Near the elephants, along the river bank, stood the engines of war, the catapults, the battering-rams, the movable towers, complicated structures of wood and bronze, drawn by rosaries of double yokes of oxen having enormous backward curving horns.
As if suffering from an eruption the fields were covered with pustules of diverse colors, tents of cloth, of straw, or of skins, some conical, others square, the majority mound-shaped like ant hills, around which swarmed the armed multitude.
The Saguntines, from the top of the walls, examined the besieging army that seemed to fill the whole plain, and which was being joined by a ceaseless stream of new crowds on foot and on horseback, flowing in from every road, and seeming to roll down from the crests of the surrounding mountains. It was an agglomeration of diverse races, of different peoples; a bizarre collection of costumes, colors, and types, and those Saguntines who had been taught by travel recognized the different nations, and were pointing them out to their absorbed fellow citizens.
Some horsemen who seemed to fly, lying stretched along the backs of their swift barbs, were Numidians, Africans of feminine aspect, covered with white veils, wearing women's earrings and slippers, perfumed, with eyes painted black, but who were impetuous in combat and fought in full career using their lances with great skill. Around the camp fires in the gardens stalked athletic negroes from Libya, with kinky hair and glistening teeth, smiling in stupid satisfaction as they wrapped their naked limbs in garments of rich weave which they had just stolen, shivering with cold as soon as they drew away from the fire, as if suffering martyrdom in the cool morning air. These dark, shiny-skinned men, so seldom seen in Saguntum, excited the curiosity of the citizens almost as much as the Amazons who audaciously passed on a gallop close to the walls to obtain a better view of the city. They were young women, slender, their skins bronzed by exposure. Their hair floated behind their helmets like a barbaric decoration, and they wore no other clothing than a broad tunic open on the left side, displaying sinewy limbs clinging to their horses' ribs. Over the breast some wore corselets of bronze-scales, also open on the left side to give greater freedom in fighting, displaying the roundness of their small breasts made firm and hard by fatiguing exercise. They rode their wild nervous horses bareback, guiding them with a delicate bridle, and as they galloped in groups the ferocious animals bit and kicked each other, thus enlivening the desperate race. The Amazons approached close to the walls, laughing and hurling insults which the Saguntines did not understand; they waved their lances and shields; and when a cloud of arrows and stones was flung after them, they dashed away, with wind-swept drapery, turning their heads to repeat their mocking gestures.