she for the first time measured herself against the resources of a great commonwealth. Rome, Carthage, and Macedonia were now the three great powers of Europe, and Rome had to strive against both the other two at once. It was well indeed for Rome that Macedonia never put forth her full strength while the strength of Carthage was still unbroken. As it was, Hannibal alone, without allies save the barbarians whom he gathered to his standard, after the fearful losses of his Pyrenæan and his Alpine march, was able to win every pitched battle that he fought, and to bring Rome so near to destruction that no power but Rome could have come alive out of the trial. Never in truth was the Eternal Question so near to its solution, so near to a solution which might have stifled the life of Europe for ever, as when Hannibal debated in his mind whether he should march straight from the field of Cannæ to the gates of Rome. It was a moment like that when it rested on the vote of the polemarch Kallimachos whether the thousands of Athens should meet the tens of thousands of Persia on the day of Marathôn. It is not for us to say whether such a march would have turned the destiny of the world for ever; it is enough that all that formed the life of Europe, all that was to form the life of Christendom, seemed at that moment to hang on the balance. The difficulty is fully to take in that Hannibal and his kinsfolk, the great house and the greatest of its sons, were in truth fighting in the same cause as the mere barbarian destroyers against whom the strife had to be waged at other stages of the long tale. Yet so it is; when we see Rome, with her citizens, colonists, and allies, holding up against the mercenaries of Carthage, when we contrast the votary of Jupiter with the votary of Moloch, we shall soon see on which side it was the abiding interests of mankind truly lay. It was after all in the worthiest of causes that the first of cities was pitted against the first of men. The overthrow of Carthage enabled Rome to go on to the overthrow of Greece; but if Greece was to have a conqueror, it was well that she should have a conqueror who could become a disciple in a way such as the Phœnician never could be. It is hard to name Hannibal along with Attila or even with Abd-al-rahman, yet the day of Zama, or rather the long endurance which made the day of Zama possible, must be set down by the still abiding world of Europe as a great salvation, a crowning mercy, alongside of the work of Aetius and Theodoric and the work of the elder Charles.