worthy of the son of Hamilcar and the brother of Hannibal. The Consul Nero hastened back to Apulia almost as speedily as he had come, and announced to Hannibal the defeat and death of his brother by throwing into his camp the severed head of Hasdrubal. "I recognize," said Hannibal, sadly, "the doom of Carthage." The victory of the Metaurus was, as we have already said, decisive of the fate of the war in Italy, and the conduct of Hannibal shows that he felt it to be such. From this time he abandoned all thoughts of offensive operations, and, withdrawing his garrisons from Metapontum and other towns that he still held in Lucania, collected together his forces within the peninsula of the Bruttii. In the fastnesses of that wild and mountainous region he maintained his ground for nearly four years, while the towns that he still possessed on the coast gave him the command of the sea. [Footnote 33: See the map in the "Smaller History of Greece," p. 117.] [Footnote 34: The story that Archimedes set the Roman ships on fire by the reflected rays of the sun is probably a fiction, though later writers give an account of this burning mirror.] [Footnote 35: Upon his tomb was placed the figure of a sphere inscribed in a cylinder. When Cicero was Quaestor in Sicily (B.C. 75), he found his tomb near one of the gates of the city, almost hid among briers, and forgotten by the Syracusans.] [Illustration: Hannibal.] CHAPTER XIV. SECOND PUNIC WAR. THIRD PERIOD: FROM THE BATTLE OF THE METAURUS TO THE CONCLUSION OF THE WAR. B.C. 206-201. After the battle of the Metaurus, the chief interest of the war was transferred to Spain and Africa. The Roman armies were led by a youthful hero, perhaps the greatest man that Rome ever produced, with the exception of Julius Caesar. The remaining period of the war is little more than the history of P. Scipio. This extraordinary man was the son of P. Scipio, who fell in Spain in B.C. 212, as already related. In his early years he acquired, to an extraordinary extent, the confidence and admiration of his countrymen. His enthusiastic mind led him to believe that he was a special favorite of heaven; and he never engaged in any public or private business without first going to the Capitol, where he sat some time alone, enjoying communion with the gods. For all he proposed or executed he alleged the divine approval: he believed himself in the revelations which he asserted had been vouchsafed to him; and the extraordinary success which attended all his enterprises deepened this belief.