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