Chapter 67

The Roman soldiers, perplexed with sudden alarm, and not knowing what was best for them to do, were in trepidation. At the citadel, where their standards and shields were, was posted a guard of the enemy; and the city-gates, previously closed, prevented escape. Women and children, too, on the roofs of the houses, hurled down upon them, with great eagerness, stones and whatever else their position furnished. Thus neither could such twofold danger be guarded against, nor could the bravest resist the feeblest; the worthy and the worthless, the valiant and the cowardly, were alike put to death unavenged. In the midst of this slaughter, while the Numidians were exercising every cruelty, and the town was closed on all sides, Turpilius was the only one, of all the Italians, that escaped unhurt. Whether his flight was the consequence of compassion in his entertainer, of compact, or of chance, I have never discovered; but since, in such a general massacre, he preferred inglorious safety to an honorable name, he seems to have been a worthless and infamous character.