If the first Punic War was in some sort an episode in European history, a check in the expected march of Rome, still more truly can this be said of the second. The Hannibalian War stands out in the history of the world as before all things a strife between a man and a commonwealth, a strife between the first of men and the first of commonwealths. Yet if Hannibal overshadows Carthage, if Carthage seems but an instrument in his hands, we must remember that Hannibal has no being apart from Carthage, that the work that he does is not the work of Hannibal but the work of Carthage. Nor must we let the glory of Hannibal altogether quench the glory of the other members of his house. Rome had to strive against a line of heroes, against the whole lion-brood of the house of Barak. One son of Thunder came after another; what the Grace of Baal began, the Help of Baal came to strengthen. But in our swift œcumenical survey we must be careful of tarrying to do homage even to the greatest of individual men. We have to deal with the results of their actions. The object of the Hannibalian war was the humiliation, the destruction, of Rome. Its effect was to raise Rome higher than ever, to make her in one generation the head of the whole West, before long to be the head of the East also. It brought, as we have seen, the western peninsula into the current of European affairs; it brought it into that current as a stronghold of Roman dominion; it made Rome a power out of Europe; she came out of the struggle more than ever the head of Italy, mistress of all Sicily, advancing to be mistress of Spain, holding a commanding influence in Africa. If she lost Cisalpine Gaul for a season, it was only for a season; the work could be done again, and Rome won an influence in Gaul beyond the Alps which was presently to stand her in good stead. From Eastern Europe her eyes are turned away for a moment, to be turned thither again in another moment with far more steadfastness. That which, but for the check given to the course of things by the great Hannibalian episode, we might have looked for as the next scene of the drama, now actually comes on the stage as an episode within the episode. Under cover as it were of the war with Hannibal, Rome for the first time wages war east of the Hadriatic as the ally of one of the chief Greek powers and as the enemy of another. But if that first war between Rome and Macedonia looks like an episode, if it seems trifling beside the great strife with Hannibal, that was merely because the Macedonian king failed to do what in reason he ought to have done, if he went to war at all. The phalanx and the siege-train of Philip failed to take their place alongside of the horsemen and the elephants of Hannibal. Still the first Macedonian war marks a most important stage in the advance of Rome towards the East. Rome now for the first time measured herself against the resources of a great kingdom, as in the war with Carthage