30. Their armed attendants having retired to an equal distance, they met, each attended by one interpreter, being the greatest generals not only of their own times, but of any to be found in the records of the times preceding them, and equal to any of the kings or generals of any nation whatever. When they came within sight of each other they remained silent for a short time, thunderstruck, as it were, with mutual admiration. At length Hannibal thus began: "Since fate hath so ordained it, that I, who was the first to wage war upon the Romans, and who have so often had victory almost within my reach, should voluntarily come to sue for peace, I rejoice that it is you, above all others, from whom it is my lot to solicit it. To you, also, amid the many distinguished events of your life, it will not be esteemed one of the least glorious, that Hannibal, to whom the gods had so often granted victory over the Roman generals, should have yielded to you; and that you should have put an end to this war, which has been rendered remarkable by your calamities before it was by ours. In this also fortune would seem to have exhibited a disposition to sport with events, for it was when your father was consul that I first took up arms; he was the first Roman general with whom I engaged in a pitched battle; and it is to his son that I now come unarmed to solicit peace. It were indeed most to have been desired, that the gods should have put such dispositions into the minds of our fathers, that you should have been content with the empire of Italy, and we with that of Africa: nor, indeed, even to you, are Sicily and Sardinia of sufficient value to compensate you for the loss of so many fleets, so many armies, so many and such distinguished generals. But what is past may be more easily censured than retrieved. In our attempts to acquire the possessions of others we have been compelled to fight for our own; and not only have you had a war in Italy, and we also in Africa, but you have beheld the standards and arms of your enemies almost in your gates and on your walls, and we now, from the walls of Carthage, distinctly hear the din of a Roman camp. What, therefore, we should most earnestly deprecate, and you should most devoutly wish for, is now the case: peace is proposed at a time when you have the advantage. We who negotiate it are the persons whom it most concerns to obtain it, and we are persons whose arrangements, be they what they will, our states will ratify. All we want is a disposition not averse from peaceful counsels. As far as relates to myself, time, (for I am returning to that country an old man which I left a boy,) and prosperity, and adversity, have so schooled me, that I am more inclined to follow reason than fortune. But I fear your youth and uninterrupted good fortune, both of which are apt to inspire a degree of confidence ill comporting with pacific counsels. Rarely does that man consider the uncertainty of events whom fortune hath never