This siege, although so short a one as to occupy but little space
in our narration, belongs to a very interesting period in the Roman
history: it occurred in the course of what are called the Punic wars,
which were the contests of two of the most powerful states then in
existence, for supremacy. Rome and Carthage were like two suns; they
had become too powerful for both to retain their splendour in one
hemisphere. They were really the noblest conflicts in which Rome
was engaged; there was a rivalry in generals and soldiers worthy of
being sustained by the great republic; and though Rome was in the end
the conqueror, and her generals were great, it is doubtful whether
she can exhibit in her annals so perfect a captain as Hannibal. The
Carthaginians suffer, in the opinion of posterity, in another way; the
Romans were not only the victors, but the historians; Punic bad faith
is proverbial in the Roman language, but we strongly suspect that a
Carthaginian Polybius or Livy would have found as many sins against the
laws of nations committed by the one party as the other. The man was
the painter, and not the lion. Whether it is from want of sympathy with
a mere nation of the sword, we know not; but, notwithstanding the great
men who illustrated Rome’s armies and senate, we cannot help taking
part with Hannibal and his countrymen throughout these wars. Much as we
like Cato the Censor in other respects, we cannot but view him, with
his figs and his “_delenda est Carthago_,” as a spiteful old fellow,
whom we should very much have liked to see disappointed.
After various and great successes, of which it is not our business to
speak, Hannibal, to terrify the Romans, presented himself before their
city. The consuls, who had received orders to watch that the republic
should receive no injury, felt it their duty to encounter him. When
they were on the point of engaging, a violent storm compelled both
parties to retire; and the same thing occurred several times; so that
Hannibal, believing that he saw in this event something supernatural,
said, according to Livy, that sometimes fortune and sometimes his will
was always wanting to make him master of Rome. That which still more
surprised him was, that whilst he was encamped at one of the gates of
the city, the Romans sent an army out of one of the other gates into
Spain; and that the very field in which he was encamped was sold at the
same time, without that circumstance having diminished the value of it.
In order to avenge himself, he put up to auction the goldsmiths’ shops
which were around the most public place in Rome, and then retired.