And After.
“It is not in the storm or in the strife
We feel benumbed and wish to be no more;
But in the after silence on the shore—
When all is lost except a little life.”—Byron.
Hannibal was only forty-five when he lost Zama. That flame of hatred toward Rome, kindled at the altar of Baal when he was a boy of only nine years, still raged within him inextinguishably. He had lost his right eye in the Roman campaign. His brave brothers, Mago, hero of Trebia, and Hasdrubal, hero of Metaurus, had fallen in battle. The second Punic War, the war of Rome against Hannibal, or rather of Hannibal against Rome, had after phenomenal successes, ended in the disastrous defeat at Zama and in the most humiliating conditions of peace imposed upon Carthage by world-conquering Rome. All, indeed, seemed lost except a little life; yet in this dull defeat-peace, this wearily sullen after-storm, the old hate fires insatiably raged.
Hannibal, unsupported and unappreciated by his own country, passed over into Asia. He wandered from Asiatic court to court ever striving to arouse enmity towards Rome or to incite the nations to battle against her. Rome steadily pursued her inveterate foe. From court to court he passed, and from country to country passed too, the paid assassins whose sole object in life was to bring Hannibal dead or alive to Rome.
And at the court of Prusias, king of Bythinia, Hannibal was at last hopelessly trapped. Hatefully grinning faces glared in upon him from corridors, doors, windows: Rome had won.
Hannibal’s presence of mind and proud dignity did not desert him even in that crucial hour, even when he toyed with death. Whilst adjusting his military robes in full presence of the leering faces at corridors, doors, and windows, he took from his finger a ring whose hollow setting contained a most potent poison. This he drank. And before any one of that self-gratulating victor-gang realized what was taking place, Hannibal fell forward dead.
The Catholic Church condemns suicide. The divine command Thou shalt not kill has as its complete predicate either thyself or another. No man can escape from God. Death only shifts the scene.
Stoicism advocated suicide; and many philosophies of the past taught that a man ought not to outlive honor.
When one considers not only the chagrin and humiliations and mental agonies, but also the rank physical tortures inflicted upon the vanquished in times past, the full meaning of Vae Victis (Woe to the vanquished!) is brought forcibly to the mind. Those were wild-beast times and the jungle-fights are ferocious. Plutarch speaking of the proscription list at the close of the civil war between Cæsar and Anthony says: “The terms of their mutual concessions were these: that Cæsar should desert Cicero, Lepidus his brother Paulus, and Anthony, Lucius Cæsar, his uncle by his mother’s side. Thus they let their anger and fury take from them the sense of humanity, and demonstrated that no beast is more savage than man, when possessed with power answerable to his rage.” And we read in Marlowe’s “Tamburlaine” that this mighty despot, conqueror of many Asiatic kings, made use of these one time monarchs to draw him in his chariot: and that bridled and with bits in their mouths they fumed forward under the swishing wire-lash, while galling insults goaded on their pangs.
“Forward, ye jades!
Now crouch, ye kings of greater Asia!
* * * * *
Thro’ the streets with troops of conquered kings,
I’ll ride in golden armor like the sun,
And in my helm a triple plume shall spring
Spangled with diamonds, dancing in the air,
To note me emperor of the threefold world.”
Whether this be only “Marlowe’s mighty line”, or whether it be the somewhat fantastic presentation of a dread reality—need not be known. The thoughtful student of history knows only too well just where to turn for human jungle-scenes. And there are many. From Assyrian cruelty boasting of pyramids of severed ears, lips, noses, and the deft art of flaying alive—down to Balkan-Turkish atrocities and Mexican murders the forest-way is long and dark and dreary. We hope light will yet shine upon this way. We dream that the black hags of war and of demon cruelty will not dare disport their hideousness in the future white-light. We would suspend judgment as to the past; we would not condemn Hannibal; we would play on the one-string lyre of hope—forlorn tho’ it be as Watts’ allegorical “Hope”—and we would wait kindly content with God’s plan for this world and for a better world to come.
[Chapter IV.]
TEUTOBERGER WALD
In Germany, in the modern principality of the Lippe, may still be seen traces of the historic struggle between the Roman legions under Varus and the Germanic barbarians led by Arminius. The names “das Winnefeld” (the field of victory), “die Knochenbahn” (the bone-lane), “die Knochenleke” (the bone-brook), “der Mordkessel” (the kettle of slaughter), which still characterize various places in the gloomy Teutoberger Wald, are in themselves reminders of scenes of horror which were once dread realities; while scattered here and there may still be seen traces of the Roman camp—unmistakable evidence of the one time presence of the Roman eagles.