The Romans were suddenly roused by the attack of the Carthaginian horsemen, and, without waiting for food, moved out of camp, chasing the horsemen toward the river. Into its icy waters the Romans waded breast-high, and when they came up on the opposite bank they were benumbed with cold. As soon as Hannibal knew that the Romans had crossed the river he attacked them fiercely with all his troops. Two thousand men whom he had placed in ambush fell upon the rear of their line. Their allies were frightened by a charge of elephants. Seeing that destruction was certain, ten thousand of the best soldiers broke through the Carthaginian line and marched away. All the rest of the army was destroyed. ROMAN ENDURANCE. This was not the last of the Roman defeats. Two other armies were destroyed by Hannibal during the next two years. In the battle of Cannae nearly seventy thousand Romans, including eighty senators, were slain. The news filled the city with weeping women, but the senate did not think of yielding. When their allies deserted them, they besieged the faithless cities, took them, beheaded the rulers, and sold the inhabitants into slavery. They did not dare to fight Hannibal in the open field, but tried to wear him out by cutting off all small bodies of his troops and by making it difficult for him to get food for his army. They carried the war into Spain and finally into Africa, and when, with a weakened army, Hannibal faced them there, they defeated him. His defeat was the ruin of Carthage, for the unhappy city was compelled to see her fleet destroyed, to pay the Romans a huge sum of money, and to give up Spain to them. [Illustration: A ROMAN SOLDIER] OTHER ROMAN TRIUMPHS. The war with Carthage ended two hundred and two years before the birth of Christ. In the wars that followed, Roman armies fought not only in Spain and Africa, but also in Greece and Asia. Carthage was destroyed; as was also Corinth, a Greek city. Roman generals enriched themselves and sent great treasures back to Rome. Roman merchants grew rich because their rivals in Carthage and Corinth were ruined or because the conquered cities were forbidden to trade with any city but Rome. All this took a long time and many wars, but in the end the Romans became masters of every land along the shores of the Mediterranean. This was not wholly a misfortune, for the Romans had learned that the Greeks were superior to them in some things and they took the Greeks as their teachers in most of the arts of living. The ancient world became a sort of partnership, and we call its civilization Graeco-Roman, that is, both Greek and Roman.