The second Punic war was not so much a struggle between Carthage and Rome, as a war entered into by Hannibal and carried on by him against the Roman republic in spite of the opposition of his own people; and this fact makes the strength of his character appear in the strongest light. Just at the close of the first war, the Carthaginians had established in Spain a city which took the name of New Carthage--that is, New New City,--and had extended their dominion over much of that country, as well as over most of the territory on the south shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Hannibal laid siege to the independent city of Saguntum, on the northeast of New Carthage, and, after several months of desperate resistance, took it, thus throwing down the gauntlet to Rome and completing the dominion of Carthage in that region (B.C. 218). Rome sent ambassadors to Carthage, to ask reparation and the surrender of Hannibal: but "War!" was the only response, and for seventeen years a struggle of the most determined sort was carried on by Hannibal and the Roman armies. After wintering at New Carthage, Hannibal started for Italy with a great army. He crossed the Pyrenees, went up the valley of the Rhone, and then up the valley of the Isère, and most probably crossed the Alps by the Little St. Bernard pass. It was an enterprise of the greatest magnitude to take an army of this size through a hostile country, over high mountains, in an inclement season; but no difficulty daunted this general. In five months he found himself in the valley of the Duria (modern Dora Baltea), in Northern Italy, with a force of twenty thousand foot and six thousand cavalry (the remains of the army of ninety-four thousand that had left New Carthage), with which he expected to conquer a country that counted its soldiers by the hundred thousand. The father of the great Scipio met Hannibal in the plains west of the Ticinus, and was routed, retreating to the west bank of the Trebia, where the Romans, with a larger force, were again defeated, though the December cold caused the invading army great suffering and killed all the elephants but one. The success of the Carthaginians led the Gauls to flock to their standard, and Hannibal found himself able to push forward with increasing vigor. [Illustration: TERENCE, THE LAST ROMAN COMIC POET.]