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,