the greatest of all that ever lived, whether before or after them; the one the conqueror of Italy and the other of Spain - drew up their forces for a close engagement. But previously a conference was held between them concerning conditions of peace. They stood motionless awhile in admiration of each other. When they could not agree on a peace, they gave the signal for battle. It is certain, from the confession of both, that no troops could have been better drawn up, and no fight more obstinately maintained. This Hannibal acknowledged concerning the army of Scipio, and Scipio concerning that of Hannibal. But Hannibal was forced to yield, and Africa became the prize of the victory, and the whole earth soon followed the fate of Africa. FLORUS.

In the mean time preparations were made by both generals for a battle, such as scarce ever occurred in any age, since they were the ablest commanders that ever led forces into the field. Scipio came off victorious, having almost captured Hannibal himself, who escaped at first with several horse, then with twenty, and at last with only four. There were found in Hannibal's camp twenty thousand pounds of silver and eight hundred of gold, with plenty of stores. After this battle, peace was concluded with the Carthaginians. Scipio returned to Rome, and triumphed with the greatest glory, receiving from that period the appellation of Africanus. Thus the Second Punic War was brought to an end in the nineteenth year after it began. EUTROPIUS.

Above fifteen hundred of the Romans fell in the action. But, on the side of the Carthaginians, more than twenty thousand were killed, and almost an equal number taken prisoners. Such was the battle between Hannibal and Scipio, — the battle which gave to the Romans the sovereignty of the world. — POLYBIUS.

Produce the urn that Hannibal contains,

And weigh the mighty dust that yet remains:
And is this all! Yet this was once the bold,

The aspiring chief, whom Afric could not hold,

Though stretched in breadth from where the Atlantic roars,

To distant Nilus and his sunburnt shores;

In length, from Carthage to the burning zone
Where other Moors and elephants are known.
-Spain conquered, o'er the Pyrenees he bounds:
Nature opposed her everlasting mounds,

Her Alps and snows; o'er these with torrent force

He pours, and rends through rocks his dreadful course.
Already at his feet Italia lies;

Yet thundering on, "Think nothing done," he cries,
"Till Rome, proud Rome, beneath my fury falls,
And Afric's standards float along her walls!"
Big words! but view his figure! view his face!

O for some master hand the lines to trace,

As through the Etrurian swamps, by floods increast,
The one-eyed chief urged his Getulian beast!
But what ensued? Illusive Glory, say:
Subdued on Zama's memorable day,
He flies in exile to a petty state

With headlong haste; and at a despot's gate
Sits, mighty suppliant! of his life in doubt,
Till the Bithynian's morning nap be out.

JUVENAL. Tr. Gifford.

From this bright era, from this prosperous field,
The Roman Glory dates her rising power;
From hence 't was given her conquering sword to wield,
Raise her fallen gods, and ruined shrines restore.

HORACE. Tr. Lord Lyttleton.

As the result of the Second Punic War Carthage was obliged to give up all her possessions out of Africa, and to become a dependent ally of Rome. She was thus wholly degraded from the position of a powerful commercial state to that of a defenceless mercantile town. Her maritime supremacy was gone, and Rome was now the undisputed mistress of the western part of the Mediterranean. The Romans did not, however, interfere with the internal government of Carthage.

The Second Punic War is so famous that all the world is acquainted with it. When we consider well the crowd of obstacles which confronted Hannibal, and which that extraordinary man surmounted, we have before us the finest spectacle that antiquity presents. MONTESQUIEU.

History can produce no greater statesmen and generals than some of the members of the Carthaginian aristocracy. But the Car

thaginian people were wholly unfit to contend with the people of Rome.

ARNOLD.

It was not the mere destruction of an army, but the final conquest of the only power that seemed able to combat Rome on equal terms. In the state of the ancient world, with so few nations really great and powerful, and so little of a common feeling pervading them, there was neither the disposition nor the materials for forming a general confederacy against the power of Rome. The defeat of Hannibal insured the empire of the ancient civilized world. — ARNOLD.

It is not without reason that so universal and vivid a remembrance of the Punic Wars has dwelt in the memories of men. They formed no mere struggle to determine the lot of two cities or two empires; but it was a strife, on the event of which depended the fate of two races of mankind, whether the dominion of the world should belong to the Indo-Germanic or to the Semitic family of nations. Bear in mind that the first of these comprises, besides the Indians and the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Germans. In the other are ranked the Jews and Arabs, the Phoenicians, and the Carthaginians. On the one side is the genius of heroism, of art, of legislation; on the other is the spirit of industry, of commerce, of navigation. - MICHELET.

Livy opens his narrative of the Second Punic War with the remark which others had made before him, that it was the greatest and most memorable that had ever been carried on by the greatest states, and at the periods of their greatest freshness and vigor: he could say so with justice; but after the lapse of more than two thousand years, we cannot think the same, for in the wars of the French Revolution far greater energies were called into action; even the seven-years' war, especially the campaign of 1757, has a greater accumulation of events, and as for the greatness of the generals engaged in it, it is by no means inferior to the Second Punic War. In the First Punic War there appears only one great general; in the Second we have, besides Hannibal, We may, Scipio, Fabius, Marcellus, and many second-rate ones. however, truly say that in all ancient history there is no war which equals that against Hannibal in the greatness of the events. We may also on the whole assert that there never was a general superior to Hannibal, and in antiquity there is not one whom we could even place by his side. · NIEBUHR.

Thus ended the Second Punic, or, as the Romans more correctly called it, the Hannibalic War, after it had devastated the lands and islands from the Hellespont to the pillars of Hercules for seventeen years. Before this war the policy of the Romans had no higher aim than to acquire command of the mainland of the Italian peninsula within its natural boundaries, and of the Italian islands and seas; and it is clearly proved by their treatment of Africa on the conclusion of peace that they terminated the war with the impression, not that they had laid the foundation of empire over the states of the Mediterranean, or of universal sovereignty, as it is called, but that they had rendered a dangerous rival innocuous, and had given to Italy agreeable neighbors. The Romans achieved the sovereignty of Italy because they strove for it; the hegemony (and the sovereignty which grew out of it) over the territories of the Mediterranean was, to a certain extent, thrown into the hands of the Romans by the force of circumstances, without intentional effort on their part to acquire it.— MOмMSEN.

GREECE.

THE ACHEAN LEAGUE.

GREECE was from this time greatly distracted in her affairs.

Greek power, Greek energy, Greek genius, might now be found indeed anywhere rather than in Greece. ARNOLD.

She, however, made an independent stand against Macedonia by means of the Achæan League, the Ætolian League, and other smaller leagues. The Achæan League was formed about 280 B. C.

The first germ of a new confederacy, which existed from this time forwards till the total extinction of Grecian independence, and in which there was revived a faint image of the ancient glory of Greece, the pale martinmas summer of her closing year. - ARNOLD.

The Achæan League had united the best elements of Greece proper in a confederacy based on civilization, national spirit, and peaceful preparation for self-defence. MOMMSEN.

The federal union of Achaia was maintained, with varied fortunes, for one hundred and forty years, and assured to a large part of Greece an honorable freedom and a political independence, which could not have been enjoyed by a number of separate cities.

At length, however, it succumbed, first to the ascendency of Macedon, and at last to the irresistible dominion of Rome. Its history, if less glorious than that of the earlier republics of Greece, is yet specially interesting, as presenting to us one of the earliest and best-contrived examples of a federal state, and the last home of Grecian liberty.

This league presented an example of pure democracy, in the form of a federal union. As in Athens-the highest type of pure democracy the sovereign power was vested in the assembly, so in the Achæan League the like power was exercised by the federal assembly, in which all citizens of the confederation had equal rights. — MAY.

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ALEXANDRIA.

THE Greek or Macedonian colony which was planted in the city of Alexandria, that had been founded by the Conqueror, and called after him, lived and flourished, and Alexandria soon took its place in the front rank of cities. Here arose a singularly brilliant and unique development of religious and speculative thought, and the school of Alexandria became famous throughout the world.

When Alexander the Great founded his stately capital on the Delta, it was with the political and commercial view of making it the imperial city of the world. Ptolemy, who in the fourfold division received this southern portion of his empire, sought further to make it "the metropolis of science, the asylum of letters, and sanctuary of light." Alexandria became "the great Hellenic city, centre of the commerce of three continents, the common shelter of letters and the arts," the "crown of all cities." When Physco