of the city of Rome itself.
After that they were finally driven out and defeated by Camillus. Later,
though they came again across the northern hills, they were always
beaten and driven back. When on the march, their armies were dangerous;
but the Gauls had no plan of permanent conquest: after a defeat, they
retired to their northern plains and hills.

Within the space of a hundred years, in the third century before the
birth of Christ, the Romans had to meet two invaders of a very different
and far more dangerous kind: invaders with a settled plan of conquest,
who came against them in order to subdue and rule Rome and Italy. These
were Pyrrhus and Hannibal. Had either of them succeeded, the whole
history of Rome and of the world might have been different. In a very
real sense Pyrrhus and Hannibal are heroes in the story of Rome. They
were the greatest enemies the Roman people ever had to meet. They were
defeated because of qualities in the Roman people as a whole, rather
than by the genius of any single general. No single Roman leader at the
time was a first-rate commander like Pyrrhus, still less a genius like
Hannibal, a much greater man than he. It is during their struggle with
Pyrrhus, in the war with Carthage that followed Pyrrhus's defeat, and in
the long war with Hannibal that ended in his defeat and the destruction
of Carthage as a great power that we can see the Roman character at its
best. We can appreciate it and understand it only by understanding the
enemies whom it met and broke.

Pyrrhus

At the time of his attack upon Italy Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, was the
most brilliant soldier of his day: and his ambition was to rule, like
Alexander, over a world greater than that of his own Greek kingdom. From
babyhood he breathed and grew up amid storm and adventure, all his life
he was most at home in camps and on the battlefield. His father was
killed in battle when Pyrrhus was but five years old: he himself was
only saved from death by a faithful slave who carried him to the house
of the King of the Illyrians and laid him at his feet. The baby Pyrrhus
clasped the knees of the monarch who, looking into his face, could not
resist the appeal of the child's eyes, but kept him safe till he was
twelve years old and then helped to put him on his father's throne.
Though only a boy, Pyrrhus held it for five years. He was driven out,
but later he recovered his kingdom again. As he grew up he studied the
art of war co