The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Young Carthaginian, by G.A. Henty

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Title: The Young Carthaginian
A Story of The Times of Hannibal

Author: G.A. Henty

Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5128]
Posting Date: June 14, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNG CARTHAGINIAN ***

Produced by Martin Robb

THE YOUNG CARTHAGINIAN

A STORY OF THE TIMES OF HANNIBAL,

By G. A. Henty

PREFACE.

MY DEAR LADS,

When I was a boy at school, if I remember rightly, our sympathies were
generally with the Carthaginians as against the Romans. Why they were
so, except that one generally sympathizes with the unfortunate, I do
not quite know; certainly we had but a hazy idea as to the merits of
the struggle and knew but little of its events, for the Latin and Greek
authors, which serve as the ordinary textbooks in schools, do not treat
of the Punic wars. That it was a struggle for empire at first, and
latterly one for existence on the part of Carthage, that Hannibal was a
great and skilful general, that he defeated the Romans at Trebia, Lake
Trasimenus, and Cannae, and all but took Rome, and that the Romans
behaved with bad faith and great cruelty at the capture of Carthage,
represents, I think, pretty nearly the sum total of our knowledge.

I am sure I should have liked to know a great deal more about this
struggle for the empire of the world, and as I think that most of you
would also like to do so, I have chosen this subject for my story.
Fortunately there is no lack of authentic material from which to glean
the incidents of the struggle. Polybius visited all the passes of the
Alps some forty years after the event, and conversed with tribesmen who
had witnessed the passage of Hannibal, and there can be no doubt that
his descriptions are far more accurate than those of Livy, who wrote
somewhat later and had no personal knowledge of the affair. Numbers of
books have been written as to the identity of the passes traversed by
Hannibal. The whole of these have been discussed and summarized by
Mr. W. J. Law, and as it appears to me that his arguments are quite
conclusive I have ad