Plutarch states that Alexander founded more than seventy new cities in Asia. So large a number of them is neither verifiable nor probable, unless we either reckon up simple military posts or borrow from the list of foundations established by his successors. Except Alexandria in Egypt, none of the cities founded by Alexander himself can be shown to have attained any great development. The process of “Hellenizing” Asia, in as far as Asia was ever “Hellenized,” which has so often been ascribed to Alexander, was in reality the work of the successors to his great dominion. We read that Alexander felt so much interest in the extension of science that he gave to Aristotle the immense sum of eight hundred talents in money, placing under his direction several thousand men, for the purpose of prosecuting zoölogical researches. These exaggerations are probably the work of those enemies of the philosopher who decried him as a pensioner of the Macedonian court; but it is probable enough that Philip, and Alexander in the earlier part of his reign, may have helped Aristotle in the difficult process of getting together facts and specimens for observation from esteem toward him personally rather than from interest in his discoveries. The intellectual turn of Alexander was toward literature, poetry, and history. He was fond of the “Iliad” especially, as well as of the Attic tragedians; so that Harpalus, being directed to send some books to him in Upper Asia, selected as the most acceptable packet various tragedies of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, with the dithyrambic poems of Telestes and the histories of Philistus. HANNIBAL. BY THEODOR MOMMSEN. [A Carthaginian statesman and soldier, one of the foremost generals of antiquity, born 247 B.C., died 183. The series of Italian campaigns in which he imperiled the very existence of Rome are commented on by modern military critics as models of brilliancy and daring, combined with far-sighted prudence. Finally compelled to evacuate Italy, he was defeated and his army destroyed by Publius Cornelius Scipio, afterward surnamed Africanus, at the battle of Zama in Africa in 202. Exiled from Carthage, he spent the latter years of his life in fomenting war against Rome among the Eastern nations, and finally committed suicide to prevent being delivered over to the hands of Rome. References: Mommsen’s “History of Rome,” Plutarch’s “Lives.”] When Hamilcar departed to take command in Spain, he enjoined his son Hannibal, nine years of age, to swear at the altar of the Supreme God eternal hatred to the Roman name, and reared him and his younger sons, Hasdrubal and Mago--the “lion’s brood,” as he called them--in the camp, as the inheritors of his projects, of his genius, and of his hatred.