[Footnote 24: A colony, I may remind my readers, was practically a military outpost. It was inhabited by old soldiers to whom land had been granted. There were two classes of colonies, Roman and Latin, as there were two kinds of citizenship, Roman and Latin. Livy has an interesting passage about the behaviour of the Latin colonies in the year 209. There were thirty in all. Twelve of these declared themselves to be unable to comply with the requisitions for men and money made upon them. The other eighteen expressed themselves in an opposite sense, as willing to do even more than was asked of them. Among these we find Brundisium, Luceria, Venusium, Paestum, and Beneventum, all important places in the region generally occupied by Hannibal. Livy goes so far as to say that it was their support that was the salvation of Rome. "After all these years they must not be forgotten or deprived of the praise which they so well deserved."] IX HANNIBAL'S LAST BATTLE What Hannibal proposed to himself by remaining in Italy after the disastrously decisive day of the Metaurus it is not easy to say. Perhaps he continued to hope against hope that the great anti-Roman combination, for which he had been working for more than ten years, might yet come into being. To us, who know what Rome became in after days, it seems strange indeed that the kingdoms which she was destined to crush one after another should not have joined with Carthage in the attempt to destroy her. If Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt could have combined while Hannibal had still a footing in Italy, she could hardly have survived. But they were too jealous of each other, or too short-sighted. Possibly they were unwilling to make Carthage, which the Greeks had no reason to love, too powerful. And what was not done after Cannæ would hardly be attempted after the Metaurus. Anyhow, Hannibal remained in Italy for four years after Hasdrubal's death. He now held only the extreme south of the Peninsula, and the limits of the region which he occupied were slowly contracted by the loss of town after town. Still he clung to his position; he could have gone at any time; but he could not bear to give up the dominating hope of his life, and he lingered on. At last, late in the year 203, in obedience to an urgent summons from home, he embarked his army. No attempt was made to hinder him. The Romans indeed were unfeignedly glad to see his departure. They had lost three hundred thousand men during the fifteen years of his stay. The huge dragon of his dream had indeed desolated Italy. It is said that when he took his last look of the land where he had met with such successes and such disappointments, he bitterly reproached his countrymen for the grudging support which they had given him. "It is not the Roman people, so often routed in the field, it is Hanno"--the leader of the Peace party in Carthage--"that has vanquished me." The charge can hardly have been true; but it is natural to one