it at a favourable moment, and thus cover
their defensive policy by a strategy of offence--always find
themselves hampered by the indolent and cowardly mass of the money-
worshippers, of the aged and feeble, and of the thoughtless who are
minded merely to gain time, to live and die in peace, and to postpone
at any price the final struggle. So there was in Carthage a party
for peace and a party for war, both, as was natural, associating
themselves with the political distinction which already existed
between the conservatives and the reformers. The former found its
support in the governing boards, the council of the Ancients and that
of the Hundred, led by Hanno the Great, as he was called; the latter
found its support in the leaders of the multitude, particularly the
much-respected Hasdrubal, and in the officers of the Sicilian army,
whose great successes under the leadership of Hamilcar, although they
had been otherwise fruitless, had at least shown to the patriots a
method which seemed to promise deliverance from the great danger that
beset them. Vehement feud had probably long subsisted between these
parties, when the Libyan war intervened to suspend the strife. We
have already related how that war arose. After the governing party
had instigated the mutiny by their incapable administration which
frustrated all the precautionary measures of the Sicilian officers,
had converted that mutiny into a revolution by the operation of their
inhuman system of government, and had at length brought the country to
the verge of ruin by their military incapacity--and particularly that
of their leader Hanno, who ruined the army--Hamilcar Barcas, the hero
of Ercte, was in the perilous emergency solicited by the government
itself to save it from the effects of its blunders and crimes. He
accepted the command, and had the magnanimity not to resign it
even when they appointed Hanno as his colleague. Indeed, when the
indignant army sent the latter home, Hamilcar had the self-control
a second time to concede to him, at the urgent request of the
government, a share in the command; and, in spite of his enemies and
in spite of such a colleague, he was able by his influence with the
insurgents, by his dexterous treatment of the Numidian sheiks, and
by his unrivalled genius for organization and generalship, in a
singularly short time to put down the revolt entirely and to recall
rebellious Africa to its allegiance (end of 517).

During