This battle ended the war. Hannibal lived nineteen years after the defeat, for six years in Carthage,--thirteen in exile. Rome never felt secure until his death. Hannibal ranks with the few great captains of the world. Alexander, Cæsar, Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick, Napoleon, alone can stand beside him. In this galaxy the stars are equal. His self-reliant courage, which prompted him to undertake the conquest of Italy with twenty thousand foot and six thousand horse, without a definite base, and with uncertain confederates, is the mark which stamps the genius--or the fool. Without the ability and iron resolution to do so vast a thing, no great man ever accomplished results. Upon such a rock have been shattered many reputations. Hannibal had remarkable control over men. Reaching Cisalpine Gaul, it was but a few weeks before the whole province became his sworn allies, and they remained true and faithful to his cause, and bore their heavy burden with cheerful alacrity,--though then, as now, the most unstable of peoples. Hannibal possessed a keen knowledge of human nature, as well as an unbounded individual power over men. Unfortunately, only a few anecdotes remain to us as the portrait of this extraordinary man; but we cannot doubt that he carried that personal magnetism with him which lent a wonderful strength to what he said or did. His victories were as brilliant as any ever won; but on these does not rest his chief glory. When he won Trebia, Trasymene, Cannæ, he had opposed to him generals ignorant of the art of war, which art the genius of Hannibal enabled him to use in a manner beyond all others, and which his experience in many arduous campaigns had taught him to the bottom. But Hannibal instructed these same Romans in this very art of war,--and his later opponents fought him on his own system, and with wonderful aptness at learning what he had instilled into them with such vast pains. These scholars of Hannibal, however, able as they became, never in any sense grew to their master’s stature. They were strong in numbers and courage, they surrounded him on all sides, they cut off his reënforcements and victuals, they harassed his outposts and foragers, they embarrassed his marches,--all in the superb style he had shown them how to use. But, for all that, though outnumbering him many to one, not one or several of them could ever prevent his coming or going, at his own good time or pleasure, whithersoever he listed, and never was more than a momentary advantage gained over him in a pitched battle till the fatal day of Zama. Even after Hasdrubal’s death, his aggressors dared not attack him. Like a pack of bloodhounds around the boar at bay, none ventured to close in on him for a final struggle. Even when he embarked for Carthage,--the most dangerous of operations possible for an army,--it was not attempted to hamper his progress. Even Scipio, in Italy, seemed by no means anxious to