Had Hannibal defeated the Romans, the whole course of the world’s history might have been changed. Looking back now it seems impossible that he could ever have thought he could do so. But part of the secret of a truly great man is that he believes nothing to be impossible on which he has set his will. The power to set the will firmly, clearly, with knowledge, on some action to be done, of whatever kind it be; to sacrifice, for that end, one’s own wishes; to crush down the desire every human being feels for rest, enjoyment, comfort at the moment, and go on when the chance of success seems far away; this power is the instrument by which extraordinary things are brought about. Because of this power behind him Hannibal was a real danger to Rome, and Rome knew it. If he could have made the people of Carthage feel as he did, he would have conquered. But he could not. His will was set on defeating Rome: the will of the Carthaginians was set, not on this, but on a life of ease and comfort for themselves. And because the Carthaginians were built thus, and not like Hannibal, and he could not, by his single force, make them like himself, it would have been a disaster for the world if Hannibal had won. The Romans defeated him because they, and not the Carthaginians, had in them something of the force that moved Hannibal: they, as Polybius said of them, ‘believed nothing impossible upon which their minds were set’. IV The Scipios Scipio, to whom after his defeat of Hannibal the name of Africanus was given by his countrymen, was a Roman of a new type. For him the interest and business of the world were not bounded by war. He read much and travelled widely in the course of his life and thought deeply on many things that had hardly begun to trouble the ordinary Roman of his time, though they were to trouble deeply the Romans who came after him. He loved Rome: but his love was not the simple unquestioning devotion of the old Romans, for whom it was enough that the city was there, and that their religion as well as their patriotism was bound up with it. He loved Rome because he believed it stood for something fine. Of Scipio’s domestic life we do not know much: but he was a man of many warm and devoted friendships and certainly showed deep attachment to his father, to his brother, and to Scipio Aemilianus, his grandson by adoption. When young he was distinguished by his slim height and extreme fairness of complexion; a skin that flushed easily and showed the feelings he afterwards learned to conceal.