Hannibal and Rome

I

ITis the year 238 B.C. Before the altar of Baal-Moloch in the city of Carthage stands the great general Hamilcar Barca, offering sacrifice for the success of the expedition he is about to lead into Spain by way of the Strait of Gibraltar. Few who watch him have any insight into the ultimate motive, stupendous in idea and in consequence, which is driving him into this self-imposed exile. Perhaps its significance is revealed, by instinct, most to the nine-year-old boy who stands near him, a boy whose features tell the relationship of the two by a similarity rare even between father and son. For Hannibal — the ‘Grace of Baal’ —

had been born in the later years of the First Punic War, when Hamilcar was about to begin that heroic guerrilla struggle in which, during six years, he strove to preserve Sicily from the Romans, only to be thwarted by lack of support from war-weary Carthage. Hannibal’s early childhood had been filled with the impressions of mingled pride and shame — with the epic glory of his father’s fight against odds which alone brightened with honor the gloom of material losses, with the peculiar bitterness which springs from undeserved defeat, and with the sense that military genius had disclosed a potential counterpoise to the traditional sea supremacy which Carthage had forfeited.

At the end of the ceremony, Hamilcar called his young son forward and, out of earshot of the other worshipers, asked him whether he would like to accompany the expedition to Spain. At Hannibal’s eager assent, his father led him up to the altar and, making him lay his hand upon the sacrifice, bade him swear an oath of lifelong enmity to Rome. Then, their blood tie reënforced by a blood oath of still deeper significance, the two prepared to set out from a mother city which the father was never to see again, the son only after thirty-six years. And the blood of that sacrifice was to be the symbol of the blood of hundreds of thousands which was to be poured out in the vain fulfillment of the oath. To understand it, the Old Testament is a better guide than the classics, for these men were of a Semitic race, strange blend of the spirit ual and material, and the binding force of a Semitic oath is portrayed in many passages, of terrible sublimity, in the Old Testament. Racial, too, was the tenacity of purpose, the patient impersonal pursuit of vengeance, carried to a pitch and prolonged to a span without match in the history of man.

II

Twenty years have passed. The scene has changed to the ramparts of Italy, those towering Alpine battlements which, seen from Turin, seem to fall sheer to the rich plain of the Po, which they protect. On a wide bare platform between two peaks, a stage raised by Nature, — probably the Col du Clapier, — are assembled a horde as awe-inspiring as their setting. Faces wolfish from hunger and pinched from cold, ragged dress, and variety of equipment may give them a tatterdemalion air, accentuated by their heterogeneous mixture of races — Spanish and African foot, Numidian cavalry on their desert-bred horses, Balearic slingers, and a sprinkling of fairskinned Gauls; but their very assortment appears to symbolize the threatened racial encirclement of Rome, and the presence of such an army in such a situation, poised like a Damocles’ sword above the plains of Italy, adds to their terrifying appearance.

With dramatic instinct Hannibal summons his men together and points to the view unfurled beneath them — in that clear atmosphere, as mountain climbers know, it would seem but a few steps down. ‘A battle, perhaps two,’ and Rome, the goal, would be in their grasp. The scene signifies not only the imagination which, coupled with vengeance, was the great driving force of Hannibal, but also his use of it as a moral tonic to his men, one of the secrets of his extraordinary power in welding this cosmopolitan collection of mercenaries into a matchless tool for his genius. For him the view symbolized Rome beneath him, for them it symbolized a limitless vista of booty; but his own imagination could also evoke a response from theirs to the grandeur of sharing in such a venture and playing for such colossal stakes. What a gamble it was! Those who saw the view were little more than half the number who, crossing first the Pyrenees and then the Rhone, had begun that arduous climb up the western slopes of the Alps. Difficult as was the passage of the precipitous and roadless gorges for an army, — with all its horses, pack animals, and elephants, — the obstacles of nature were less than the obstacles of men. For as the snakelike column dragged its endless tail round mountain spurs and along the face of precipices it was repeatedly assailed by the mountain tribes. And the descent, if unopposed, had to overcome the treachery of snow and ice — in one place Hannibal had to halt his half-frozen and half-starved men and beasts for three days while a road was made for the elephants. What power of leadership must have radiated from this young man of twenty-nine to carry his heterogeneous army of mercenaries so far from their homes, to make them dare such perils when their blood was chilled and their minds oppressed by the unknown — and this in physical conditions so strange to men accustomed to the genial southern warmth of Africa and Spain. When they at last stood on the plains of Italy, they mustered only 20,000 foot and 6000 horse — a mere handful to invade a state which, fighting on its own ground, had a quarter of a million men listed for service among its citizens and allies, and thrice that number capable of bearing arms.

Yet, if the physical odds were so heavily with Rome, Hannibal had a counterpoise which has been too often underrated by historians. For he pitched his military genius against commanders who knew only the drill and not the art of war, — scorning it as Punic deceit, — and he brought a superbly trained professional army against short-service citizen levies. That he ultimately failed in a trial of quality against quantity, where Alexander had succeeded, was because he had to meet Romans, not Persians, men who stiffened instead of dissolving under pressure, and because he gave them time to learn the art of war and so balance the deficit of quality.

Thus Rome, despite her numerical strength, had ample cause for dread at the news that her foes had surmounted her northern ramparts. Baal-Moloch stood on the mountains, casting his fell shadow over the sunny plains of Italy, for although the head was the ‘Grace of Baal,’ the body symbolized the terror of Moloch and its burning embrace, lusting to make sacrifice by fire and sword.

III

Two years later. It is the evening of Cannæ. The victim lies prone beneath the sword, stretched helpless, to all appearance, on the altar, awaiting the consummation of the sacrifice. Yet the blade does not fall. Why? That is still the enigma of history.

Since Hannibal entered Italy, he has defeated the Roman armies in three great battles. First at the Trebia, when he not only drew the enemy to battle breakfastless on a bitter winter day, but hid a picked body of troops in the sunken bed of a stream, to emerge and strike the Romans in the rear when they were spent from hunger and the strain of resisting the direct attack, and the more vulnerable because of the rout of their cavalry. Then at the Lake of Trasimenus in the spring of 217 B.C.; here, after slipping past the army of Flaminius, which blocked the road to Rome, he prepared for his pursuers an ambush which, in art and scope, has no match in history. Concealing his troops overnight on the hills which bordered the lake, he waited until the Roman army, in hot pursuit, was pressing along the lake shore in the early morning, and then, at a signal, his troops, sweeping down from the mist-wraithed slopes, blocked both ends of the defile as a prelude to a battle that, morally and mentally won before it began, became a massacre as of sheep. The road to Rome lay open to Hannibal, with barely a hundred miles to go, and with no formed army at hand to oppose him. But instead of marching south he turned east toward the Adriatic shore, ravaging the country, giving his men their fill of booty, and putting to the sword all inhabitants capable of bearing arms. Some discount this story because it comes, like all we know of Hannibal, from racial enemies; yet they relate many instances of his chivalry, and the very fact that they contrast this action with that of Pyrrhus, the last overseas invader, suggests its authenticity. If true, it not only shows us Hannibal slaking his thirst for vengeance, — he was still youthful enough to find satisfaction in such physical retribution, — but perhaps yields a clue to a deeper problem, his turning aside from the goal. The military reason often advanced is that his army, essentially equipped for mobile warfare, — like an athlete stripped for a race, — had no siege train. It may be true, for, although there is no direct proof, the repulse of his attempt to take Spoletium in passing is perhaps indirect evidence.

But beyond this there would seem to be a political reason. Since crossing the Alps he had conducted a ceaseless and subtle propaganda, its keynote that ‘he was not come to fight against Italians, but on behalf of Italians against Rome.’ Consistently he had released without ransom all prisoners who were not Romans, seeking thus to detach from Rome her allies. W ith his first military successes many of the Gallic tribes north of the Po had come over to his banner, but he had still to gain the alliance of the Italian states. It is well to emphasize that, if his route from Trasimenus took him away from Rome, it took him toward his allies. His army was a mercenary coalition, and he now aimed to expand and secure it through the achievement of a political coalition — his policy that of the racial encirclement of Rome.

But, as beyond the military reason we found a political reason, so beyond the political was there perchance a spiritual reason? Let us stay our hand for a moment, for it is still premature for an attempt to draw aside the veil. Granted a respite after Trasimenus, the Romans, now awake to the imminence of the menace, — the fiery breath of Moloch scorching their very faces, — appointed a dictator, Fabius, who adopted a strategy henceforth to be linked with his name for all time, a strategy of wearing down the enemy’s strength by avoiding battle. Time was on his side. Dogging Hannibal’s footsteps persistently, keeping to the hills where Hannibal could not bring his cavalry superiority into play, cutting off stragglers and foraging parties, he remained an elusive shadow on the horizon, dimming the brightness of Hannibal’s triumphal progress. Thus Fabius, by his very presence and immunity from defeat, thwarted Hannibal’s moral suasion over the minds of the Italian allies. To check them from joining Hannibal was a far greater result than that, more commonly acclaimed by historians, of giving Rome breathing space — for Hannibal himself allowed this to Rome.

Attrition strategy, however, is not only a blunt but a two-edged weapon, and is apt to injure those who wield it through the moral depression and strain which it involves. When after six months the tenure of Fabius expired, Rome was almost compelled by the devastation of the lands of her allies to relieve the strain by a reversion to direct action. If the instinct was right, the execution was faulty, and the new consuls allowed themselves to be drawn to battle on the cavalry arena afforded by the coastal plain of the Adriatic.

Here, on the field of Cannæ, the greatest host Rome had ever brought into action — eight legions instead of the two of the usual consular army — was annihilated by Hannibal’s art, particularly the skill with which he played his cavalry ‘trump.’ As usual, the infantry were in the centre, the cavalry on the flanks, but the actual disposition was unconventional. For Hannibal pushed forward the Gauls and Spaniards who formed the centre of the infantry line, while holding back his African foot, posted at each end of the line. Thus the Gauls and Spaniards formed a natural magnet for the Roman infantry and were, as intended, forced back and back, so that what had been a line bulging outward became a line bulging inward. Flushed with their success and eager to break right through the enemy centre, the Roman legionaries crowded into the bulge and the press grew ever denser, until they could scarcely use their weapons. Thinking that they were pushing in the Carthaginian front, they were actually pushing themselves into a Carthaginian sack. For at this juncture Hannibal’s African veterans wheeled inward from either side and automatically took the thick press of the Romans in flank. Meanwhile, the powerful assault of Hannibal’s heavy cavalry on the left had broken the opposing cavalry on that wing and, sweeping round the Roman rear, had dispersed the cavalry on the other wing, which had been held in play by the elusive Numidian horse. Leaving the pursuit to the Numidians, the heavy cavalry had then delivered the coup de grâce by bursting like a thundercloud on the rear of the Roman foot, already surrounded on three sides and too tightly jammed to offer effective resistance. Thenceforward it was but massacre.

That evening, Maharbal, commander of the Numidian cavalry, urged an instant advance on Rome. According to Livy he declared, ‘Send me on with the cavalry, follow on yourself, and in five days you shall feast in triumph in the Capitol.’ Hannibal replied that he must take time for reflection, whereupon Maharbal bitterly exclaimed, ‘You know how to win a victory, Hannibal, but not how to use one.’

If the truth of the remark be uncertain, the truth of the opportunity is sure. When the rumors of disaster reached Rome, there was panic among the people, if not among the Senate — but for their prompt and resolute action masses of the inhabitants would have fled the city while there was time. For the dread advance guard of Hannibal was expected hourly.

Why in this hour of supreme triumph did he abstain from attempting the consummation? His next efforts are directed to breaking up the Italian confederation, and the reward of his victory at Cannæ comes in the first secessions of these states. His political object is clearly to continue building up a coalition against Rome. But why do this when Rome is stripped of her defenders, and her allies, if they have not deserted her, are temporarily paralyzed? An advance on Rome is not only the direct way to gain Rome, but the best and quickest way to hasten the secession of her Italian allies, for the news that Hannibal is at the gates of Rome, after destroying her army, will discourage any idea of intervention to avert her impending doom.

There must surely be a deeper explanation than any yet offered. What is the mainspring of Hannibal’s whole career and campaigns? Vengeance — Semitic vengeance, conceived on a scale and with a majesty of design far removed from a crude vendetta. Yet vengeance is a primitive instinct, and the fact that it is the governing motive of a great mind does not affect its nature, only its mode of execution. When primitive man takes revenge he does not dispatch the object of his hatred quickly, but prolongs his sufferings in order, by slow sips, to obtain the full flavor of the satisfaction of his instinct. The victim must not only pay for his misdeeds, but must know that he is paying. Let us apply our knowledge of this primitive instinct to the study of Hannibal’s mind. To sweep down from the Alps and overwhelm Rome in a swift, Homeric conflict would enable the defeated to fall fighting in a blaze of glory. But if Rome’s armies could be one by one destroyed, her allies turned to spurn her, the fruits of her years of conquest gradually plucked from her, while she, in pitiable weakness, and in the sight of all who had long feared her, awaited the inevitable end — what an epic vengeance!

IV

Five years pass. Hannibal is riding up to the walls of Rome, leisurely surveying the city which has been his magnet since he took the vow of eternal enmity in Carthage twentyseven years before. His coming has been announced by a flood of terrorstricken refugees from all the countryside and by the fiery beacons of hamlets given up to the flames. Within the walls are the same panic, the same lamentations of women, as on the morrow of Cannæ. But the Senate is equally resolute, and far less moved. And Hannibal himself lets his eyes rest on the city, not with the satisfied look of one who holds the prize in his hand, but with the wistful glance of him who makes a supreme act of renunciation. He casts his spear over t he walls — symbol of defiance, but also of futility — and a few days later turns his back on Rome, forever.

After Cannæ, many Italian cities had come over to him, led by Capua, the nearest rival of Rome in size and riches. From Capua south down the shin to the toe of Italy, most of the land acknowledged his leadership. But even here numerous Latin colonies or Roman garrisons held out, and the heel as well as all the upper part of the leg of Italy was unshakably solid in fidelity to Rome. While the respite after Cannæ enabled Rome to raise fresh levies to replace her lost legions, Hannibal’s new allies accepted his help rather than tendered him theirs. And his help was soon needed, for, although the Romans were too wary to risk another pitched battle, four armies kept watch on him, harassing his detachments and confederates, as well as giving both moral and t imely material aid to the fortresses which he threatened.

More ominous still, the Roman generals were learning the art of war from their master, and some of his pupils, Marcellus particularly, began to score points in these desultory exchanges. In 213 B.C., while Hannibal was away in the south besieging Tarentum, the Romans laid siege to Capua, and, although Hannibal relieved it once, the Romans lured him away by a threat elsewhere and promptly returned to the siege. Their entrenched lines of circumvallation were soon so strong that a fresh and direct attempt at relief by Hannibal failed, and it was in a calculating but desperate effort at indirect relief that, in 211 B.C., he marched on Rome. But the opposing generals, both before Capua and in Rome, were not deceived by this strategic bluff and, maintaining the siege, detached only a small part of the besieging force as a stiffening to the ample new levies in Rome.

In an age when the strategic art was still far behind the tactical, which Hannibal himself had raised to the highest level in all history, this farreaching manæuvre of his was a landmark in the evolution of strategy, and the very fact that it failed of its purpose testified not merely to that supreme level-headedness which was the hall mark of the Romans, but also to the progress of their military education.

Soon one of them, graduating in the Hannibalic school of war, was to retort by a stroke of strategy more original than any Hannibal had tried. After Capua had fallen, — to be made an awful warning against desertion of Rome,—Hannibal’s sole hope lay in support from his own people. Carthage had sent him only the most meagre reënforcements, although, strangely enough, she had been liberal in furnishing troops for Spain and even for Sicily. She was a ‘nation of tradesmen,’ and, while she could appreciate the value of war as a means to new markets or resources, she had no thirst for either empire or revenge, except as a byproduct. Moreover, she was divided by faction, and there was a powerful ‘ peace party ’ whose policy was dictated as much by a personal feud with the Barcine party as by distrust of its ‘imperialistic’ designs. When Hannibal sent a message by Mago for reënforcements, his opponents turned his words as an argument against his request: ‘“I have slain the armies of the enemy; send me soldiers.” What else would you ask if you had been conquered? “I have captured two of the enemy’s camps, full of booty and provisions; supply me with corn and money.” What else would you ask if you had been plundered and stripped of your own camp?’ Thus they excused themselves for withholding the men and supplies which might have sealed the fate of Rome and averted their own. The Romans were right to term it the Hannibalic war rather than the Second Punic War— for it was a duel between a man and a nation.

In default, of direct support from home, Hannibal’s remaining hope lay in reënforcements from his Spanish base. But here the Romans intervened. No diversion was ever better justified, whatever the apparent breach of the principle of concentration, than the action of Rome in maintaining large armies in Spain while she was fighting for her life on her own soil. The brothers Publius and Cneius Scipio were successful during the crucial years in keeping the Carthaginians so fully occupied in Spain that it was out of the question to send troops to Hannibal in Italy. True, in 212 B.C., the year before Capua fell, the Scipios were defeated and killed. This was perhaps the darkest hour for Rome since Cannæ, for in Italy she and her allies were feeling acutely the strain of the incessant struggle. But the twenty-four-yearold son of Publius Scipio, a youth who had distinguished himself in preserving the remnants of the Roman army after Cannæ, volunteered, when his seniors held back, to take the command in Spain. By a brilliant march and coup de main, he seized Cartagena, the main Carthaginian base in Spain, under the noses of three Carthaginian armies, and thus debarred them from transporting reënforcements to Italy by the direct and comparatively simple sea route. But although he was too weak to prevent Hasdrubal, Hannibal’s brother, from leaving Spain next year by the land route, it was with such a small fragment of the Carthaginian forces that Hasdrubal had to tarry in Gaul to recruit and reorganize, losing two vital years before he at last pushed on into Italy, in 207 B.C. By then Hannibal’s situation had changed for the worse, and, although still undefeatable, he was gradually being hemmed in in an ever-narrowing area in the south of Italy, like a lion in the bush by the encircling beaters.

V

Hannibal is in camp at Canusium, a few miles from the battlefield of Cannæ. Facing him is the camp of the consular army under Nero — a name three centuries later to be of as ill omen for Rome as it is now for Carthage. Hannibal’s outposts see a party emerge from the Roman camp; as they come closer they are seen to be prisoners, chained and under escort; a little closer and they are recognized as Africans. Then one of the escort advances and throws a human head on the ground before returning. Curious as to the significance of this byplay, the Carthaginian outposts pick up the head and take it to Hannibal, who recognizes the marred features as those of his brother. It is the first news he has had that Hasdrubal was even in Italy, and a cruel repayment of the honors he has always paid to his own fallen antagonists. Soon two of the captives, released for the purpose, arrive to give him a full account of the disaster.

The messengers sent by Hasdrubal to tell Hannibal of his arrival in Italy, and his plans, had traversed the whole length of Italy safely, only to miss Hannibal, owing to one of his frequent changes of position, and to fall into the hands of Nero. Thereupon Nero had resolved on a bold cast, and, leaving part of his force still facing Hannibal, had gone north by forced marches to join the other consul in a concentrated blow against Hasdrubal. In seven days and nights he covered some two hundred and fifty miles, defeated Hasdrubal at the Metaurus by a brilliantly conceived and executed transfer of force from one flank to another, and marched back quicker than he had come, so that he was again with his whole army facing Hannibal a fortnight after he had silently slipped away.

Hannibal, recognizing that his last hope of conquest had vanished, quitted the scene of his supreme triumph, nine years before, and fell back to Bruttium, the toe of Italy, there to stand at bay, a stricken but still unapproachable lion, for another five years. But he could recognize a still deeper significance in this disaster. For he, the archdeceiver, had been himself deceived, outwitted at last by men who were tyros in strategy nine years before, masked by a shadow while his opponent was carrying out a strategic manæuvre more far-reaching than any he had ever conceived — one unsurpassed for two thousand years, and made possible by the highly trained mobility of troops whom his campaigns had converted from citizen levies into expert professionals. Only when he was present were the Roman arms still powerless. For sixteen years he strode to and fro through a hostile country, untamable, and after Cannæ rarely challenged; supported only by his own exertions, yet making the war support itself— a feat without parallel in history. To have held his mercenary and heterogeneous band together through the perils of t he Alps and the march into the heart of Italy was remarkable, but as a testimony to the unique force of his leadership in war it was nothing compared with the fact of holding their devotion, so that none offered to betray or desert him, through fourteen years of fading fortune. And he quitted the land without molestation, the Roman armies daring no more than to follow him down to the shore at a respectful distance.

Hannibal’s vigil of revenge in Italy was ended by an urgent summons of recall to Africa to save Carthage from the rising star of Scipio. For Scipio, after conquering Spain and destroying there the whole fabric of Carthaginian dominion which Hamilcar had woven, had carried the war into Africa, defying the military wiseacres of the Senate who were still prodding cautiously and ineffectively at the lion in his den. They argued, with the obstinacy of orthodoxy so familiar in the modern World War more than two thousand years later, that it was essential to concentrate all efforts against the main armed forces of the enemy — in Italy. Scipio, an ancient Winston Churchill in vision and initiative, preferred the more original strategy of manæuvring against the enemy’s rear; by slipping past the arm to strike at the heart of the enemy power, instead of putting his head in its mouth. Annoyed at Scipio’s presumption, his senatorial opponents not only sought to deprive him of command on a trumped-up charge, but, foiled in this, took care to give him as little support as Carthage had given his rival.

With two disgraced legions and a few thousand volunteers Scipio sailed from Sicily and confounded the prophets of gloom by making good his hold on African soil. With prudence balancing audacity, he first sought to secure a base and to weld his troops into a fighting force. Then he sprang, shattered the field armies of Carthage and her African allies, and, before Hannibal could return to the rescue, forced Carthage to sue for peace. But the news that Hannibal had landed encouraged Carthage to break the truce, and Scipio’s position, isolated on foreign soil, looked as black as his opponents at home could wish. By a masterly strategic move, however, he tilted the scales in his favor. Instead of falling back along the coast to his base, he advanced inland up the Bagradas Valley — a move which apparently isolated him still more. Actually, however, by this menace to the main source of supply for Carthage, he compelled Hannibal to follow him to a battleground of his own choosing and toward the Numidian reënforcements which were expected from his own new allies.

VI

The shadows are lengthening on the battlefield of Zama, in the year 202 B.C. From behind a rampart of corpses advances a line of Roman legionaries, unexpectedly thin if also unexpectedly long, treading carefully to avoid slipping on the blood-soaked ground. Hannibal has been awaiting this moment all the long day of fighting. His ‘Old Guard’ of 24,000 veterans from Italy has been held well back in reserve, immobile and fretting while the battle raged before their eyes. They have seen the thunderous charge of the elephants nullified by Scipio’s originality in leaving lanes between his cohorts, down which the maddened beasts took the line of least resistance to themselves — and least damage to the Romans. They have caught glimpses, through the dust clouds, of the swirl of the cavalry fight on the wings, which ended badly, but also in the disappearance of both pursuers and pursued. They have seen their first two infantry lines, composed of Gallic mercenaries and home levies, shattered and dispersed after a fierce struggle. But the victors must surely have suffered severely and become disordered — then their own chance will come for the decisive counterstroke. To their disgust, however, they have seen that Scipio had the impudence, under their very noses, not only to reorganize, but to change his dispositions, securely screened by the rampart of bodies, and in the knowledge that they dare not risk disarranging their close-ranked formation by an advance over such corpselittered ground. The Hannibalic host have been still more astonished to see that Scipio is deploying his rear lines on the flanks of his first line. Surely he is mad to stake a single thin line against their deep mass, even though it gives him the momentary advantage of overlapping their flanks!

At last the Romans are coming — now they are clear of the barrier of dead. Hannibal gives the long-awaited signal and his massive phalanx bears down on the slender Roman line. What if they be checked for a moment by the stream of missiles which that line can shower, owing to its extension? Once the opposing ranks are at handgrips, weight must tell, and the lighter be pulverized.

But the rearmost Carthaginian ranks hear the thunder of hoofs behind them. It is Scipio’s cavalry returning from the pursuit, as he calculated when making his novel disposition. The decisive manæuvre of Cannæ is repeated — but reversed, and the result also. Scipio has not only learned Hannibal’s art, but has borrowed his instrument — superiority of cavalry.

VII

A few weeks later — in the city of Carthage. The assembly is discussing the peace terms which Scipio has offered — unexpectedly moderate, as no extra penalties are exacted for the violated truce. Yet an orator, closing his eyes to the helplessness of Carthage, is advocating a continuance of the struggle. Hannibal, tired of listening to those who for sixteen years have merely made war with words, rises from his seat and pulls the speaker down. At a murmur from the assembly, Hannibal asks them ironically to pardon him if, after thirty-six years’ service abroad, he has forgotten the etiquette of debate. Then he urges them to accept the terms.

And for seven years he strives loyally to fulfill them, diverting his genius, as many-sided as Napoleon’s, into new channels — the restoration of Carthage’s prosperity and the improvement of its administration, financial and judicial.

With the collapse of his titanic scheme of vengeance, has the spirit which inspired it changed? Having learned the futility of destruction, has he turned his energies to reconstruction as a worthier memorial of his genius? Or merely as a means to an end — that of building up the material strength of Carthage for a fresh military cast? We shall never know. For now a new vengeance becomes incarnate, as implacable as his own — the hatred of Rome for the man who has committed the crime of making Romans tremble. In vain Scipio protests that such vindictiveness toward a man is unbecoming to the dignity of the Roman people. Cato, with his parrot cry of ‘Delenda est Carthago!’ carries the first step of his programme of persecution, and to avoid being brought to trial Hannibal flies from Carthage by sea. Nine years of boyhood filled with visions, seven of middle age filled with disillusion, are all that Hannibal saw of his native land. Henceforward he sets out again on the stony path of revenge. He has failed to raise the West against Rome; for the remainder of his life he will try to raise the East—to rouse the lands whence came his forefathers, before they too feel the iron heel of Rome. From Tyre, the cradle of the Phœnician race, he goes to the court of Antiochus, King of Syria, who is contemplating an invasion of Greece to stem the Roman tide. Once more Hannibal designs a vast scheme for t he conquest of Italy — that Antiochus shall advance through Greece while he, with the loan of a force, goes to Carthage to raise Africa against the oppressor, the two armadas then to converge on Italy. The jealousy and egotism of Antiochus make this scheme stillborn, and soon Antiochus, the victim of his own vanity, is conquered in Asia Minor by an invading Roman army. The Roman peace terms demand the surrender of Hannibal, but he flees in time, first to Crete and ultimately to Bithynia, where the King, Prusias, promises him a safe refuge.

VIII

Dusk deepens into darkness. The house which Prusias assigned to Hannibal some years before is encircled by a cordon of shadowy figures, stealthily creeping into position as a guard of dishonor. Then the occupants hear the rattle of accoutrements as an armed party marches into the porch, Hannibal has no need to be told the meaning — since a Roman envoy arrived at the court of Prusias he has been anticipating some such action, for his trust in the faith of kings is as slight as his knowledge of Rome’s ceaseless pursuit of himself is sure. His attendants hurriedly rush to see if there is an avenue of escape, if one of the secret passages which have been prepared is open. Everywhere, however, they are brought to a halt by the glint of arms. The spies of the King have done their work well; his band of assassins are watching every bolt hole. But there is one resource they cannot block. Hannibal calls for poison, long kept ready, and with the comment, majestic in its irony, ‘Let us release the Romans from their long anxiety, since they think it too long to wait for the death of an old man,’ he drains the cup.

Thus, defying his lifelong foes to the end, passed the one man who might have diverted the Roman flood which was soon to submerge the whole Mediterranean world — the man who almost changed the whole course of history.

‘The wheel has come full circle,’ and with the completion of the cycle the curtain drops on the supreme drama of vengeance, leaving to history the memory of its futility, but also of its sublimity.