P. Scipio and Hannibal, according to the common account, died in the year 569, the latter by his own hand, as the Romans had basely called upon Prusias, the king of Bithynia, to yield him up. It happened that the extensive and wealthy state of Eumenes, who was in a sort of thraldom to the Romans, was so unwarlike, that the small kingdom of Bithynia was formidable to him; and the latter had spread, and had wrested from him a great part of Phrygia on the Hellespont. In this war, Hannibal directed the undertakings of Prusias, and forthwith Roman ambassadors demanded his surrender. The king was loth to arrest him; but he ordered his house to be surrounded by soldiers, that he might secure him until he had made up his mind whether he should give him up. When Hannibal saw that every way of escape was shut out from him, he swallowed poison and died. This demand of the Romans is one of the infamies of that age. But even in their brightest times, they would not have been more generous to an enemy like Hannibal, as is shown by the case of C. Pontius in the Samnite war. Hannibal had been unaccountably overlooked by the Romans for some years. T. Quinctius Flamininus lent himself to the office of getting him to be delivered up. LITERATURE OF THE ROMANS AT THIS PERIOD. ATELLANÆ, PRÆTEXTATÆ; LIVIUS ANDRONICUS; NÆVIUS; ENNIUS; PLAUTUS. ROMAN HISTORIANS IN GREEK. We are by no means to fancy that the Romans, before they were acquainted with the Greeks, knew as little of Greek literature, as, for instance, our forefathers did at the time of the revival of learning, or that indeed they had had no literature whatever. The class of scholars and writers was then unknown; but the Romans, and all the Italian nations in general, were very well versed in Greek poetry. This is shown by their pictures and monuments of every kind, by the many representations of Greek fables on the vases of the Etruscans and other peoples, and by the idiomatic names of Grecian heroes which were current in Italy; for instance, Ulixes,[38] instead of Odysseus; Catamitus, instead of Ganymedes; Alumentus, instead of Laomedon, and so forth; which are proofs that they really were in the mouths of the people. The religion of the Romans was not mythological, but a regular theology; their deities were νοούμενα, the myths referring but to the gods of lesser rank: they were therefore wanting in that which gives so much life to the Greek poetry. This of course applies rather to the Sabine element in the Roman population; the Pelasgian one was evidently more akin to the Grecian. By the other element, as well as by the Sibylline books and by the oracle of Apollo, they were familiarized with the mythology, and, therefore, likewise with the poetry of the Greeks: that mythology, there can be no doubt, was perfectly intelligible to the Romans. In Rome, after the end of the first Punic war, Greek poetry became still more known through the medium of the