ffered him. They were not the guilty ones, he said. The legions must be
placed again in the Caudium Valley, or Rome keep the treaty. Anything
else would be base and faithless.

The treaty was not kept. The war went on. And nearly thirty years
afterwards, as we have told in the preceding story, Pontius, who had
behaved so generously to the Romans, was led as a prisoner in a Roman
triumph, and then basely beheaded while the triumphal car of the victor
ascended the Capitoline Hill. His death is one of the darkest blots on
the Roman name. "Such a murder," we are told, "committed or sanctioned
by such a man as Q. Fabius, is peculiarly a national crime, and proves
but too clearly that in their dealings with foreigners the Romans had
neither magnanimity, nor humanity, nor justice."

_THE FATE OF REGULUS._

We have followed the growth of Rome from its seed in the cradle of
Romulus and Remus to its early maturity in the conquest of Italy. Its
triumph over the Latins, Samnites, and Etruscans had made it virtually
master of that peninsula. In the year 280 B.C. it was first called upon
to meet a great foreign soldier in the celebrated Pyrrhus of Epirus, who
had invaded Italy. How this great soldier scared the Romans with his
elephants and defeated them in the field, but was finally baffled and
left the country in disgust, we have told in "Historical Tales of
Greece." It was not many years after this that Rome herself went abroad
in search of new foes, and her long and bitter struggle with Carthage
began.

The great city of Carthage lay on the African side of the Mediterranean,
where it had won for itself a great empire, and had added to its
dominion by important conquests in Spain and Sicily. Settled many
centuries before by emigrants from the Phoenician city of Tyre, it
had, like its mother city, grown rich through commerce, and was now lord
of the Mediterranean and one of the great cities of the earth. With this
city Rome was now to begin a mighty struggle, which would last for many
years and end in the utter destruction of the great African city and
state.

Pyrrhus of Epirus, on leaving Sicily, had said, "What a grand arena this
would be for Rome and Carthage to contend upon!" And it was in the
island of Sicily that the struggle between these two mighty powers
began. In the year 264 B.C., nearly five centuries after the founding of
Rome, that city first sent its armies beyond the borders of Italy, and
the long cont