fight for them by the hands of mercenaries of every race and
clime--hirelings whose ungoverned valour had proved almost as deadly
to their employers and generals as to their enemies. Above all, the
same battle had been joined before when Rome was weaker and Carthage
stronger, and Carthage had already shown her weakness and Rome her
strength.

And now in this renewed war we see a young man, aided only by a little
group of compatriots, welding together army of the most heterogeneous
elements--Spaniards, Gauls, Numidians, Moors, Greeks--men of almost
every race except his own. We see him cutting loose from his base of
supplies, leaving enemies behind him, to force his way through
hostile races, through unknown lands bristling with almost impassable
mountains and frigid with snow and ice. We see him conquering here,
making friends and allies there, and, more wonderful than all, holding
his mongrel horde together through hardships and losses by the force
of his character alone. We see him at last descending into the plains
of Italy. We see him not merely defeating but annihilating army after
army more numerous than his own and composed of better raw material.
We see him, unaided, ranging from end to end of the peninsula, none
daring to meet him with opposing standards, and the greatest general
of Rome winning laurels because he knew enough to recognise his own
hopeless inferiority. All stories of reverses other than those of mere
detachments may pretty safely be set down as the exaggeration of Roman
writers. Situated as was Hannibal, the loss of one marshalled field
would have meant immediate ruin, and ruin never came when he fought
in Italy. On the contrary, without supplies save what his sword could
take, without friends save what his genius and his fortune could win,
he maintained his place and his superiority not for one or for two but
through fourteen years, during all which time we hear no murmur
of mutiny, no hint of aught but obedience and devotion among the
incongruous and unruly elements from which he had fashioned his
invincible army; and at the end we see him leaving Italy of his own
free will, at the call of his country, to waste himself in a vain
effort to save her from the blunders of other leaders and from the
penalty of inherent weakness, which only his sword had so long warded
off.

When I consider the means, the opposition, and the achievement--a
combination of elements by which alone we can judge such