n that
the best of generals was Alexander, next to him Pyrrhus, and next
himself, Scipio, with a quiet smile, asked him: "What would you have
said, if I had not conquered you?" "In that case, Scipio," answered
Hannibal, "I should not have reckoned myself third but first of
generals." The people remembering this cried shame upon Titus, for
having laid hands upon a man whom another had slain.[37] Some few,
however, praised the deed, thinking that Hannibal, as long as he
lived, was a fire which might easily be fanned into a destructive
conflagration. They pointed out that even when he was in the prime of
life it was not his bodily strength or personal prowess that made him
so terrible to the Romans, but his intellect and skill, together with
his inveterate hatred of Rome, none of which had been diminished by
age, but that his natural gifts remained the same, while also fortune
was wont to change, and so those who had any permanent cause of enmity
with another nation were ever encouraged by hopes of success to make
new attacks. Indeed subsequent events seemed to prove Titus right, as
Aristonikus, the son of the harp-player, in his admiration for
Eumenes, filled the whole of Asia with revolt and revolution, while
Mithridates, after his tremendous losses at the hands of Sulla and
Fimbria, again gathered together such great forces both by land and
sea to oppose Lucullus. Yet Hannibal did not fall so low as Caius
Marius. The former was to the last the friend of a king, and spent his
time in sailing in ships, riding on horseback, and in the study of how
to keep a military force efficient; whereas the Romans, who had
laughed Marius to scorn as he wandered a beggar in Africa, soon licked
the dust before him while he flogged and slaughtered them in Rome.
Thus no one of our present circumstances can be said to be either
important or trifling, great or small, in comparison with what is to
come, but we only cease to change when we cease to exist.

For this reason some say that Titus did not effect this of his own
free will, but that he was sent with Lucius Scipio as a colleague on
an embassy whose sole object was the death of Hannibal. Now, as after
these events we know of no other acts of Titus either as a warrior or
statesman, and as he died a peaceful death, it is time to begin our
comparison.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 32: Publius Sulpicius Galba.]

[Footnote 33: Publius Villius Tappulus. _Cf_. Livy xxxi. _sqq_.]

[Footnote 34: