died with him.  Lastly, during the latter years when the senate certainly began, to apprehend that it was not prudent long to delay the renewal of the war, there was the very intelligible wish to dispose of the Gauls in the valley of the Po in the first instance, for these, threatened with extirpation, might be expected to avail themselves of any serious war undertaken by Rome to allure the Transalpine tribes once more to Italy, and to renew those Celtic migrations which were still fraught with very great peril.  That it was not regard either for the Carthaginian peace party or for existing treaties which withheld the Romans from action, is self-evident; moreover, if they desired war, the Spanish feuds furnished at any moment a ready pretext.  The conduct of Rome in this view is by no means unintelligible; but as little can it be denied that the Roman senate in dealing with this matter displayed shortsightedness and slackness—­faults which were still more inexcusably manifested in their mode of dealing at the same epoch with Gallic affairs.  The policy of the Romans was always more remarkable for tenacity, cunning, and consistency, than for grandeur of conception or power of rapid organization—­qualities in which the enemies of Rome from Pyrrhus down to Mithradates often surpassed her.

Hannibal

Thus the smiles of fortune inaugurated the brilliantly conceived project of Hamilcar.  The means of war were acquired—­a numerous army accustomed to combat and to conquer, and a constantly replenished exchequer; but, in order that the right moment might be discovered for the struggle and that the right direction might be given to it, there was wanted a leader.  The man, whose head and heart had in a desperate emergency and amidst a despairing people paved the way for their deliverance, was no more, when it became possible to carry out his design.  Whether his successor Hasdrubal forbore to make the attack because the proper moment seemed to him to have not yet come, or whether, more a statesman than a general, he believed himself unequal to the conduct of the enterprise, we are unable to determine.  When, at the beginning of 534, he fell by the hand of an assassin, the Carthaginian officers of the Spanish army summoned to fill his place Hannibal, the eldest son of Hamilcar.  He was still a young man—­born in 505, and now, therefore, in his twenty-ninth year; but his had already been a life of manifold experience.  His first recollections pictured to him his father fighting in a distant land and conquering on Ercte; he had keenly shared that unconquered father’s feelings on the peace of Catulus, on the bitter return home, and throughout the horrors of the Libyan war.  While yet a boy, he had followed his father to the camp; and he soon distinguished himself.  His light and firmly-knit frame made him an excellent runner and fencer, and a fearless rider at full speed; the privation of sleep did not affect him, and he knew like a soldier how to enjoy or to dispense with