Hannibal was as typically a fighter as even Alexander, though he preferred to prescribe his own time and conditions. But all through Alexander’s campaigns it happened that the results he aimed at could be accomplished only by hammering. And he had the power to hammer. Hannibal, on the contrary, found that he could not stand attrition; that he must save men. Alexander was constantly seeking conquests; Hannibal, like Frederick, only to keep what he had won, and in doing this he showed the world the first series of examples of intellectual war. Alexander’s strategy, in its larger aspect, was as far-seeing and far-reaching as that of any of the great captains, and he was the first to show it. But Alexander’s strategic movements had not been understood, and ran danger of being lost. Hannibal was, probably, the only man who understood what Alexander had done, and he impressed his own strategy so thoroughly upon the Romans that it modified their whole method of waging war. Alexander’s strategy was equally marked. Like Cæsar’s, his strategic field was the whole known world. But he did not exhibit that more useful phase of strategy, on a smaller theatre, which Hannibal has given us. While Hannibal’s movement into Italy was offensive, the years after Cannæ partook largely of the defensive. He was holding his own till he could get reënforcements from home, or the help of the Roman allies. And yet it was he who was the main-spring which furnished the action, the centre about which everything revolved. Perhaps there is no surer test of who is the foremost soldier of a campaign than to determine who it is upon whose action everything waits; who it is that forces the others to gauge their own by his movements. And this Hannibal always did. It made no odds whether it was in his weak or his strong years. It was Hannibal’s marching to and fro, Hannibal’s manœuvres, offensive or defensive, which predetermined the movements of the Roman armies. We know little about the personal appearance of Hannibal. We only know that in the march through the Arnus swamps he lost an eye. In the British Museum is an ancient bust of a soldier with but one eye--by some supposed to be Hannibal. But there is no authentic likeness of the man. It is improbable that he possessed Alexander’s charm of beauty. But in all his other qualities, mental and physical, he was distinctly his equal; and in his life he was simple, pure and self-contained.