ign enemy. The
unsuccessful expedition of Hannibal served only to display the character
of the senate and people; of a senate degraded, rather than ennobled,
by the comparison of an assembly of kings; and of a people, to whom the
ambassador of Pyrrhus ascribed the inexhaustible resources of the Hydra.
Each of the senators, in the time of the Punic war, had accomplished
his term of the military service, either in a subordinate or a superior
station; and the decree, which invested with temporary command all those
who had been consuls, or censors, or dictators, gave the republic the
immediate assistance of many brave and experienced generals. In the
beginning of the war, the Roman people consisted of two hundred and
fifty thousand citizens of an age to bear arms. Fifty thousand had
already died in the defence of their country; and the twenty-three
legions which were employed in the different camps of Italy, Greece,
Sardinia, Sicily, and Spain, required about one hundred thousand men.
But there still remained an equal number in Rome, and the adjacent
territory, who were animated by the same intrepid courage; and every
citizen was trained, from his earliest youth, in the discipline and
exercises of a soldier. Hannibal was astonished by the constancy of
the senate, who, without raising the siege of Capua, or recalling their
scattered forces, expected his approach. He encamped on the banks of
the Anio, at the distance of three miles from the city; and he was soon
informed, that the ground on which he had pitched his tent, was sold for
an adequate price at a public auction; and that a body of troops was
dismissed by an opposite road, to reenforce the legions of Spain. He led
his Africans to the gates of Rome, where he found three armies in order
of battle, prepared to receive him; but Hannibal dreaded the event of a
combat, from which he could not hope to escape, unless he destroyed the
last of his enemies; and his speedy retreat confessed the invincible
courage of the Romans.

From the time of the Punic war, the uninterrupted succession of senators
had preserved the name and image of the republic; and the degenerate
subjects of Honorius ambitiously derived their descent from the heroes
who had repulsed the arms of Hannibal, and subdued the nations of
the earth. The temporal honors which the devout Paula inherited and
despised, are carefully recapitulated by Jerom, the guide of her
conscience, and the historian of her life. The