gh Scipio protested in the Senate, declaring it to be
unworthy of Rome to fear one man in a ruined state. Hannibal took refuge
in the East. There, some years later, he and Scipio met. Of the
conversation between them many stories were told. Scipio asked Hannibal
whom he thought the greatest general in the world. Hannibal replied that
he put Alexander first, then Pyrrhus, then himself.

'And where would you have placed yourself had I not defeated you?'

'Oh, Scipio, then I should have placed myself not third but first.'

In saying this Hannibal put his thought in words that might give
pleasure to his listener but were not quite true. Scipio had defeated
him at Zama; but no one knew better than the victor that the real
triumph was not his. The forces that had defeated Hannibal were greater
than those in the hand of any one man.

Had Hannibal defeated the Romans, the whole course of the world's
history might have been changed. Looking back now it seems impossible
that he could ever have thought he could do so. But part of the secret
of a truly great man is that he believes nothing to be impossible on
which he has set his will. The power to set the will firmly, clearly,
with knowledge, on some action to be done, of whatever kind it be; to
sacrifice, for that end, one's own wishes; to crush down the desire
every human being feels for rest, enjoyment, comfort at the moment, and
go on when the chance of success seems far away; this power is the
instrument by which extraordinary things are brought about. Because of
this power behind him Hannibal was a real danger to Rome, and Rome knew
it. If he could have made the people of Carthage feel as he did, he
would have conquered. But he could not. His will was set on defeating
Rome: the will of the Carthaginians was set, not on this, but on a life
of ease and comfort for themselves. And because the Carthaginians were
built thus, and not like Hannibal, and he could not, by his single
force, make them like himself, it would have been a disaster for the
world if Hannibal had won. The Romans defeated him because they, and not
the Carthaginians, had in them something of the force that moved
Hannibal: they, as Polybius said of them, 'believed nothing impossible
upon which their minds were set'.

IV

The Scipios

Scipio, to whom after his defeat of Hannibal the name of Africanus was
given by his countrymen, was a Roman of a new type. For him the interest
and business of the