|
| | | |
| | Peace for 52 years | |
| | | |
| | | |
| 148 | War declared } | III. |
| | } | |
| 145 | Carthage destroyed } | 3 years. |
+------+--------------------------------------+-------------+

These three Punic wars extended, as the table shows, over a period of
more than a hundred years. Each successive contest in the series was
shorter, but more violent and desperate than its predecessor, while
the intervals of peace were longer. Thus the first Punic war continued
for twenty-four years, the second about seventeen, and the third only
three or four. The interval, too, between the first and second was
twenty-four years, while between the second and third there was a sort
of peace for about fifty years. These differences were caused, indeed,
in some degree, by the accidental circumstances on which the
successive ruptures depended, but they were not entirely owing to that
cause. The longer these belligerent relations between the two
countries continued, and the more they both experienced the awful
effects and consequences of their quarrels, the less disposed they
were to renew such dreadful struggles, and yet, when they did renew
them they engaged in them with redoubled energy of determination and
fresh intensity of hate. Thus the wars followed each other at greater
intervals, but the conflicts, when they came, though shorter in
duration, were more and more desperate and merciless in character.

We have said that, after the close of the second Punic war, there was
a sort of peace for about fifty years. Of course, during this time,
one generation after another of public men arose, both in Rome and
Carthage, each successive group, on both sides, inheriting the
suppressed animosity and hatred which had been cherished by their
predecessors. Of course, as long as Hannibal had lived, and had
continued his plots and schemes in Syria, he was the means of keeping
up a continual irritation among the people of Rome against the
Carthaginian name. It is true that the government at Carthage
disavowed his acts, and professed to be wholly opposed to his designs;
but then it was, of course, very well known at Rome that this was