These two great powers, Rome and Carthage, soon came into conflict, the subject of dispute being possessions in the island of Sicily, which lay between them. brought on the First Punic War.

When Punic arms infested land and main,

When heaven and earth were in confusion hurled

For the debated empire of the world.

This

LUCRETIUS. Tr. Dryden.

The vigorous republic is now prepared to contest the sovereignty of the West with the long-settled and deep-rooted power of Carthage. MERIVALE.

When in respect of her claims in Sicily and Spain, her growing aggrandizement had brought Rome in contact with Carthage, the powers she had long been gathering together were suddenly developed to an extent of greatness that amazed the contemporary world, as it has all succeeding ages. SCHLEGEL.

The result of the First Punic War (which lasted from 264 B. C. to 241 B. C.) was that Carthage gave up her possessions in Sicily to Rome. After this the Carthaginians, under Hamilcar, largely increased their dominion in Spain. The Romans also extended and strengthened their empire.

As when two black clouds,

With heaven's artillery fraught, come rattling on
Over the Caspian, then stand front to front,
Hovering a space, till winds the signal blow

To join their dark encounter in mid air,
So frowned the mighty combatants.

In 218 B. C. began the Second Punic War.

MILTON.

Previous to the prostration of Carthage, there were, so to speak, two separate worlds. In the one the Romans and the Carthaginians contended for empire; the other was agitated by the quarrels which continued from the time of the death of Alexander the Great. The East gave no thought to what was going on in the West.— MON

TESQUIEU.

Up to the Second Punic War, Rome had no historian. She was too much occupied in making history to amuse herself with writing MICHELET.

it.

The Carthaginian general, Hannibal, one of the greatest generals who ever lived, having resolved upon the invasion of Italy, performed, in 218 B. C., one of the most remarkable military, achievements of antiquity, that of crossing the Alps with his army and reaching Italy by land. The bold enterprise was, however, accomplished despite barbarous nations, rapid streams, and the dangers of the Pyrenees and Alps. He is said to have lost over thirty thousand men during the passage.

If it be true, as no one doubts, that the Roman people excelled all other nations in warlike merit, it is not to be disputed that Hannibal surpassed other commanders in ability as much as the Romans surpassed all other people in valor. - CORNELIUS NEPOS.

Beyond the Pyrenean's lofty bound,

Through blackening forests shagged with pine around,
The Carthaginian passed; and, fierce, explored

The Volcan champaign with his wasting sword,
Then trod the threatening banks with hastening force,
Where Rhone high-swelling rolls its sweeping course.
From Alpine heights and steep rocks capped with snow,

He spoke; nor they delayed: the troops he drew
Up the steep hills, their promised spoil in view:
Transgressed the Herculean road, and first made known
Tracks yet untrodden and a path their own
Where inaccessible the desert rose,

He burst a passage through forbidden snows;

Now poured from craggy dens, a headlong force,
The Alpine hordes hang threatening on their course;
Track the known thickets, beat the mountain snow,
Bound o'er the steeps, and hovering hem the foe.

SILIUS ITALICUS. Tr. Elton.

Hannibal who not in vain

Swore hate to Rome, and crossed the heaving main,
Climbed with his dauntless bands yon Alpine height,
And southward poured, an avalanche in his might,
While Rome confessed the terror of his name,
Drooped her bright eye, and hung her head in shame.

Trampling the snows

The war-horse reared, and the towered elephant
Upturned his trunk into the murky sky,

Then tumbled headlong, swallowed up and lost,
He and his rider.

Having crossed the Alps,

N. MICHELL.

ROGERS.

"Dire Hannibal, the Roman dread” (HORACE),

burst into the plain of Italy, and defeated the Romans in four battles, the chief of which was that of Cannæ.

The dire African with wasteful ire

Rode o'er the ravaged towns of Italy;
As through the pine-trees flies the raging fire,
Or Eurus o'er the vexed Sicilian sea.

HORACE. Tr. Lord Lyttleton.

The battle of Cannæ (216 B. C.), one of the most memorable and decisive in history, resulted in the rout Cannæ. and almost total destruction of the Roman army, although that force was probably much superior to the Carthaginian in point of numbers.

While Waterloo with Canna's carnage vies.

BYRON.

In this battle three thousand of the Africans fell, and a great part of Hannibal's ariny were wounded. The Romans, however, never received so severe a blow at any period of the Punic Wars; for the

consul, Æmilius Paulus, was killed; twenty officers of consular and prætorian rank, thirty senators, and three hundred others of noble descent were taken or slain, as well as forty thousand foot-soldiers, and three thousand five hundred horse. During all these calamities, however, not one of the Romans deigned to speak of peace. EUTROPIUS.

The immediate consequences of this victory were such as both sides had expected from it. . . . In a word, all the neighboring people began now to turn their eyes towards the Carthaginians, who on their part were persuaded that they should take even Rome itself upon their first approach. The Romans, on the other hand, not only renounced all hopes of being able any longer to retain the sovereignty of Italy, but were filled also with the greatest apprehensions with regard even to the safety of themselves and their own proper country, expecting that the Carthaginians instantly would arrive to finish their destruction. - POLYBIUS.

The number of the slain is computed at forty thousand foot, and two thousand seven hundred horse. - LIvy.

On the day following, as soon as light appeared, his [Hannibal's] troops applied themselves to the collecting of the spoils, and viewing the carnage made, which was such as shocked even enemies, so many thousand Romans, horsemen and footmen, lay promiscuously on the field, as chance had thrown them together, either in the battle or flight. Some whom their wounds, being pinched by the morning cold, had roused from their posture, were put to death by the enemy, as they were rising up, all covered with blood, from the midst of the heaps of carcasses. Some they found lying alive, with their thighs and hams cut, who, stripping their necks and throats, desired them to spill what remained of their blood. Some were found, with their heads buried in the earth, in holes which it appeared they had made for themselves, and, covering their faces with earth thrown over them, had been thus suffocated. - LIVY.

The lingering war

That of the rings made such illustrious spoils,

As Livy has recorded, who errs not.

DANTE, Inferno. Tr. Longfellow.

Of these [the gold rings taken from the Romans] there was so great a heap that, according to some writers, on being measured, they

filled three pecks and a half; but the more general account, and likewise the more probable, is, that they amounted to no more than one peck. He also explained to them, in order to show the greater extent of the slaughter, that none but those of equestrian rank, and of these only the principal, wore this ornament. - LIVY.

After the battle of Cannæ, when any other state would have succumbed to its bad fortune, there was not a movement of weakness among the Roman people, nor a thought which was not devoted to the good of the republic. All orders, all ranks, all conditions, exhausted themselves voluntarily. Honor consisted in retaining less, shame in reserving more. SAINT-EVREMOND.

Hannibal made no important victory after that of Cannæ, but he remained in Italy for fifteen years (217202 B. C.), carrying on an intermittent strife with the Romans. At last the Roman general, Scipio (afterwards called, from his success in Africa, Scipio Africanus) crossed to Spain and thence to Africa, and Hannibal had to go home to defend Carthage.

The final battle of the war was fought at Zama, in Africa, in 202 B. C., and resulted in the defeat of Zama. the Carthaginians.

Forced e'en dire Hannibal to yield,

And won the long-disputed world at Zama's fatal field.

HORACE. Tr. Earl of Roscommon.

When Hannibal turned back with all his hosts.

DANTE, Inferno. Tr. Longfellow.

At last, not at three miles' distance, but by a close siege, he [Scipio] shook the very gates of Carthage itself. And thus he succeeded in drawing off Hannibal, when he was still clinging to and brooding over Italy. There was no more remarkable day, during the whole course of the Roman Empire, than that on which those two generals