of the gold
rings worn by the knights.

[Illustration: ARCHIMEDES.]

Hannibal was only five days' march beyond Rome, and his officers wanted
him to turn back and attack it in the first shock of the defeat, but he
could not expect to succeed without more aid from home, and he wanted to
win over the Greek cities of the south; so he wintered in Campania,
waiting for the fresh troops he expected from Africa or from Spain,
where his brother Mago was preparing an army. But the Carthaginians did
not care about Hannibal's campaigns in Italy, and sent no help; and
Publius Cornelius Scipio and his brother, with a Roman army in Spain,
were watching Mago and preventing him from marching, until at last he
gave them battle and defeated and killed them both. But he was not
allowed to go to Italy to his brother, who, in the meantime, found his
army so unstrung and ill-disciplined in the delightful but languid
Campania, that the Romans declared the luxuries of Capua were their best
allies. He stayed in the south, however, trying to gain the alliance of
the king of Macedon, and stirring up Syracuse to revolt. Marcellus, who
was consul for the third time, was sent to reduce the city, which made a
famous defence, for it contained Archimedes, the greatest mathematician
of his time, who devised wonderful machines for crushing the besiegers
in unexpected ways; but at last Marcellus found a weak part of the walls
and surprised the citizens. He had given orders that Archimedes should
be saved, but a soldier broke into the philosopher's room without
knowing him, and found him so intent on his study that he had never
heard the storming of the city. The man brandished his sword. "Only
wait," muttered Archimedes, "till I have found out my problem;" but the
man, not understanding him, killed him.

Hannibal remained in Italy, maintaining himself there with wonderful
skill, though with none of the hopes with which he had set out. His
brother Hasdrubal did succeed in leaving Spain with an army to help him,
but was met on the river Metaurus by Tiberius Claudius Nero, beaten, and
slain. His head was cut off by Nero's order, and thrown into Hannibal's
camp to give tidings of his fate.

Young Scipio, meantime, had been sent to Spain, where he gained great
advantages, winning the friendship of the Iberians, and gaining town
after town till Mago had little left but Gades and the extreme south.
Scipio was one of the noblest of the Romans, brave, pious, an