measured tones. In sudden rage at the noise--so it must have been--those
delicate idlers sprang up and ran down to the harbour, and took the
boats that lay there, and overwhelmed the unarmed Roman traders, slaying
many of them. Foolish, cruel, almost comic. So a sensitive musician,
driven half mad by a street organ, longs to rush out and break the thing
to pieces, and kill the poor grinder for his barbarous noise.

But when there was blood in the harbour of Tarentum, and some of the
ships had escaped on their oars, the Greeks were afraid; and when the
message of war came swiftly down to them from inexorable Rome, their
terror grew, and they sent to Pyrrhus of Epirus, who had set up to be a
conqueror, to come and conquer Rome for the sake of certain aesthetic
fine gentlemen who could not bear to be disturbed at a good play on a
spring afternoon. He came with all the pomp and splendour of Eastern
warfare; he won a battle, and a battle, and half a battle, and then the
Romans beat him at Beneventum, famous again and again, and utterly
destroyed his army, and took back with them his gold and his jewels, and
the tusks of his elephants, and the mastery of all Italy to boot, but
not yet beyond dispute.

Creeping down into Sicily, Rome met Carthage, both giants in those days,
and the greatest and last struggle began, with half the known world and
all the known sea for a battle-ground. Round and round the
Mediterranean, by water and land, they fought for a hundred and eighteen
years, through four generations of men, as we should reckon it, both
grasping and strong, both relentless, both sworn to win or perish for
ever, both doing great deeds that are remembered still. The mere name of
Regulus is a legion of legends in itself; the name of Hannibal is in
itself a history, that of Fabius Maximus a lesson; and while history
lasts, Cornelius Scipio and Scipio the African will not be forgotten. It
is the story of many and terrible defeats, from each of which Rome rose,
fiercely young, to win a dozen terrible little victories. It is strange
that we remember the lost days best; misty Thrasymene and Cannae's
fearful slaughter rise first in the memory. Then all at once, within ten
years, the scale turns, and Caius Claudius Nero hurls Hasdrubal's
disfigured head high over ditch and palisade into his brother's camp,
right to his brother's feet. And five years later, the battle of Zama,
won almost at the gates of Carthage; and then, almost th