thaginian state. The marked recognition thus accorded
to him by the Roman government scarcely took himself by surprise.
As it was Hannibal and not Carthage that had carried on the last war,
so it was he who had to bear the fate of the vanquished. The
Carthaginians could do nothing but submit and be thankful that
Hannibal, sparing them the greater disgrace by his speedy and prudent
flight to the east, left to his ancestral city merely the lesser
disgrace of having banished its greatest citizen for ever from his
native land, confiscated his property, and razed his house. The
profound saying that those are the favourites of the gods, on whom
they lavish infinite joys and infinite sorrows, thus verified itself
in full measure in the case of Hannibal.

Continued Irritation in Rome towards Carthage

A graver responsibility than that arising out of their proceedings
against Hannibal attaches to the Roman government for their
persistence in suspecting and tormenting the city after his removal.
Parties indeed fermented there as before; but, after the withdrawal
of the extraordinary man who had wellnigh changed the destinies of the
world, the patriot party was not of much more importance in Carthage
than in Aetolia or Achaia. The most rational of the various ideas
which then agitated the unhappy city was beyond doubt that of
attaching themselves to Massinissa and of converting him from
the oppressor into the protector of the Phoenicians. But neither
the national section of the patriots nor the section with Libyan
tendencies attained the helm; on the contrary the government remained
in the hands of the oligarchs friendly to Rome, who, so far as they
did not altogether renounce thought of the future, clung to the single
idea of saving the material welfare and the communal freedom of
Carthage under Roman protection. With this state of matters the
Romans might well have been content. But neither the multitude, nor
even the ruling lords of the average stamp, could rid themselves of
the profound alarm produced by the Hannibalic war; and the Roman
merchants with envious eyes beheld the city even now, when its
political power was gone, possessed of extensive commercial
dependencies and of a firmly established wealth which nothing could
shake. Already in 567 the Carthaginian government offered to pay up
at once the whole instalments stipulated in the peace of 553--an offer
which the Romans, who attached far more importance to th