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 on his death, which took place soon after, Hannibal Barca, the son of Hamilcar, and then only twenty-six years of age, was appointed to the command. The siege by him of Saguntum, an independent Spanish town, which had claimed the assistance of the Romans, led to the Second Punic War ( 218-201). Little did the Romans know what a war it was to be! Crossing the Pyrenees, the young Carthaginian general, the greatest military commander probably, and certainly one of the ablest men the world ever saw, pushed his way through the Gallic tribes, and effecting the passage of the Alps, descended into Italy with an army of 12,000 Africans, 8,000 Spaniards, and 6,000 Carthaginian horse. Rousing the Cisalpine Gauls, and defeating in several successive battles the Roman generals sent against him, he made his way into the south of Italy ( 217); and having in the following year inflicted on the Romans at Cannæ the greatest defeat they had ever received, he remained in Italy fifteen years ( 217-202), moving hither and thither, keeping seven or eight Roman generals, and among them the wary Fabius and the bold Marcellus, continually employed, scattering the Romans like chaff wherever he appeared, exhausting the finances of the state, and detaching the Italian nations from their allegiance. Had he received reinforcements, as he expected, from Spain, where he had left his brother Hasdrubal in command, Rome might have fallen. Fortunately, however, for the Romans, while they were manfully opposing Hannibal in Italy, one of their generals, the great Scipio, was busily engaged in Spain. To prevent Spain from falling into Scipio's hands, Hasdrubal was obliged to remain in it; and it was not till 207, when all hope of retaining his footing in that peninsula was lost, that he set out to join his brother. He crossed the Alps in safety, but was attacked, defeated and slain on his march through Italy; and Hannibal was left to his own resources. These, however, were exhaustless; and with the assistance of the Italian nations, who, especially the unprivileged classes, were friendly to the Carthaginians, and hated Rome, he might still have shattered the Commonwealth in pieces, had not Scipio passed over from Spain into Africa, and defeating the Carthaginians in several battles, with the help of a Numidian prince named Masinissa, compelled them to recall their greatest man for the defense of his native city. In 202, or the year of the city 552, Hannibal quitted Italy, where he had spent the best period of his life. Not long after his landing in Africa, he was defeated by Scipio at Zama, and his countrymen were obliged in consequence to agree to a peace on very severe terms.

The Second Punic War concluded, and Italy once more pacified, the Romans made war on Philip III. king of Macedonia, and virtual ruler of all the Greek states, who had offended them by entering into a treaty with Hannibal. The war was protracted over seventeen years ( 214-197,) but ended in the reduction of Macedonia, and the proclamation by the Romans of the independence of the other Greek states. Seized with a desire to assume the place which the Macedonian king had been unable to maintain, Antiochus the Great, king of Syria, and representative therefore of the Greek empire in Asia, crossed into Greece, where he joined the Ætolians against the Romans. Defeated, however, in Greece, and forsaken by the Ætolians, he was pursued into Asia, and after the loss of a great battle at Magnesia, obliged to submit to the Romans, who thus became virtual masters of the various kingdoms and states of Asia Minor