were preserved longest from general ruin, and revived first in more modern times. Greek thought and culture, and Roman law remained indestructible.

290-The Samnites, Sabines and Gauls, being all defeated, Rome was virtually mistress of Italy, although the Grecian cities on the eastern coast remained to be subdued. They had little strength in themselves against a power so warlike, and invited Pyrrhus, the king of 281-Epirus, to their assistance. He twice defeated the Roman consuls, but they inflicted on him so much loss that they vainly offered him battle immediately after, and rejected all his overtures to treat for peace. He was at length vanquished and obliged to abandon Italy to the Republic.

4. The Romans soon subdued all opposition and began to look about for other lands to conquer.

264-The Carthaginians, on the opposite coast of Africa, had become a colossal power, and sought to establish their control over Sicily-not an easy task, since it had many colonies of Greeks whose national spirit and bravery did not desert them. In this year a call for assistance from a plundering band who had captured a Greek city, a part of whom had also invited Carthaginian aid, brought Rome and Carthage in conflict. The Carthaginians were enraged at this interference with an island. which they had long intended to make their own, and raised an immense army to drive out the intruders. The Romans defeated the army and took Agrigentum, one of the best strongholds of the Carthaginians on the island.

260-The Carthaginians were masters of the sea, and the Romans had little knowledge of naval affairs. Taking a Carthaginian vessel which had been driven ashore for a model, they, in a short time, created a fleet and worsted their enemies on their own special element.

256- The Romans again defeated the Carthaginians in a sea fight near the island of Lipara. 255-The Romans determined to carry the war into Africa, and fitting out a large fleet, inflicted a still heavier loss on the Carthaginian armaments, landed in Africa and defeated an immense army. The Carthaginians sued for peace, but the terms proposed by Regulus, the Roman general, were so severe that they resolved to continue the war. A Grecian general, Xanthippus, took command of their army and totally defeated the Romans, taking Regulus prisoner, and destroying or 248-capturing all his army but 2000. The Romans lost three fleets by storms, but conquered once in a sea fight, and defeated an army in Sicily. The Carthaginians again sought peace, but the Romans would not abate their first terms, and continued the war until the 240-Carthaginians, completely humbled, accepted the severe

alternative of submission or destruction. The temple of Janus, the god of war, never shut but in time of absolute peace, was now closed for the second time since the building of the city.

The people, whose special occupation was war, soon grew tired of peace, and carried on various conflicts with the Gauls settled at the foot of the Alps in the 227 — north of Italy. They invaded Illyria, on the east coast of the Adriatic Sea, whose people were very troublesome pirates. This war was again renewed with a more complete defeat of the Illyrians. They had before this subdued Sardinia and Corsica.

219 — The Carthaginians pursued their conquests in Spain, and the celebrated Hannibal took Saguntum, which 218-brought on the second Punic war, as the war with Carthage was termed.

217-Hannibal, with great celerity, crossed the Pyrenees and

the Alps-having first completed the conquest of

Spain and defeated the Romans in the battle of Tici

nus, and again at Trebia. 217-The Achaian confederacy, now in the height of its glory

215

in maintaining the liberties of Greece, united all the Greeks in a confederacy under the influence of Philip, king of Macedon, with the hope of arresting the power and ambition of Rome.

216-Hannibal inflicted a dreadful defeat on the Romans near the Thrasymenean Lake. The Romans were greatly alarmed, and made Fabius Maximus dictator, whose habit of refusing a pitched battle, wearing out his adversary by skirmishes and cutting off his supplies, is called "The Fabian Policy." This plan is, by maneuvering and delay, to wear out and destroy an invader in detail without peril of defeat in battle. The Romans kept armies in Spain to prevent the Carthaginians from sending reinforcements to Hannibal. At the close of this year Fabius resigned his dictatorship and the consuls appointed to succeed him abandoned his policy. They offered battle to Hannibal at Cannæ and the army was annihilated. 40,000 Romans were slain on the field. These defeats had destroyed the flower of their fighting population, but Roman courage and resolution always rose with defeat. They did not despair, but raised a fresh army and put Fabius again at its head, against whom the talents of Hannibal were vain. They fomented disturbances in Greece to keep Philip, King of Macedon at home, and beseiged Syracuse in Sicily, which had joined the Carthaginians, 212- for three years, and then took it by stratagem. Archimedes, a celebrated mathematician of Syracuse, who had protracted the siege by his ingenious and powerful engines was killed in the sack of the city. Soon after the whole island was subdued and remained a Roman province.

210

206 Asdrubal, the brother of Hannibal, general of the Car

202

thaginian forces in Spain, crossed the Pyrenees and the Alps to reinforce Hannibal, but was defeated by the Romans and slain before Hannibal knew of his march. Scipio, who had conquered in Spain, led an army into Africa, Hannibal being considered too formidable to attack, though his forces were very small. Scipio put 40,000 Numidians, allies of Carthage, to the sword, besieged the neighboring cities and defeated a large Carthaginian army. Hannibal was now called home to defend the metropolis. He fought a battle with raw 201-troops, at Zama, and was defeated - 20,000 Carthaginians being slain. The Carthaginians begged for peace, Hannibal declaring that the war could not be protracted. The Roman terms left them little but their city. Such was the fruit of inflexible resolution.

5. The Romans are an example of a people, who, from first to last, had one clearly defined end, to which everything else was subservient. They formed their state for conquest, and that idea controlled the Kingdom, the Republic and the Empire. They were much wiser than the Spartans, for, devoting themselves to war, they meant to secure and enjoy all the fruits of conquest, and they did all that was possible to promote the prosperity of their people that they might produce warriors in abundance; but they relied mainly on actual war for discipline. They were constantly exercised in the art in the field and the orderly and sensible instinct of the race made discipline a matter of course. They were sometimes defeated when they encountered unfamiliar difficulties, or by the mistakes of their leaders, but never abandoned a purpose once adopted and never sued for peace.

Morally, the object they set before them was entirely unjustifiable, according to the standard of national rights accepted in our day. But such a conception never entered the minds of men in the ancient times. It is the fruit of modern civilization alone. The Romans, and many a nation after them, must work out the destructive consequences of that doctrine

that "Might makes Right" before the universal sense of inankind would recoil from it. It was the accepted doctrine of the ancients, and has not yet disappeared from the world. 197-Sicily, Spain and Carthage were conquered, and Roman

valor looked around for opportunities of winning fresh laurels. Philip of Macedon, an ambitious prince, threatened the Athenians, who implored help from Rome. An army immediately proceeded to Greece, penetrated into Macedonia, and completely defeated Philip at Cynocephalæ.

6. The Romans were now the mightiest people in the civilized world. Their obstinate contests with the vigorous nations of the West had often perilled the existence of their state, and a people of ordinary stamina and persistance would not, at the best, have risen above the rank of the Etruscans and Samnites, nor have made Rome greater than Syracuse or Carthage. They, however, matured and grew into an invincible power, whose solid and stately grandeur struck the intelligent but unpractical Greeks with admiration, and all the old peoples of the East with awe.

The Romans were not without admiration for the ancient valor and the graceful culture of the Greeks. When, two hundred and fifty years before, the Romans revised their laws, under the Decemvirate, they sent to Athens to obtain models from that republic. Athens was now treated by them with much consideration, and finally became the University City of the Empire. When Roman influence became paramount after the battle of Cynocephalæ they did not at once proceed with brutal force against the land of Beauty and Art, but took it under their protection, and proclaimed the full liberty of the Grecian States. It filled the Greeks with transport, and for some time Rome played the noble and dignified part of a disinterested protector; but when the Achaians, under their excellent and talented leader Philopomen, sought to realize the fact of liberty, the Romans abandoned that pretence and made Greece a Roman province. Thus the whole of Europe