Saguntum

(now Murviedro ). A wealthy and warlike town of ancient Spain, in Hispania Tar racon ens is. It was besieged and destroyed by the Cart hag in i ans under Hannibal in 218 B.C. Having withstood the siege for the greater part of a year, against an army of about 150,000 men, the Saguntines, now most severely pre ed by famine, concluded, with an act of heroic defiance and self-sacrifice, a resistance that had been characterized by the most brilliant valor. Heaping their valuable effects into one vast pile, and placing their women and children around it, the men i ued forth for the last time against the enemy; and the women, setting fire to the pile they had prepared, cast themselves upon it with their children, and found in flames the fate their husbands met in battle. The destruction of Saguntum directly led to the second Punic war.