It took Rome many years and enormous efforts to recover from this disaster, and from the destruction of her fleets by tempests which unluckily followed and gave Carthage once more the mastery of the sea. Carthage, too, had found a man of genius, Hamilcar Barca, whose intense hatred of Rome, ever growing as she gradually prevailed, inspired his people to continue the struggle by sea, and his own forces to hold on grimly to a mountain fortress in the north-west of Sicily, Mount Eryx, the scene of the games in the fifth book of Virgil’s _Æneid_. Both sides were exhausted and indeed permanently damaged; but the strength of Rome was more enduring, and in 241 B.C. Hamilcar consented himself to negotiate a peace, by which Sicily and the adjacent smaller islands passed into the hands of Rome for ever. Soon afterwards, taking advantage of a deadly war which Carthage had to wage with her own mercenaries, Rome contrived, in that spirit of “slimness” already noticed, to get possession of both Sardinia and Corsica. This shows that the Senate understood the importance of these islands for a power in command of the western seas; but unjust dealing brought its own reward. It is possible that the great Hamilcar might have forgiven Rome her injuries to his country but for this. As it was, his hatred of her sunk into his soul more deeply than ever, and that hatred, springing up afresh in the breast of his son Hannibal, all but destroyed his enemy off the face of the earth. He retired to Spain, to organise a Carthaginian dominion there, of which he was himself practically king, and which he destined as a base of operations against Rome in another war; and before he started, as Hannibal himself told the story long afterwards, the father made his boy of nine years old take a solemn oath to cherish an eternal hatred of the enemies of his country.