ever were waged; and though we may not express ourselves in such
general terms, it is safe to say that no struggle recorded in the
annals of antiquity, or of the middle age, surpasses it in importance
or in historical interest. The war was to decide whether the conqueror
of the world was to be self-centred Rome; or whether it should be a
nation of traders, commanded by a powerful general who dictated to them
their policy,--a nation not adapted to unite the different peoples in
bonds of sympathy,--one whose success would, in the words of Dr.
Arnold, "have stopped the progress of the world."

Hannibal stands out among the famed generals of history as one of the
very greatest. We must remember that we have no records of his own
countrymen to show how he was estimated among them; but we know that
though he was poorly supported by the powers at home, he was able to
keep together an army of great size, by the force of his own
personality, and to wage a disastrous war against the strongest people
of his age, far from his base of supplies, in the midst of the enemy's
country. It has well been said that the greatest masters of the art of
war, from Scipio to Napoleon, have concurred in homage to his genius.

The other hero, and the successful one, in the great struggle, was
Publius Cornelius Scipio, who was born in that year when the temple of
Janus was closed, of a family that for a series of generations had been
noted in Roman history, and was to continue illustrious for generations
to come.

Another among the many men of note who came into prominence during the
second war with Carthage was Quintus Fabius Maximus, a descendant of
that Rullus who in the Sabine wars brought the names Fabius and Maximus
into prominence. His life is given by Plutarch under the name Fabius,