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��Historic Problems.
��marched up with the cities of Magna- Groecia, and presented a second foe to Rome, — what would have availed the valor of all her great captains, of a Fabius or of a Papirus, to save the republic? Rome fell once under C. Pontius unassisted, and only the most desperate measures saved her in the end. Assailed by a second and far more formidable enemy, what could she have done? Even fifty years after- wards, Pyrrhus beat her armies in three great battles when she had the Samnites under her feet ; and had that hero possessed half the vast resources of Alexander, together with his persist- ence, he might easily have conquered Italy. Think you not, then, that a great- er than Pyrrhus might have been the conqueror at this earlier date ?
But, objects the disciple of Livy, mighty as Alexander's name is among military captains, there is little evidence of his capacity in conflict with equal enemies. Was not Memnon, who com- manded the Persians at the Granicus, an equal enemy, and had twenty thou- sand trained Greeks, besides fifty thou- sand Persians? And was not Porus an equal enemy, who was the monarch of a highly civilized Indo-European race, and who could bring into the field a hundred thousand trained infantry, besides chariots and elephants? Yet the genius of the Macedonian over- came them both. It is well to remem- ber, too, that the Macedonian phalanx was the most perfect instrument of war- fare the world had yet seen. The Roman legion was nothing like it until Scipio improved it a hundred years later. None of the Greek soldiers showed fear before the elephants of Darius and Porus. How did the Ro- mans withstand them in the ranks of Pyrrhus? In Alexander's day the
��Romans were probably not so civilized, though they might have been as far advanced in military art, as were the Persians and the Indians. It was only through contact with the magnificence of the Greek cities of Southern Italy, and by the long campaigns with the Samnites, their equals, that Rome in the time of Pyrrhus was the powerful state she was.
Hannibal was a greater general than either Pyrrhus or Alexander, and would not his ultimate failure teach us to doubt the Macedonian's success ? We answer. No. There were excellent and logical reasons why the great Cartha- ginian hero met with defeat. In the first place, he was not supported by the Carthaginian government. Hanno, the great enemy of the Barcine family, was all-powerful in the home senate, and Hannibal was forced to rely on the aid of the Italian tribes. In this also he was disappointed. Despite his dip- lomatic skill, despite his series of bril- liant victories, the aid of the Italians was lukewarm and limited. Their sub- jugation and humiliation had been so complete that even the sentiment of revenge was obliterated ; consequently, Hannibal's accession of native soldiers was wholly inadequate to enable him to press on as he had begun. He then summoned his brother from Spain, but that brother's head alone reached him : his body and the bones of his soldiers lay rotting on the banks of the Metau- rus. The home government inactive, his Italian allies lukewarm, his brother defeated, there was nothing for the Carthaginian to fall back upon but his own genius ; and that, unparalleled as it was, could not long avail him against the resources, the valor, the persistence, of Rome.
In Alexander's case it would have
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