who knew how to hate and how to wreak his hatred by blood and devastation. His career and his character are both more readily appreciated by connecting them with the condition and the history of Carthage, in which, as a declining state, he might, with his peculiar genius, have made himself a tyrant, with greater success than it was possible for him to obtain in seeking distant conquests, while factions, scanty, but passionate, were left to quarrel and to rule behind him. We cannot know him as he was once known; but if there be any security in the bare indications of defective history, it is to be believed that he who sought the friendship of Spaniards, Gauls, and Italians, through something more than the command of a conqueror, at the same time that he clung with something more than the fidelity of a fellowcountryman to his own Carthaginians in the hour of defeat, though they had scarcely heeded him in the hour of victory, was not only a hero, but a man of heart, 155 The thought of what Hannibal would have been, had he belonged to Rome instead of Carthage, is not only allowable, but necessary, in order to conceive aright of the contrast between him and his nominal conqueror, Scipio. The one had every thing to prepare by his own exertions for his campaigns, except so far as his brother and his father had secured the control of Spain; the other was obliged, not to pre 155 Hannibal's continued devotion to the interests of Carthage, his exile, and his death, about twenty years after the war, are all concisely related by Corn. Nepos, Hann., 7 et seq. pare so much as to profit by what had been prepared for victory, through years of constancy and suffering.156 The difference between the labors of the two generals is the difference between the fortunes of their respective countries. Rome was in the bloom of her existence. The blood in her veins was in all its purity; the vigor in her arms was in all its prime; and she needed only to be directed where and when the blow was to be struck, in order to see her enemies brought low. Scipio was the champion 157 of a cause in itself so strong, and to which he but devoted the enterprise and the power it inspired. His confidence in himself, his knowledge and command of men, and his consultations with the gods, were all the characteristics of his nation, though of course developed in him to a much more than common degree; and while Hannibal's greatness depended altogether upon his remoteness from the common stamp of men in Carthage, Scipio's consisted in his adaptation to his country. It is the same congeniality between the Roman people and their great hero that accounts for their enthusiasm in his behalf when he returned from Africa. Not only was his triumph celebrated with unexampled magnificence,158 but it was proposed to set his statue in the squares and temples, and even to make him Consul or Dictator for life. These un 156 As Cicero perceived, when he wrote of the war as one which "excitatum majoribus copiis, aut Q. Maximus enervavisset, aut M. Marcellus contudisset, aut a portis hujus urbis avulsum P. Africanus compu lisset intra hostium mœnia." De Rep., I. 1. 157"Fatalis dux hujusce belli." Liv., XXII. 53. 158 Liv., XXX. 45. wonted honors had no charm for him who was then a true Roman; 159 and all that he accepted, besides his triumph, was the surname of Africanus, in memory of his renowned achievements at Zama and at Carthage. It must be repeated, that the conduct and the termination of the wars with Carthage were not due to the generals, however great these were, so much as to the institutions which both made them great and supported them by a determined people. The humblest Roman citizen, whose knowledge of home and of law, imperfect though it were, rose far superior to that possessed by the highest of the Carthaginians, was but one of a thousand, whom victories might bring to the ground, but could never keep there, unless life had left their limbs. The biographer's tribute to the generals belongs to the whole people of the Commonwealth, in these passing generations. "In their youth," he wrote, "they fought with the Carthaginians for Sicily; in their manhood, against the Gauls, for the sake of Italy; and again, in their old age, with Hannibal and the Carthaginians." 160 The battles which drove back the Persians from Greece were not more the work of a free people than those that, sustained through doubts and sacrifices of which the memory is blotted out, made Rome the 159 Val. Max., IV. 1. 6; where it is added,- "Pæne tantum in recusandis honoribus se gessit, quantum gesserat in emerendis." Liv., XXXVIII. 56. See 160 Plut., Marc., 1. See also Cic., De Nat. Deor., II. 66, and the eulogy on Metellus in Plin., Nat. Hist., VII. 45. conqueror of Carthage, and opened wide the way across the earth. So likewise it must be said once more that the victory was not won without its sorrows and its wrongs. The treatment of the rebellious allies or subjects was more cruel 161 than had yet been the wont of the Romans when they conquered. The number of slaves was greatly increased, not only by captures and by punishments, but by the luxurious wants, which were multiplying faster even than was proportionate to the extension of dominion. Above all other indirect consequences were the evils of extreme wealth and extreme poverty, sure to engender rapacity and pride on the one hand, and, on the other, to produce sedition and brutality.162 Above all other immediate results was the unavoidable thinning of the old Roman race, that fell in the wars by thousands and tens of thousands, leaving their places to such as prospered amongst the new-comers. Even though these things could not actually present themselves as we see them, at the conclusion of the wars, but were rather hidden materials for future explosion and de 161 As in Syracuse and Capua. Liv. XXV. 31, XXVI. 14, 16. It was but the beginning, however, of a change in policy; the old system being observed in the forgiveness of many of the southern Italians. Appian., De Bell. Ann., 60. 162 Such laws as the Cincian (A. C. 204) against the offence of bribery on the part of judges, or the Oppian, of an earlier date (215), VOL. II. 20 against the extravagances of wom- |