now forced him to take office, against his wish, though his actions and his language were of the most insulting character.  A great union of parties had taken place, for Hasdrubal was marching to Italy, for the purpose of effecting a junction with his brother Hannibal, and it was felt that nothing short of perfect union could save the State.  The State was saved, the two old consuls acting together, and defeating and slaying Hasdrubal in the last great battle of the war that was fought in Italy.  The old fogies were too much for their foe, a much younger man than either of them, and a soldier of high reputation.

It must be admitted, however, that the Second Punic War is fairly quotable by those who insist upon the superiority of youthful generals over old ones, for the two greatest men who appeared in it were young leaders,—­Hannibal, and Publius Cornelius Scipio, the first Africanus.  No man has ever exceeded Hannibal in genius for war.  He was one of the greatest statesmen that ever lived, and he was so because he was the greatest of soldiers.  He might have won pitched battles as a mere general, but it was his statesmanship that enabled him to contend for sixteen years against Rome, in Italy, though Rome was aided by Carthaginian copperheads.  But, though a young general, Hannibal was an old soldier when he led his army from the Ebro to the Trebia, as the avenging agent of his country’s gods.  His military as well as his moral training began in childhood; and when his father, Hamilcar Barcas,[B] was killed, Hannibal, though but eighteen, was of established reputation in the Carthaginian service.  Eight years later he took the place which his father and brother-in-law had held, called to it by the voice of the army.  During those eight years he had been constantly employed, and he brought to the command an amount and variety of experience such as it has seldom been the lot of even old generals to acquire.  Years brought no decay to his faculties, and we have the word of his successful foe, that at Zama, when he was forty-five, he showed as much skill as he had displayed at Cannae, when he was but thirty-one.  Long afterward, when an exile in the East, his powers of mind shine as brightly as they did when he crossed the Pyrenees and the Alps to fulfil his oath.  Scipio, too, though in a far less degree than Hannibal, was an old soldier.  He had been often employed, and was present at Cannae, before he obtained that proconsular command in Spain which was the worthy foundation of his fortunes.  The four years that he served in that country, and his subsequent services in Africa, qualified him to meet Hannibal, whose junior he was by thirteen years.  That he was Hannibal’s superior, because he defeated him at Zama, with the aid of Masinissa, no more follows than that Wellington was Napoleon’s superior, because, with the aid of Bluecher, he defeated him at Waterloo.  It would not be more difficult to account for the loss of the African field than it is to account for the loss of