Scipio
at Zama; his raw levies fled, and in part went over to the enemy; his
veterans were cut to pieces where they stood, and Carthage was at the
mercy of Rome. So ended the Second Punic War--the war, as Arnold so
truly said, of a man with a nation, and the war which is perhaps the
most wonderful in all history. Three hundred thousand Italians had
fallen, and three hundred towns had been destroyed in the struggle.

Peace being made, Hannibal turned his genius to political toils. He
amended the constitution, cut down the power of the ignoble oligarchy,
checked corruption, and placed the city's finances on a sounder
footing. The enemies whom he made by his reforms denounced him to the
Romans, and the Romans demanded that he should be surrendered into
their hands. Setting out as a voluntary exile, Hannibal visited Tyre,
the mother-city of Carthage, and then betook himself to the court of
Antiochus, at Ephesus. He was well received by the king, who
nevertheless rejected his advice to carry the war with Rome into
Italy. On the conclusion of peace, to avoid being given up to the
Romans, he repaired to Prusias, king of Bithynia, for whom he gained a
naval victory over the king of Pergamus. The Romans again demanding
that he should be surrendered, he baffled his enemies by taking
poison, which, we are told, he carried about with him in a ring, and
died at Lybyssa about the year 183 B.C.

In judging of the character and achievements of Hannibal, it must
never be forgotten, that for all we know of him, we are indebted to
his implacable enemies. No Carthaginian record of that astounding
career has come down to us. The Romans did all that unscrupulous
malignity can, to blacken the fame and belittle the deeds of the most
terrible of their foes. Yet, though calumny has done its bitterest
against him, Hannibal not only dazzles the imagination, but takes
captive the heart. He stands out as the incarnation of magnanimity and
patriotism and self-sacrificing heroism, no less than of incomparable
military genius. Napoleon, the only general who could plausibly
challenge the Carthaginian's supremacy, had throughout the greater
part of his career an immense superiority to his adversaries in the
quality of the forces which he wielded. He had the enthusiasm of the
Revolution behind him, and he was unhampered by authorities at home.
Hannibal, on the contrary, saw his plans thwarted and finally wrecked
by the sordid merchant-nobles of the city