on the
Roman territories and Roman rights began to be realized, the party of
his friends was overturned, the power reverted to the hands of those
who had always opposed him, and in trying to keep him down when he was
once fallen, their action, whether politically right or wrong, was
consistent with itself, and can not be considered as at all subjecting
them to the charge of ingratitude or treachery.

One might have supposed that all Hannibal's hopes and expectations of
ever again coping with his great Roman enemy would have been now
effectually and finally destroyed, and that henceforth he would have
given up his active hostility and would have contented himself with
seeking some refuge where he could spend the remainder of his days in
peace, satisfied with securing, after such dangers and escapes, his
own personal protection from the vengeance of his enemies. But it is
hard to quell and subdue such indomitable perseverance and energy as
his. He was very little inclined yet to submit to his fate. As soon as
he found himself at the court of Antiochus, he began to form new plans
for making war against Rome. He proposed to the Syrian monarch to
raise a naval force and put it under his charge. He said that if
Antiochus would give him a hundred ships and ten or twelve thousand
men, he would take the command of the expedition in person, and he did
not doubt that he should be able to recover his lost ground, and once
more humble his ancient and formidable enemy. He would go first, he
said, with his force to Carthage, to get the co-operation and aid of
his countrymen there in his new plans. Then he would make a descent
upon Italy, and he had no doubt that he should soon regain the
ascendency there which he had formerly held.

Hannibal's design of going first to Carthage with his Syrian army was
doubtless induced by his desire to put down the party of his enemies
there, and to restore the power to his adherents and partisans. In
order to prepare the way the more effectually for this, he sent a
secret messenger to Carthage, while his negotiations with Antiochus
were going on, to make known to his friends there the new hopes which
he began to cherish, and the new designs which he had formed. He knew
that his enemies in Carthage would be watching very carefully for any
such communication; he therefore wrote no letters, and committed
nothing to paper which, on being discovered, might betray him. He
explained, however, all his plan