an 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 the Flemish field, by the superior genius. The
elder Africanus is the most exceptional character in all history, and it
is impossible to place him. He seems never to have been young, and we
cannot associate the idea of age with him, even when he is dying at
Liternum at upwards of fifty. He was a man at seventeen, when first he
steps boldly out on the historic page, and there is no apparent change
in him when we find him leading great armies, and creating a new policy
for the redemption of Italy from the evils of war. He was intended to be
a king, but he was born two centuries too early to be of any use to his
country in accordance with his genius, out of the field. Such a man is
not to be judged as a mere soldier, and we were inclined not to range
him on the side of youthful generals; but we will be generous, and, in
consideration of his years, permit him to be claimed by those who insist
that war is the business of youth.

At later periods, Rome's greatest generals were men who were old. The
younger Africanus was fifty-one at Numantia, Mar