essary
rather than honorable.

"It is indeed the right of him who grants, and not of him who solicits
it, to dictate the terms of peace, but perhaps we may not be unworthy to
impose upon ourselves the fine. We do not refuse that all those
possessions on account of which the war was begun should be yours;
Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, with all the islands lying in any part of the
sea, between Africa and Italy. Let us Carthaginians, confined within the
shores of Africa, behold you, since such is the pleasure of the gods,
extending your empire over foreign nations both by sea and land. I
cannot deny that you have reason to suspect the Carthaginian faith, in
consequence of their insincerity lately in soliciting a peace and while
awaiting the decision. The sincerity with which a peace will be observed
depends much, Scipio, on the person by whom it is sought. Your senate,
as I hear, refused to grant a peace in some measure because the deputies
were deficient in respectability. It is I, Hannibal, who now solicit
peace; who would neither ask for it unless I believed it expedient, nor
will I fail to observe it for the same reason of expedience on account
of which I have solicited it. And in the same manner as I, because the
war was commenced by me, brought it to pass that no one regretted it
till the gods began to regard me with displeasure; so will I also exert
myself that no one may regret the peace procured by my means."

In answer to these things the Roman general spoke nearly to the
following effect: "I was aware that it was in consequence of the
expectation of your arrival that the Carthaginians violated the existing
faith of the truce and broke off all hope of a peace. Nor, indeed, do
you conceal the fact, inasmuch as you artfully withdraw from the former
conditions of peace every concession except what relates to those things
which have for a long time been in our own power. But as it is your
object that your countrymen should be sensible how great a burden they
are relieved from by your means, so it is incumbent upon me to endeavor
that they may not receive, as the reward of their perfidy, the
concessions which they formerly stipulated, by expunging them now from
the conditions of the peace. Though you do not deserve to be allowed the
same conditions as before, you now request even to be benefited by your
treachery.

"Neither did our fathers first make war respecting Sicily, nor did we
respecting Spain. In the former case