FIFTH SIEGE, A.C. 211.
This siege, although so short a one as to occupy but little space in our narration, belongs to a very interesting period in the Roman history: it occurred in the course of what are called the Punic wars, which were the contests of two of the most powerful states then in existence, for supremacy. Rome and Carthage were like two suns; they had become too powerful for both to retain their splendour in one hemisphere. They were really the noblest conflicts in which Rome was engaged; there was a rivalry in generals and soldiers worthy of being sustained by the great republic; and though Rome was in the end the conqueror, and her generals were great, it is doubtful whether she can exhibit in her annals so perfect a captain as Hannibal. The Carthaginians suffer, in the opinion of posterity, in another way; the Romans were not only the victors, but the historians; Punic bad faith is proverbial in the Roman language, but we strongly suspect that a Carthaginian Polybius or Livy would have found as many sins against the laws of nations committed by the one party as the other. The man was the painter, and not the lion. Whether it is from want of sympathy with a mere nation of the sword, we know not; but, notwithstanding the great men who illustrated Rome’s armies and senate, we cannot help taking part with Hannibal and his countrymen throughout these wars. Much as we like Cato the Censor in other respects, we cannot but view him, with his figs and his “delenda est Carthago,” as a spiteful old fellow, whom we should very much have liked to see disappointed.
After various and great successes, of which it is not our business to speak, Hannibal, to terrify the Romans, presented himself before their city. The consuls, who had received orders to watch that the republic should receive no injury, felt it their duty to encounter him. When they were on the point of engaging, a violent storm compelled both parties to retire; and the same thing occurred several times; so that Hannibal, believing that he saw in this event something supernatural, said, according to Livy, that sometimes fortune and sometimes his will was always wanting to make him master of Rome. That which still more surprised him was, that whilst he was encamped at one of the gates of the city, the Romans sent an army out of one of the other gates into Spain; and that the very field in which he was encamped was sold at the same time, without that circumstance having diminished the value of it. In order to avenge himself, he put up to auction the goldsmiths’ shops which were around the most public place in Rome, and then retired.