The Story of Greece and Rome for boys and girls
- Автор: Macgregor Mary
- Год: 1914
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Зарубежная литература для детей
Электронная книга - «The Story of Greece and Rome for boys and girls». Краткое содержание книги:
The Story of Greece: Told to Boys and Girls от Mary Macgregor
The Story of Rome, From the Earliest Times to the Death of Augustus, Told to Boys and Girls от Mary Esther Miller MacGregor
While he was still young, he was given a command in the army, and none was ever loved by his men as was he.
In battle, the young leader was always to be found at the point of danger, and every hardship, in the camp as on the field, he shared with his men. Nothing seemed able to daunt his spirit. In disaster as in success he remained cheerful and confident. And he complained of no trouble when it could help his cause.
Until he was twenty, Hannibal lived his hard and happy soldier life. Then young as he was, a great responsibility was laid upon him.
Hasdrubal was killed in his tent by a slave whose master he had murdered, and the army shouted with one voice, that no one but Hannibal should become their commander.
And at length, the government of Carthage reluctantly agreed that the young soldier should be appointed. Until now this important post had been filled by men of greater age and wider experience than Hannibal.
But the new general soon showed the stuff of which he was made. He was young and energetic, and in two years he had taken many towns and added to the power and possessions of Carthage in Spain.
But Saguntum, a town on the east coast of Spain, defied Hannibal’s efforts and remained unconquered. As the inhabitants watched the growing power of the young Carthaginian leader, they grew afraid, lest they in the end should be forced to yield. So they appealed to Rome for help.
In the winter of 220 B.C. a Roman embassy was therefore sent to Spain, bearing a message from the Senate for Hannibal.
The young leader received it with no goodwill. Did it not come from the country he had sworn to hate, and had not his hatred grown, until now it had become the burning passion of his life?
But although the Roman ambassadors found Hannibal in no pleasant mood, they did not attempt to pacify him. Haughtily they gave their message that he should not attack Saguntum, or dare to cross the river Ebro, beyond which the Carthaginians had not yet advanced.
Hannibal listened with undisguised disdain to the demands of the Senate, and dismissed the ambassadors from his camp without an answer.
In the spring of 219 B.C., it was plain that he meant to defy Rome, for he laid siege to Saguntum.
For eight months the city held out. When their provisions failed, and starvation stared them in the face, they still refused to surrender, believing that Rome would send help.
But at length all hope of relief faded. Then the Spanish chiefs determined to die rather than fall into the hands of the enemy. So they ordered a fire to be kindled in the market-place, and into it they flung all the treasures which were left in the city. After the treasures were consumed, they themselves leaped into the flames and were burned to death.
When tidings of the fall of Saguntum reached Rome, she sent an embassy to Carthage, at the head of which was a noble named Fabius.
Fabius demanded that Hannibal and his officers should be given up, otherwise Rome would declare war against Carthage.
While the Carthaginians hesitated, Fabius rose, and gathering up the folds of his toga, as though in them he held the fate of the city, he cried, ‘I carry here peace and war. Choose, men of Carthage, which ye will.’
‘Give us whatever ye wish,’ answered the Senate.
Then shaking out the folds of his toga Fabius answered, ‘Then here I give ye war,’ and without another word he left the Senate-house.
‘With that spirit with which ye give it, shall we wage it,’ cried the Carthaginians, while the ambassador strode away.
As the shout of the Assembly followed him, Fabius knew that the men of Carthage did not dread his gift.
CHAPTER LVII
HANNIBAL PREPARES TO INVADE ITALY
The Romans thought it would be an easy matter to send an army to Spain to punish the young general for his daring defiance of the Senate. But as they soon found, it was not so simple as they had deemed.
Hannibal had ambitions beyond the wildest imaginations of the Romans, and before they had sent an army to Spain, he had left the country to invade Italy, for this was his great ambition.
In order to reach Italy, he determined to lead his army across the Alps, a feat that no one without the genius and the daring of the Carthaginian general could have ever hoped to accomplish.
The Gauls, who had so lately been at war with Rome, promised to join Hannibal’s forces. When he was assured of the help of the barbarians, Hannibal called his soldiers together and told them his plans.
‘The Romans,’ he said, ‘have demanded that I and my principal officers should be delivered up to them as malefactors. Soldiers, will you suffer such an indignity? The Gauls are holding out their arms to us, inviting us to come to them and to assist them in revenging their manifold injuries. And the country which we shall invade, so rich in corn and wine and oil, so full of flocks and herds, so covered with flourishing cities, will be the richest prize that could be offered by the gods to reward your valour.’
“I carry here peace and war, choose, men of Carthage, which ye will.”
As you know, Hannibal was the idol of his men, and when he had spoken a loyal shout arose. It was plain that his soldiers would follow him to death.
Hannibal thanked his troops for their devotion, told them the day on which they were to march, and then dismissed them.
He himself went to the temple to pray to the gods for the success of his invasion of Italy.
Day and night he brooded over his plans, so that even when he slept his mind was possessed by them.
One night he dreamed that he was in the presence of the gods of Carthage. The deities bade him invade Italy, and one of them, they promised, would be with him as his guide.
In his dream he and his divine leader then set out. ‘See that thou look not behind thee,’ said the god. But in spite of this command Hannibal looked back and a terrible dragon, covered with innumerable scales, met his gaze. As the monster moved, it dragged in its path, woods, orchards, houses.
‘What is this that I see?’ asked Hannibal.
‘Thou seest the desolation of Italy,’ answered his guide. ‘Go thy way straight forward and cast no look behind.’
Thus encouraged by his dream, Hannibal went back to his army more confident than before, and marched into Italy to perform his boyhood’s vow.
CHAPTER LVIII
HANNIBAL CROSSES THE ALPS
In the spring of 218 B.C. the Carthaginian army set out on its great undertaking, thirty-seven elephants in its train.
Hasdrubal, one of Hannibal’s brothers, was left behind to guard the towns that had been taken in Spain.
Meanwhile the Roman Senate, knowing nothing of Hannibal’s movements, sent Sempronius, one of the Consuls, into Sicily with an army, while the other, Cornelius Scipio, was ordered to lead an army into Spain to punish Hannibal.
But while Rome was thus hoping to secure the general who had flouted her, he was already marching through Gaul. At the river Rhone he was met by his first difficulty, for some of the tribes that were unfriendly to the Carthaginians had gathered on the opposite bank to oppose his passage.
Hannibal at once sent a body of his troops higher up the river, with orders to cross, and, stealing unnoticed into the camp of the enemy, to set it on fire. When the general thought that there had been time for this to be done, he began to cross the river with the main body of his army, in boats and canoes. On the opposite bank, the barbarians were drawn up in battle array.
Hannibal did not fear them. Already his quick eyes had seen a column of smoke rising from the Gallic camp, and he knew that when the flames burst out, the Gauls would not stay to oppose his passage across the river.
As Hannibal had foreseen, so it happened. The Gauls, to their dismay, soon saw that their camp was on fire, and many of them at once rushed away to try to save their goods. Those who did not desert their post were too few to prevent Hannibal and his army from landing in safety.