ied that the Roman senate in dealing with this
matter displayed shortsightedness and slackness--faults which were
still more inexcusably manifested in their mode of dealing at the same
epoch with Gallic affairs. The policy of the Romans was always more
remarkable for tenacity, cunning, and consistency, than for grandeur
of conception or power of rapid organization--qualities in which the
enemies of Rome from Pyrrhus down to Mithradates often surpassed her.

Hannibal

Thus the smiles of fortune inaugurated the brilliantly conceived
project of Hamilcar. The means of war were acquired--a numerous army
accustomed to combat and to conquer, and a constantly replenished
exchequer; but, in order that the right moment might be discovered for
the struggle and that the right direction might be given to it, there
was wanted a leader. The man, whose head and heart had in a desperate
emergency and amidst a despairing people paved the way for their
deliverance, was no more, when it became possible to carry out his
design. Whether his successor Hasdrubal forbore to make the attack
because the proper moment seemed to him to have not yet come, or
whether, more a statesman than a general, he believed himself unequal
to the conduct of the enterprise, we are unable to determine. When,
at the beginning of 534, he fell by the hand of an assassin, the
Carthaginian officers of the Spanish army summoned to fill his place
Hannibal, the eldest son of Hamilcar. He was still a young man--born
in 505, and now, therefore, in his twenty-ninth year; but his had
already been a life of manifold experience. His first recollections
pictured to him his father fighting in a distant land and conquering
on Ercte; he had keenly shared that unconquered father's feelings on
the peace of Catulus, on the bitter return home, and throughout the
horrors of the Libyan war. While yet a boy, he had followed his
father to the camp; and he soon distinguished himself. His light
and firmly-knit frame made him an excellent runner and fencer, and a
fearless rider at full speed; the privation of sleep did not affect
him, and he knew like a soldier how to enjoy or to dispense with food.
Although his youth had been spent in the camp, he possessed such
culture as belonged to the Phoenicians of rank in his day; in Greek,
apparently after he had become a general, he made such progress under
the guidance of his confidant Sosilus of Sparta as to be able to
compose state pape