Despair
What thou owest, Rome, to the house of Nero, let the Metaurus be our witness, and Hasdrubal’s overthrow, and that bright day that scattered the gloom of Latium, the first to smile with cheering victory since the dread African careered through the cities of Italy, like fire through a pine forest or Eurus over Sicilian waves. After this the manhood of Rome gained strength from continued and successful effort, and temples desecrated by the unhallowed violence of the Carthaginian saw their gods restored. And the treacherous Hannibal at length exclaimed ‘Like stags, the prey of ravening wolves, we essay to pursue those whom it is a rare triumph to elude and escape.... No more shall I send triumphant messages to Carthage; fallen, yea fallen, is all the hope and greatness of our name with the loss of Hasdrubal. Naught is there that the hands of the Claudii will fail to perform, for Jupiter protects them with beneficent power, and prudent forethought brings them safe through the perils of war.’
Horace, Od. iv. 4. 36-76.
For four more years Hannibal stood at bay in South Italy. No Roman general drove him out, no Roman army could defeat him or the soldiers who stood by him with a matchless devotion only given to men who have, as Hannibal had, what we call the divine spark burning within them. When at last, after fourteen years in Italy, he sailed home, it was to try to save Carthage, the city which had betrayed him, and now called him to save them from the war the Romans had carried into their own country. He knew that he could not do it. The Carthaginians had signed their own doom when they failed to send him help. When they in their turn called to Hannibal the enemy was at their gates. In the great battle of Zama, outside Carthage, Scipio defeated Hannibal. This defeat was the end of Carthage as a great power. The Roman terms had to be accepted. The power and might of Carthage was over. The city still stood: but its empire was gone. All its overseas possessions were added to the Roman dominions.
A COIN OF VICTORY
Six years after Zama Hannibal was banished from Carthage at the bidding of Rome, although Scipio protested in the Senate, declaring it to be unworthy of Rome to fear one man in a ruined state. Hannibal took refuge in the East. There, some years later, he and Scipio met. Of the conversation between them many stories were told. Scipio asked Hannibal whom he thought the greatest general in the world. Hannibal replied that he put Alexander first, then Pyrrhus, then himself.
‘And where would you have placed yourself had I not defeated you?’
‘Oh, Scipio, then I should have placed myself not third but first.’