act
in a foreign land, and contented herself with destroying during the war
seven hundred five-banked Roman ships, which were every time replaced
with amazing swiftness.

* * * * *

The war had raged for sixteen years when Hamilcar Barca, father of the
most famous general before Caesar (except Alexander the Great), was given
command over land and sea. He was a young man, not more than thirty, and
belonged to one of the oldest families in Carthage. Unlike most of his
nation, he valued many things more highly than money, and despised the
glitter and show and luxury in which all the Carthaginians delighted. A
boy of fourteen when the first Punic war began (for this is its name in
history), his strongest passion was hatred of Rome and a burning desire
to humble the power which had defied his own beloved city. It did not
matter to Hamilcar that his ships were few and his soldiers
undisciplined. The great point was that he had absolute power over them,
and as to their training he would undertake that himself.

So, full of hope he began his work, and in course of time, after hard
labour, his raw troops became a fine army.

Hamilcar's first campaign in Sicily--so often the battleground of
ancient Europe--was crowned with success. The Romans were hemmed in by
his skilful strategy, and if he had only been given a proper number of
ships it would have been easy for him to have landed in Italy, and
perhaps marched to Rome. But now, as ever in the three Punic wars,
Carthage, absorbed in counting her money and reckoning her gains and
losses, could never understand where her real interest lay. She waited
until Rome, by a supreme effort, built another fleet of two hundred
vessels, which suddenly appeared on the west coast of Sicily, and gave
battle to the Carthaginian ships when, too late, they came to the help
of their general. The battle was lost, the fleet destroyed, and Hamilcar
with wrath in his soul was obliged to make peace. Sicily, which Carthage
had held for four hundred years, was ceded to Rome, and large sums of
money paid into her treasury for the expenses of the war.

* * * * *

Bitterly disappointed at the failure forced on him when victory was
within his grasp, Hamilcar was shortly after summoned back to Carthage
to put down a rebellion which the government by its greed and folly had
provoked. The neighbouring tribes and subject cities joined the foreign