The second war (from 218 to 201) was the work of Hannibal.

The third war was a war of extermination: the Romans took Carthage by
assault, razed it, and conquered Africa.

These wars had long made Rome tremble. Carthage had the better navy,
but its warriors were armed adventurers fighting not for country but
for pay, lawless, terrible under a general like Hannibal.

=Hannibal.=--Hannibal, who directed the whole of the second war and
almost captured Rome, was of the powerful family of the Barcas. His
father Hamilcar had commanded a Carthaginian army in the first Punic
war and had afterwards been charged with the conquest of Spain.
Hannibal was then but a child, but his father took him with him. The
departure of an army was always accompanied by sacrifices to the gods
of the country; it was said that Hamilcar after the sacrifice made his
infant son swear eternal enmity to Rome.

Hannibal, brought up in the company of the soldiers, became the best
horseman and the best archer of the army. War was his only aim in
life; his only needs, therefore, were a horse and arms. He had made
himself so popular that at the death of Hasdrubal who was in the
command of the army, the soldiers elected him general without waiting
for orders from the Carthaginian senate. Thus Hannibal found himself
at the age of twenty-one at the head of an army which was obedient
only to himself. He began war, regardless of the senate at Carthage,
by advancing to the siege of Saguntum, a Greek colony allied with
Rome; he took this and destroyed it.

The glory of Hannibal was that he did not wait for the Romans, but had
the audacity to march into Italy to attack them. As he had no fleet,
he resolved to advance by land, through the Pyrenees, crossing the
Rhone and the Alps. He made sure of the alliance of the Gallic peoples
and penetrated the Pyrenees with an army of 60,000 men, African and
Spanish mercenaries, and with 37 war-elephants. A Gallic people wished
to stop him at the Rhone, but he sent a detachment to pass the river
some leagues farther up the stream and to attack the Gauls in the
rear; the mass of the army crossed the river in boats, the elephants
on great rafts.

He next ascended the valley of the Isere and arrived at the Alps at
the end of October; he crossed them regardless of the snow and the
attacks of the mountaineers; many men and horses rolled down the
precipices. But nine days were consumed in attaining the summits of
the Alps. The