like one defeated. What
provoked this noble people was that the command of the sea was forced
from them, that their islands were taken, and that they were obliged to
pay tribute which they had before been accustomed to impose. Hannibal,
when but a boy, swore to his father, before an altar, to take revenge on
the Romans; nor was he backward to execute his oath. Saguntum,
accordingly, was made the occasion of a war; an old and wealthy city of
Spain, and a great but sad example of fidelity to the Romans. This city,
though granted, by the common treaty, the special privilege of enjoying
its liberty, Hannibal, seeking pretences for new disturbances, destroyed
with his own hands and those of its inhabitants, in order that, by an
infraction of the compact, he might open a passage for himself into
Italy.

Among the Romans there is the highest regard to treaties, and
consequently, on hearing of the siege of an allied city, and
remembering, too, the compact made with the Carthaginians, they did not
at once have recourse to arms, but chose rather to expostulate on legal
grounds. In the mean time the Saguntines, exhausted with famine, the
assaults of machines, and the sword, and their fidelity being at last
carried to desperation, raised a vast pile in the market-place, on which
they destroyed, with fire and sword, themselves, their wives and
children, and all that they possessed. Hannibal, the cause of this great
destruction, was required to be given up. The Carthaginians hesitating
to comply, Fabius, who was at the head of the embassy, exclaimed: "What
is the meaning of this delay? In the fold of this garment I carry war
and peace; which of the two do you choose?" As they cried out "War,"
"Take war, then," he rejoined, and, shaking out the fore-part of his
toga in the middle of the senate house, as if he really carried war in
its folds, he spread it abroad, not without awe on the part of the
spectators.

The sequel of the war was in conformity with its commencement; for, as
if the last imprecations of the Saguntines, at their public
self-immolation and burning of the city, had required such obsequies to
be performed to them, atonement was made to their _manes_ by the
devastation of Italy, the reduction of Africa, and the destruction of
the leaders and kings who engaged in that contest. When once, therefore,
that sad and dismal force and storm of the Punic War had arisen in
Spain, and had forged, in the fire of Saguntum, the th