Saguntum, a wealthy and warlike town of ancient Spain, in Hispania Tarraconensis, stood on an eminence near the mouth of the Pallantias, its site occupied by the modern town of Murviedro. Founded, according to Strabo, by Greeks from
Zacynthus, it became at an early period celebrated for its commerce, and attained to great wealth. But the one event in its history was its siege and destruction by the Carthaginians, under Hannibal, in 219 B.C. Having held out the greater part of a year against an army of 150,000 and a consummate general, the famished Saguntines concluded their resistance with an act of heroic self-sacrifice. Heaping their valuables into one vast pile, and placing their women and children around it, the men made their last sally against the enemy, and the women fired the pile they had prepared, cast themselves upon it with their children, and so found in the flames the fate their husbands met in battle. The destruction of Saguntum directly led to the second Punic war.