rete. He found that he could not long remain here. He had,
however, brought with him a large amount of treasure, and when about
leaving Crete again, he was uneasy about this treasure, as he had
some reason to fear that the Cretans were intending to seize it. He
must contrive, then, some stratagem to enable him to get this gold
away. The plan he adopted was this:

He filled a number of earthen jars with lead, covering the tops of
them with gold and silver. These he carried, with great appearance of
caution and solicitude, to the Temple of Diana, a very sacred edifice,
and deposited them there, under very special guardianship of the
Cretans, to whom, as he said, he intrusted all his treasures. They
received their false deposit with many promises to keep it safely, and
then Hannibal went away with his real gold cast in the center of
hollow statues of brass, which he carried with him, without suspicion,
as objects of art of very little value.

Hannibal fled from kingdom to kingdom, and from province to province,
until life became a miserable burden. The determined hostility of the
Roman senate followed him every where, harassing him with continual
anxiety and fear, and destroying all hope of comfort and peace. His
mind was a prey to bitter recollections of the past, and still more
dreadful forebodings for the future. He had spent all the morning of
his life in inflicting the most terrible injuries on the objects of
his implacable animosity and hate, although they had never injured
him, and now, in the evening of his days, it became his destiny to
feel the pressure of the same terror and suffering inflicted upon
_him_. The hostility which he had to fear was equally merciless with
that which he had exercised; perhaps it was made still more intense by
being mingled with what they who felt it probably considered a just
resentment and revenge.

When at length Hannibal found that the Romans were hemming him in more
and more closely, and that the danger increased of his falling at last
into their power, he had a potion of poison prepared, and kept it
always in readiness, determined to die by his own hand rather than to
submit to be given up to his enemies. The time for taking the poison
at last arrived. The wretched fugitive was then in Bithynia, a kingdom
of Asia Minor. The King of Bithynia sheltered him for a time, but at
length agreed to give him up to the Romans. Hannibal learning this,
prepared for flight. But he found, on