And now in this renewed war we see a young man, aided only by a little group of compatriots, welding together army of the most heterogeneous elements--Spaniards, Gauls, Numidians, Moors, Greeks--men of almost every race except his own. We see him cutting loose from his base of supplies, leaving enemies behind him, to force his way through hostile races, through unknown lands bristling with almost impassable mountains and frigid with snow and ice. We see him conquering here, making friends and allies there, and, more wonderful than all, holding his mongrel horde together through hardships and losses by the force of his character alone. We see him at last descending into the plains of Italy. We see him not merely defeating but annihilating army after army more numerous than his own and composed of better raw material. We see him, unaided, ranging from end to end of the peninsula, none daring to meet him with opposing standards, and the greatest general of Rome winning laurels because he knew enough to recognise his own hopeless inferiority. All stories of reverses other than those of mere detachments may pretty safely be set down as the exaggeration of Roman writers. Situated as was Hannibal, the loss of one marshalled field would have meant immediate ruin, and ruin never came when he fought in Italy. On the contrary, without supplies save what his sword could take, without friends save what his genius and his fortune could win, he maintained his place and his superiority not for one or for two but through fourteen years, during all which time we hear no murmur of mutiny, no hint of aught but obedience and devotion among the incongruous and unruly elements from which he had fashioned his invincible army; and at the end we see him leaving Italy of his own free will, at the call of his country, to waste himself in a vain effort to save her from the blunders of other leaders and from the penalty of inherent weakness, which only his sword had so long warded off.