extension of commerce, to the growth of manufactures, to the spread of a
colonial empire. What, then, must have been the capacity of the man who
could, by his single efforts, alter the character of a whole people;
chain victory at land to the standards of a maritime republic; and bow
down to the earth, on their own territory, that rival power, whose
legions erelong triumphed over the armies of all the military monarchies
of the world?

The auxiliaries formed a considerable part, in point of numbers, of the
Roman forces; but the strength of the legions was to be found in the
Roman citizens. It was that indomitable body of men, ever flowing out,
yet ever full, animated with fiery passions, but directed by consummate
prudence, panting for rapine and conquest, but patient of all the toils
by which they were to be attained, which constituted the strength of the
armies which conquered the world. But the Carthaginians had no body of
citizens capable of forming such a force. They were nothing but a great
and powerful seaport town, with its adjacent villas spreading along the
coast of Africa. The people of Dido had not, like those of Romulus,
established off-shoots in the interior. No three-and-thirty colonies
awaited the commands of the senate of Carthage, as they did of the
consuls in the time of Fabius, to recruit the national armies. Twenty
thousand native citizens was all, at its last extremity at Zama, that
this mighty republic, which had so nearly achieved the conquest of the
Capitol, could fit out to defend their country. The strength of the
Punic armies consisted in what was merely an accessory to the Roman, the
auxiliaries. It was the Numidian horse, the Balearic slingers, the
Spanish infantry, the Gaulish broadswords, which proved so formidable in
the ranks of Hannibal. It was literally, as Livy says, a "colluvies
omnium gentium," which rolled down from the Alps, under his direction,
to overwhelm the Romans on their own hearths. Twenty different
languages, Polybius tells us, were not unfrequently spoken at the same
time in the Carthaginian camp. What, then, must have been the capacity
of the general who could still the jealousies, and overcome the
animosities, and give unity to the operations of a vast army, composed
of so many different tribes and people, and mould them all into so
perfect a form, that, for fifteen years that he remained in Italy after
the first great defeats, the consuls never once ventured to measur