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on both flanks, Hasdrubal, with his victorious Gaulish and Spanish horsemen, broke with thundering fury upon their

rear.

12. Then followed a butchery such as has no recorded equal, except the slaughter of the Persians in their camp, when the Greeks forced it after the battle of Platea. Unable to fight or fly, with no quarters asked or given, the Romans and Italians fell before the swords of their enemies, till, when the sun set upon the field, there were left, out of that vast multitude, no more than three thousand men alive and unwounded; and these fled in straggling parties, under cover of the darkness, and found a refuge in the neighboring towns. The consul Æmilius, the proconsul Servilius, the late master of the horse, M. Minucius, two quæstors', twenty-one military tribunes, and eighty senators, lay dead amidst the carnage; Varro, with seventy horsemen, had escaped from the rout of the allied cavalry on the right of the army, and made his way safely to Venusia...

13. Less than six thousand men of Hannibal's army had fallen; no greater price had he paid for the total destruction of more than eighty thousand of the enemy, for the capture of their two camps, for the utter annihilation, as it seemed, of all their means of offensive warfare. It is no wonder that the spirits of the Carthaginian officers were elated by this unequalled victory. Mahar'bal, seeing what his cavalry had done, said to Hannibal, "Let me advance immediately with the horse, and do thou follow to support me; in four days from this time thou shalt sup in the capitol." There are moments when rashness is wisdom; and it may be that this was one of them. The statue of the goddess Victory in the capitol may well have trembled in every limb on that day, and have dropped her wings as if forever, but Hannibal came not; and if panic had for one moment unnerved the iron courage of the Roman aristocracy, on the next their inborn spirit revived; and their resolute will, springing beyond its present power, created, as is the law of our nature, the power which it required.

[This was the last important victory gained by Hannibal. The Romans rallied, and

under their great leaders, Fabius and Marcellus, together with Scipio in Spain and Africa, succeeded in turning the tide of victory against the Carthaginians. Hannibal was recalled to defend Carthage itself against the assaults of Scipio, and on the plains of Zama met with a final and disastrous defeat (202 B.C.). This ended the second Punic War.]

Destruction of Carthage.-Ferguson.

[The third Punic War was brought on by the inveterate hatred of the Romans toward Carthage; Cato, one of their senators, ending every speech which he made with the words, Delenda est Carthago" (Carthage must be destroyed). A pretext was soon found for attack; and although the Carthaginians complied with every demand of their inveterate foes, even surrendering their arms and military stores, they were told at last that they must leave the city and abandon it to destruction. They then became desperate, shut the city gates, and put to death every Roman within its walls, being determined to defend the city to the last. The result is told in the following extract from the "History of the Roman Republic," by Adam Ferguson, LL.D.]

1. CARTHAGE was situated at the bottom of a spacious bay, covered on the west by the promontory of Apollo, on the east by that of Her'mes, or Mercury, at the distance of about fifteen leagues from each other. The city stood on a peninsula joined to the mainland by an isthmus about three miles in breadth, and covering a basin or harbor, in which their docks and their shipping were secured from storms and hostile attacks. The Byrsa, or citadel, commanded the isthmus, and presented at this only entrance to the town by land a wall thirty feet thick and sixty feet high. The whole circumfer ence of the place was about twenty miles.

2. The besiegers, by their shipping, had access to that side of the town on which the walls were washed by the sea; but chain which was stretched were shut out from the harbor by across its entrance. Hasdrubal had taken post on the basin over against the town, and by this means still preserved the communication of the city with the country. Scipio,* to dislodge him from this post, made a feint at a distant part of the fortifications to scale the walls, actually gained the battlements, and gave an alarm which obliged the Carthaginian general to throw himself into the city.

3. Scipio, satisfied with having obtained his end, took pos

This Scipio had been adopted by the son of the great Scipio Africanus. He was the son of Paulus Emilius, the conqueror of Perseus After the destruction of Carthage he was styled Scipio

Africanus the Younger.

session of the post which the other had abandoned; and being now master of the isthmus, and the whole continental side of the harbor, advanced to the walls of the Byrsa. In his camp he covered himself as usual with double lines; one facing the fortifications of the enemy, consisting of a curtain twelve feet high, with towers at proper intervals, of which one in the centre was high enough to overlook the ramparts, and to afford a view of the enemy's works. The other line secured his rear from surprise on the side of the country; and both effectually guarded the isthmus, and obstructed all access to the town by land.

4. The besieged, however, still received some supply of provisions by sea; their victuallers took the benefit of every wind that blew fresh and right into the harbor, to pass through the enemy's fleet, who durst not unmoor to pursue them; and Scipio, to cut off this resource, projected a mole from the mainland to the point of the peninsula across the entrance of the harbor. He began to throw in his materials on a foundation of ninety feet, with an intention to contract the mound as it rose to twenty-four feet at the top. The work, when first observed from Carthage, was considered as a vain undertaking; but when it appeared to advance with a sensible progress, gave a serious alarm.

5. The Carthaginians, to provide against the evils which they began to foresee from this obstruction at the entrance of their harbor, undertook a work more difficult, and more vast than that of the besiegers, to cut across the peninsula within their walls, and to open a new passage to the sea; and this they had actually accomplished by the time that the other passage was shut. Notwithstanding the late surrender of all their shipping and stores, they had at the same time, by incredible efforts, assembled or constructed a navy of sixty galleys.

6. With this force they were ready to appear in the bay, while the Roman ships lay unmanned and unrigged, secure against any danger from an enemy whom they supposed shut up by impenetrable bars; and in these circumstances, if the Carthaginians had availed themselves of the surprise with which

they might have attacked their enemy, they must have done great execution on the Roman fleet. But having spent no less than two days in clearing their new passage after it was known to be open, and in preparing for action, they gave the enemy likewise full time to prepare. On the third they engaged, fought for the whole day without gaining any advantage; and in their retreat at night, suffered greatly from the enemy, who pressed on their rear.

7. While the besiegers endeavored to obstruct this new communication with the sea, the besieged made a desperate attempt on their works by land. A numerous body of men, devoting their lives for the defense of their country, without any arms, and provided only with matches, crossed the harbor, and, exposing themselves to certain death, set fire to the engines and towers of the besiegers; and while they were surrounded and put to the sword, willingly perished in the execution of their purpose. In such operations the summer elapsed; and Scipio, with the loss of his engines, and a renewal of all the difficulties which he had formerly to encounter at sea, contenting himself with a blockade for the winter, discontinued the siege.

8. His command being prolonged for another year, he resumed his attack in the spring; and finding the place greatly reduced by despair and famine, he forced his way by one of the docks, where he observed that the battlements were low and unguarded. His arrival in the streets did not put him in possession of the town. The inhabitants, during six days, disputed every house and every passage, and successively set fire to the buildings whenever they were obliged to abandon them. Above fifty thousand persons of different sexes, who had taken refuge in the citadel, at last accepted of quarter, and were led captive from thence in two separate divisions, one of twentyfive thousand women, and another of thirty thousand men.

9. Nine hundred deserters, who had left the Roman army during the siege, having been refused the quarter which was granted to the others, took post in a temple which stood on an eminence, with a resolution to die with swords in their hands, and with the greatest effusion of blood to their enemies. To

these Hasdrubal, followed by his wife and his children, joined himself; but not having the courage to persist in the same purpose with these deserters, he left the temple and accepted of quarter. His wife, in the mean time, with more ferocity or magnanimity than her husband, laid violent hands on her children, and, together with the dead bodies, threw herself into the flame of a burning ruin. The deserters, too, impatient of the dreadful expectations which they felt, in order to hasten their own fate, set fire to the temple in which they had sought a temporary cover, and perished in the flames.

10. The city continued to burn during seventeen days; and all this time the soldiers were allowed to seize whatever they could save from the flames or wrest from the hands of the dying inhabitants, who were still dangerous to those who approached them. The tidings of the taking of Carthage were received at Rome with uncommon demonstrations of joy. The victors, recollecting all the passages of their former wars, the alarms that had been given by Hannibal, and the irreconcilable antipathy of the two nations, gave orders to raze the fortifications of Carthage, and even to destroy the materials of which they were built [146 B.C.].

⚫ [Thus perished this magnificent city, after it had existed seven centuries. Under the Emperor Augustus it was rebuilt, and became, in the second century of our era, one of the finest cities of the Roman empire. It was again destroyed by the Arabs in the seventh century, and now only a few ruins remain to mark its site.]

Assassination of Julius Cæsar.-Merivale.

[Cæsar, having vanquished his great rival, Pompey, and all the partisans of the latter, became master of Rome, being made Perpetual Dictator. He fell a victim, however, to a conspiracy, at the head of which was his friend Brutus, and Cassius, whose previous hostility Cæsar had freely pardoned. This event took place just as Cæsar was about to set out, in order to assume the command of the armies, with the view to extend the dominion of Rome. The following account is from the "History of the Romans," by Charles Merivale.]

1. CESAR'S preparations for his departure were almost com plete. The Senate was convened for the Ides of March, the fifteenth day of the month; and at that meeting it was confidently expected the odious proposition would be openly made for conferring the royal name and power on the dictator in the

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