formed an alliance with Xerxes, and lost a battle against Gelo, the same day that the Lacedæmonians fell at Thermopyla. They had tried the fortune of war, too, with Agathocles in Africa, and Pyrrhus in Sicily, before they came to blows with their more formidable antagonists on the banks of the Tiber.

No other event of great importance occurred prior to the first Punic war, if we except the attempt made to relieve Tyre when about to be finally overthrown by Alexander the Macedonian. That ambitious prince, irritated by the interference of a maritime power whose territory he had not yet menaced, resolved to inflict on them a signal chastisement; but his thoughts being diverted to other objects, he allowed them to enjoy an exemption from the fate which he had prepared for their kinsmen in the East. It was reserved for the Romans to impose a check upon the growing influence and prosperity of these Tyrian colonists.

The ostensible cause of quarrel was an armed interposition, on the part of the Carthaginians, in behalf of Hiero, king of Syracuse, against the Mamertines, who were allies of Rome. It belongs not to our undertaking to describe the battles by sea and land, the sieges and negotiations, which filled up the long space of twenty-four years. Suffice it to mention, that Regulus, who commanded the Romans, having reduced Tunis, appeared before the gates of the capital, and summoned it to surrender. The citizens, alarmed at the rapid progress of the enemy, solicited peace on equitable terms; but the victor, eager to accomplish the entire conquest of their country, insisted on such conditions as determined them to continue the war.. At this crisis of their affairs, relief was brought to them by a Lacedæmonian captain, named Xantippus, who engaged the conquerors under the walls of Tunis, destroyed their legions, and took the proconsul prisoner. Regulus was conducted as a captive into the city which he had hoped to enter in triumph, and is said to have been exposed to much indignity as well as to great bodily suffering. But no degree of torture or reproach could overcome his patriotism; for, upon consenting to accompany the Carthaginian ambassadors to Rome, he exhorted the senate to refuse peace, and even to prosecute hostilities with increased vigour. His counsel was adopted, though at the expense of his life, and finally enabled his

countrymen to conclude a more advantageous treaty with their humbled foes.

The interval of peace with her European rivals was not altogether a period of tranquillity to Carthage. The Numidians, taking advantage of her weakness, endeavoured to limit her pretensions in Africa, and to recover the independence which they had gradually forfeited during the growing ascendency of her power. She soon found it necessary, moreover, to renew the struggle in Sicily, and to engage in a war with a sovereign of that island, which, Livy informs us, lasted five years. The Romans, who had long relinquished the moderation which guided their proceedings in the infancy of their commonwealth, perceived that an opportunity was thereby presented to them for obtaining possession of Sardinia-an acquisition which appeared in their eyes so much the more valuable, that the people with whom they now found themselves doomed to contend for empire still retained several important settlements in the adjoining seas. Under some frivolous pretext, accordingly, they invaded the Carthaginian colony, and could boast that they wrested it from its legitimate owners during the subsistence of a regular treaty. The injured party, however, could not, at that moment, have recourse to the usual means of redress. They even condescended to purchase the forbearance of their insolent neighbours, and to remit money to Rome in name of tribute or compensation. But, pursuing a policy which sometimes confounded the less subtle genius of their opponents, they sought new sources of wealth in Spain, the mines of which filled their treasury with the precious metals, and enabled them to call into the field very numerous armies, and cover the sea with their fleets. Amilcar was intrusted with this important enterprise, which was afterward so ably conducted by his renowned son Hannibal; who, by taking Saguntum, gave occasion to the second Punic war.

This celebrated leader has been esteemed by many able judges the greatest general of antiquity; and, assuredly, if he does not win more affection than any other, he excites higher admiration. He possessed neither the heroism of Alexander nor the universal genius of Cæsar; but, as a military man, he surpassed them both. In ordinary cases, it is the love of country or of glory which conducts commanders to great achievements: Hannibal alone was stimulated by hatred and

the desire of revenge. Inflamed with this acrimonious spirit, he set out from the extremity of Spain with an army composed of a great variety of nations; passed the Pyrenees; marched through Gaul; and arrived at the foot of the Alps. These trackless mountains, defended by fierce barbarians, were in vain opposed to his progress. He crossed their icy summits and perilous ravines, presented himself in Italy as if he had descended from the clouds, and annihilated the first consular army on the banks of the Ticinus. Following up his victory, he gained another triumph at Trebia, a third at Thrasymene, and in the fourth, which he accomplished at Cannæ, he threatened the existence of Rome itself. During sixteen years he prosecuted the war, unaided, in the heart of the enemy's country, driving the greatest generals from the field, and inspiring the legions with a degree of fear or caution which they had not known since the invasion of Pyrrhus.

To withdraw this conqueror from the Roman provinces, it was resolved to send an army into Africa. Scipio, whose reputation for urbanity, moderation, and self-restraint, has reached our own times, was appointed to the command of the expedition, with the view of realizing a plan which had originated with himself as the most likely means for subduing Hannibal. The landing was effected without any loss; for consternation had pervaded all the coast, and covered the roads with fugitives, who fled from the towns without knowing where to seek an asylum. The same alarm had extended to Carthage itself; the citizens ran to arms; the gates were shut; and the usual preparations were made to repel an assault or to withstand a siege. But Scipio was not yet in a condition to attack the capital. Having sent his fleet towards Utica, he himself proceeded by land to the same point, where he was joined by Masinissa, the king of Numidia, with a large body of cavalry. This chief, formerly the ally of the Carthaginians, had made war against the Romans in Spain; and having, by a succession of singular events, repeatedly lost and recovered his dominions, he had once more fallen a victim to certain intrigues, and been deprived of his crown. Syphax, prince of the Getulians, who had married Sophonisba, the daughter of Asdrubal, was put in possession of his lands-an injustice which alienated him so much from the ruling government, that he declared himself

ready to co-operate with the invaders against those tyrants of Africa.*

After some battles which terminated in his favour, Scipio invested Utica with the resolution to take it; though Asdrubal and Syphax were encamped in the vicinity. As the tents of the latter were formed of mats and reeds, after the Numidian manner, the Romans set them on fire, and thereby destroyed the lives of 40,000 men. But the Carthaginians, so far from yielding to misfortune, saw in this event only a more urgent reason for increasing their levies and encouraging the fidelity of their confederates; though they had the mortification to discover, on most occasions, that their raw troops, and the undisciplined valour of the Getulians, could not maintain their ground against the steady courage of the legions. Syphax, being united to a daughter of Carthage, would not desert the cause of that republic, convinced as he was that its fall would crush all his hopes, and perhaps bury his sovereignty in its ruins; and accordingly, though Scipio had repeatedly dispersed the armies opposed to him, and even made himself master of Tunis, the barbarian prince resolved once more to face the victors, and, if possible, save the capital from destruction. He entered into the combat with a bravery worthy of a better fate; and, when deserted by his soldiers in the heat of the battle, he rushed alone upon the Roman squadrons, hoping that his men, ashamed of having abandoned their king, would return and die with him. But in this expectation he was grievously disappointed; the cowards continued their flight; and, his horse being killed, he fell alive into the hands of his mortal enemy Masinissa.†

A tale of romance, affectingly told by Livy, occupies the short period which precedes the return of Hannibal to defend his native country. Sophonisba, whom the fortune of war soon afterward threw into the same hands with her husband, was induced or compelled to become the wife of Masinissa; who, upon discovering that the virtuous and exemplary Scipio was displeased with this union, from the fear that her influence would draw him to the side of the enemy, sent her a cup of poison, in order that she might free herself from the apprehension of a still greater disgrace.‡

* Livius, lib. xxi., c. 1-54.

+ Ibid., lib. xxx., c. 11. Livius, lib. xxx., c. 12. The narrative begins at the 3d and continues to the end of the 12th chapter.

Finding their affairs fast becoming desperate, the magis trates of Carthage sent orders to their great general to abandon Italy and hasten to their relief. Upon receiving this message, he is said to have shed tears of rage, to have reproached the imbecility of his government, and to have bitterly condemned himself for not marching to Rome after the battle of Cannæ Never, it was remarked, did a man, quitting the land of his birth to go into exile, experience more profound grief than Hannibal endured when he left a foreign shore to return home. He had sailed from Africa when a boy, had been thirty-six years away; and was about to find strangers among the nearest relatives of his family. At length he disembarked on the shore of his fathers, at the head of the veterans who had followed him in Spain, Gaul, and Italy; who could show more insignia of honour, taken from pretors, generals, and consuls, than were carried before all the dignitaries of Rome and in the city, to the protection of which he was now advancing, the temples, crowded with the spoils of her mighty enemy, were perhaps the only places he could recognise amid the scenes of his youth.*

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But the fortune of Hannibal did not accompany him into Africa. The battle of Zama decided the fate of Carthage and of the most renowned of her sons; putting an end, at the same time, to the second Punic war. The vanquished sued for peace and obtained it, but on such terms as announced their approaching humiliation; while their illustrious general, not venturing to rely on the generosity of an irritated and fickle populace, retired to Asia Minor, where he spent the remainder of his days in vain attempts to form a coalition against the Romans. Nor did he find the hatred of that people more relenting than his own. On the contrary, the emissaries of the senate pursued him from one court to another, till he was on the point of being delivered up into their hands, when, according to the custom of his age and nation, he brought his life to a close by swallowing poison.

The events now recorded took place about 200 years before our era, according to the more common calculation. Half a century passed without any open rupture between the two republics; and the wiser statesmen at Rome had begun

* Chateaubriand's Travels in Greece, Palestine, Egypt, and Barbary, vol. ii., p. 259, second edition, London, 1812.