Livy[36] says that he prepared some poison which he kept by him ready for such an emergency, and that as he was about to drink it he said:—­“Let us set the Roman people free from their terrible anxiety, since they think it long to wait for the death of the old man whom they hate.  However, Titus will not gain a glorious victory, or one worthy of his ancestors, who sent to bid Pyrrhus beware of poison, although he was their enemy and actually at war with them.”

XXI.  Thus is Hannibal said to have perished.  When the news was brought to the Senate many thought that Titus had acted officiously and cruelly in putting Hannibal to death, when he was living unharmed and helpless, merely in order to obtain the credit of having killed him.  When they reflected upon the mildness and magnanimity of Scipio Africanus they wondered yet more, for Scipio, after vanquishing the terrible and unconquered Hannibal in Libya, did not drive him into exile, or insist upon his countrymen delivering him up.  He actually met him on friendly terms before the battle, and when he made a treaty with him after his victory he did not bear himself unseemly or insult his rival’s misfortune.  It is related that they met again in Ephesus, and that as they walked together Hannibal took the place of honour, while Africanus walked contentedly beside him.  Their conversation turned upon great generals, and when Hannibal stated his opinion that the best of generals was Alexander, next to him Pyrrhus, and next himself, Scipio, with a quiet smile, asked him:  “What would you have said, if I had not conquered you?” “In that case, Scipio,” answered Hannibal, “I should not have reckoned myself third but first of generals.”  The people remembering this cried shame upon Titus, for having laid hands upon a man whom another had slain.[37] Some few, however, praised the deed, thinking that Hannibal, as long as he lived, was a fire which might easily be fanned into a destructive conflagration.  They pointed out that even when he was in the prime of life it was not his bodily strength or personal prowess that made him so terrible to the Romans, but his intellect and skill, together with his inveterate hatred of Rome, none of which had been diminished by age, but that his natural gifts remained the same, while also fortune was wont to change, and so those who had any permanent cause of enmity with another nation were ever encouraged by hopes of success to make new attacks.  Indeed subsequent events seemed to prove Titus right, as Aristonikus, the son of the harp-player, in his admiration for Eumenes, filled the whole of Asia with revolt and revolution, while Mithridates, after his tremendous losses at the hands of Sulla and Fimbria, again gathered together such great forces both by land and sea to oppose Lucullus.  Yet Hannibal did not fall so low as Caius Marius.  The former was to the last the friend of a king, and spent his time in sailing in ships, riding on horseback, and in the study of how to keep a military force efficient; whereas the Romans, who had laughed Marius to scorn as he wandered a beggar in Africa, soon licked the dust before him while he flogged and slaughtered them in Rome.  Thus no one of our present circumstances can be said to be either important or trifling, great or small, in comparison with what is to come, but we only cease to change when we cease to exist.