliberating on these things, Saguntum was already being attacked with all possible force. 2That city was by far the wealthiest beyond the Ebro, situated about a mile from the sea. 2Its people are said to have come originally from the island of Zacynthus, and some of Rutulian stock from Ardea were also mixed with them; 3but in a short time they had grown to such great wealth, whether through the produce of sea or land, or the increase of their numbers, or the integrity of their discipline, by which they kept faith with their allies even to their own destruction. 4Hannibal, having entered their territory with his army ready for war and laid waste the fields far and wide, attacks the city on three sides.
5There was a corner of the wall sloping down towards a valley more level and open than the rest of the ground around. 5Against it he began to move up siege-sheds, under cover of which a battering-ram could be brought up to the walls. 6But though the ground at a distance from the wall was level enough for moving the sheds, the undertaking went by no means well once it came to carrying out the work. 7A huge tower overhung the spot, and the wall, as was natural in a vulnerable place, had been built up beyond the height of the rest, and picked young men resisted with greater force where the most danger and fear were threatened.
8At first they drove the enemy back with missiles and allowed those working on the siege-works no safety at all; 8then weapons were no longer flashing only in front of the walls and the tower, but they even had the spirit to sally out against the outposts and works of the enemy; 9and in these disorderly skirmishes, as a rule, hardly more Saguntines fell than Carthaginians. 10But when Hannibal himself, while approaching the wall too incautiously, fell badly wounded in the front of the thigh by a javelin, there was such flight and panic all around that the siege-works and sheds were very nearly abandoned.