city to Hannibal, rode away from the battle at full speed. Shortly
after, his horse, which was loose and straying through the city,
was recognised, but his body could not be found any where. It was
generally believed that he had pitched headlong from his horse into an
open well. Carthalo, the praefect of the Carthaginian garrison, while
coming to the consul unarmed, to put him in mind of a connexion of
hospitality which subsisted between their fathers, was put to death
by a soldier who met him. The rest were put to the sword on all hands,
armed and unarmed indiscriminately, Carthaginians and Tarentines
without distinction. Many of the Bruttians also were slain either by
mistake or on account of an old grudge entertained against them, or
else with a view to the report that the city was betrayed; in order
that Tarentum might rather appear to have been captured by force of
arms. The troops then ran off in all directions from the slaughter,
to plunder the city. Thirty thousand slaves are said to have
been captured; an immense quantity of silver, wrought and coined;
eighty-three thousand pounds of gold; of statues and pictures so many
that they almost equalled the decorations of Syracuse. But Fabius,
with more magnanimity than Marcellus, abstained from booty of that
kind. When his secretary asked him what he wished to be done with the
statues of their gods, which are of immense size and represented as
fighting, each having his peculiar habit, he gave orders that their
angry gods should be left in the possession of the Tarentines. After
this, the wall which separated the city from the citadel was razed and
demolished. While things were going on thus at Tarentum, Hannibal,
to whom the troops engaged in the siege of Caulonia had surrendered
themselves, hearing of the siege of Tarentum, marched with the
greatest expedition both night and day; but hearing that the city was
taken, as he was hastening to bring assistance to it, he exclaimed,
"the Romans too have their Hannibal. We have lost Tarentum by the same