Up to the middle of the day the veterans had attacked the Taenia
fiercely in order to penetrate into the harbour and destroy the fleet.
Hamilcar had a fire of damp straw lit upon the roofing of Khamon, and
as the smoke blinded them they fell back to left, and came to swell
the horrible rout which was pressing forward in Malqua. Some syntagmata
composed of sturdy men, chosen expressly for the purpose, had broken in
three gates. They were checked by lofty barriers made of planks studded
with nails, but a fourth yielded easily; they dashed over it at a
run and rolled into a pit in which there were hidden snares. At the
south-west gate Autaritus and his men broke down the rampart, the
fissure in which had been stopped up with bricks. The ground behind
rose, and they climbed it nimbly. But on the top they found a second
wall composed of stones and long beams lying quite flat and alternating
like the squares on a chess-board. It was a Gaulish fashion, and had
been adapted by the Suffet to the requirements of the situation; the
Gauls imagined themselves before a town in their own country. Their
attack was weak, and they were repulsed.
All the roundway, from the street of Khamon as far as the Green Market,
now belonged to the Barbarians, and the Samnites were finishing off
the dying with blows of stakes; or else with one foot on the wall were
gazing down at the smoking ruins beneath them, and the battle which was
beginning again in the distance.
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