The military hero, the “chief who in triumph advances”, the Warrior Bold, the idols of history will continue to glimmer secure in cob-web fascination even when armaments shall have been banished from off the face of the earth and wars shall be remembered only as the myths of days that are no more. We forgive Granicus-Issus-Arbela for the sake of Alexander the Great. And the conqueror of the world died, aged thirty-two, in Babylon. This cognizant old city and Accadian Euphrates were too wearily wise to wonder two thousand years ago. They had seen the rise and fall of many monarchs: and one more, this boy-wonder from the West, could arouse no throb of pitying surprise from scenes that dully remembered dead and gone dynasties. Why, death was old when Accadia was young ten thousand years ago; lament this stripling? No. And thus went out the conquered Conqueror of the world. The little stream Metaurus witnessed perhaps the most momentous battle of history. Yet no magic name shines forth from that strife either as victor or vanquished. Nero, the Roman consul, victor; and Hasdrubal, brother of Hannibal, vanquished; are not the names of favorites of fame. As Byron says, of a thousand students hearing the name _Nero_ nine hundred and ninety-nine recall the last Julian Emperor of Rome, and one laboriously remembers the hero of Metaurus. And yet were historians endowed with Platonic vision whereby the great is perceived in the small, doubtless the bloody conflict by the stream would be seen pivotal of history. O hopes and fears and blasted dreams of so gigantic scale, played on a stage of Alpine eminence, no wonder you stand spectacular thro’ the ages! “Carthagini jam non ego nuntios Mittam superbos. Occidit, occidit Spes omnis et fortuna nostri Nominis, Hasdrubale interemto.” --_Horace._ “Alas, I shall not now send to Carthage proud bearers of good news,” said Hannibal, as he mournfully gazed at the severed head of his brother, hurled insolently into his camp, even as with impatient hope he awaited news of that brother’s coming and dreamed the dream of their successfully united forces, attack on Rome, victory, and the dispatch of proud messengers to Carthage. With prophetic gaze did the hero of Cannæ see in that bloodily dead face the negation of his eight years’ victory in Italy, his recall to Carthage, his defeat at Zama, his exile and bitter death, and the onward stride of world-conquering Rome over the ashes of Carthage. Cities that have been and that are no more: Niobe-woe: rivers that know of that long ago and wearily sigh as they flow! Old Tiber disdains the paragraph; a volume for it or--nothing. Lordly dark Danube--so long the barrier between the known and the unknown, civilization and barbarism, the magic sun-gardens of Italy and the Teutoberger Wald!