HANNIBAL, like Napoleon, and
even more decidedly than Na-
poleon, towers over all the fig-
ures of an age of war in its
grandest aspects, and of the shock
of nations in conflict. Except his
father, who died when Hannibal was
still a youth, no Carthaginian of his
time had a pretence to greatness; he is
supreme over the soldiers and statesmen of Rome;
he is the master spirit of the Mediterranean World.
Nothing in the period of the Second Punic War can
be compared to Hannibal, save the great people
which at last overthrew the great man. We possess
hardly anything which has emanated directly from
this extraordinary personage, scarcely a phrase, not
line of correspondence; his achievements and
character have been described by bitter enemies,
with the doubtful exception of one historian who
understood his genius, yet inclined to the side of
Rome. Yet through the mists of calumny and de-
traction we can see the form and the lineaments of
that gigantic figure, one of the most commanding

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