CHAPTER X.
HANNIBAL.
Now we will go back through all the years that have rolled away since Christ came to dwell upon the earth for a time. And yet further back in the history of the world we will look for our great man. Two hundred and forty-seven years before Christ, so the chronicle runs, one of the greatest generals, and one of the most interesting characters of antiquity, was born at Carthage.
And where is Carthage, does some one ask? Ah! we must ask, where was Carthage? your school maps of modern geography do not indicate the location of this ancient city, which was great and powerful, and situated upon the northern coast of Africa, near the site of the modern city of Tunis. In the annals of ancient history, Carthage figures largely, although no record of its early history has been discovered. The city
was destroyed 146 B.C. Another Carthage was built upon the same site, which in its turn was destroyed 647 A.D.; and of this second Carthage we are told that "few vestiges of its ancient grandeur remain to indicate its site except some broken arches of a great aqueduct which was fifty miles long."
At the time when our hero was born, the first Carthage was one of the two great and powerful cities of the world. It was about that time that Rome and Carthage began a war for the possession of the beautiful and rich island of Sicily. This was the first Punic War. The Carthagenians were defeated and obliged to give up the island to the Romans.
Hamilcar, a Carthagenian general, burning with thoughts of revenge, took his young son Hannibal into the temple and made him lay his hand upon the altar and swear eternal enmity to Rome; thus the boy grew up with this one absorbing passion filling his young soul—hatred to the Romans. When his father died, he succeeded to the command of the armies, and soon engaged in what is known as the second Punic War. He led his army across Spain and crossed the Pyrenees and marched through Gaul. You
see his object was to enter Italy from the North, but the Alps lifted their proud heads, seeming to be an insurmountable obstacle lying right in the path of this great army, like a long and frowning battlement. Would you not think the soldiers' hearts must have quailed as they looked up to the snow-capped peaks and realized that unless these were surmounted their expedition must fail!
Four little words tell the story—"he crossed the Alps!" But how much of iron resolution, of endurance, of suffering, of loss of life, and of perseverance lies behind that sentence! Those who know the Alps, and who also know what it means to lead an army through difficult passes, tell us that it was an undertaking of tremendous magnitude, and it would not have seemed strange if after undergoing such fatigue and hardship, the army had been defeated by the Roman forces which awaited them at the foot of the southern slope. But this was not the case. Hannibal was the victor not only in many minor engagements, but at last he obtained a complete victory at a place called Cannæ, where he destroyed the Roman army. This battle has been considered his greatest exploit in the line of
fighting. The spot where this bloody battle was fought is called the field of blood, and when we know that forty thousand men were slain there, we would almost expect to see even to this day, the soil stained with blood, and surely the stain if washed out of the soil cannot be washed out of the history of those nations.