[Illustration: HANNIBAL.] No greater generals come before us in the grand story of Rome than those who are now to appear. One was born while the first Punic war was still raging, and the other in the year 235, when the gates of the temple of Janus were, for the first time in centuries, closed in token that Rome was at peace with the world. Hannibal, the elder of the two was son of Hamilcar Barca, and inherited his father's hatred of Rome, to which, indeed, he had been bound by a solemn oath, willingly sworn upon the altar at the dictation of his father. When Livy began his story of the second war between Rome and Carthage, he said that he was about to relate the most memorable of all wars that ever were waged; and though we may not express ourselves in such general terms, it is safe to say that no struggle recorded in the annals of antiquity, or of the middle age, surpasses it in importance or in historical interest. The war was to decide whether the conqueror of the world was to be self-centred Rome; or whether it should be a nation of traders, commanded by a powerful general who dictated to them their policy,--a nation not adapted to unite the different peoples in bonds of sympathy,--one whose success would, in the words of Dr. Arnold, "have stopped the progress of the world." Hannibal stands out among the famed generals of history as one of the very greatest. We must remember that we have no records of his own countrymen to show how he was estimated among them; but we know that though he was poorly supported by the powers at home, he was able to keep together an army of great size, by the force of his own personality, and to wage a disastrous war against the strongest people of his age, far from his base of supplies, in the midst of the enemy's country. It has well been said that the greatest masters of the art of war, from Scipio to Napoleon, have concurred in homage to his genius. The other hero, and the successful one, in the great struggle, was Publius Cornelius Scipio, who was born in that year when the temple of Janus was closed, of a family that for a series of generations had been noted in Roman history, and was to continue illustrious for generations to come. Another among the many men of note who came into prominence during the second war with Carthage was Quintus Fabius Maximus, a descendant of that Rullus who in the Sabine wars brought the names Fabius and Maximus into prominence. His life is given by Plutarch under the name Fabius, and he is remembered as the originator of the policy of delay in war, as our dictionaries tell us, because his plan was to worry his enemy, rather than risk a pitched battle with him. On this account the Romans called him _Cunctator_, which meant delayer, or one who is slow though safe, not rash. He was called also _Ovicula_, or the lamb, on account of his mild temper, and _Verrucosus_, because he had a wart on his upper lip (_Verruca_, a wart).