The consequences of Hannibal's reckless ambition, and of his wholly
unjustifiable aggression on Roman rights to gratify it, did not end with his own personal ruin. The flame which he had kindled continued to burn until at last it accomplished the entire and irretrievable destruction of Carthage. This was effected in a third and final war between the Carthaginians and the Romans, which is known in history as the third Punic war. With a narrative of the events of this war, ending, as it did, in the total destruction of the city, we shall close this history of Hannibal.
Chronological table of the Punic wars.
It will be recollected that the war which Hannibal himself waged against Rome
was the second in the series, the contest in which Regulus figured so prominently having been the first. The one whose history is now to be given is
the third. The reader will distinctly understand the chronological relations of these contests by the following table:
TABLE.
Date
Events.
Punic Wars.
B.C.
War commenced in Sicily
264
Naval battles in the
262
Mediterranean
}
I.
249
Regulus sent prisoner to
24 years.
241
Rome
Peace concluded
Peace for 24 years
218
Hannibal attacks Saguntum
217
Crosses the Alps
216
Battle of Cannæ
}
II.
17 years.
205
Is conquered by Scipio
200
Peace concluded
Peace for 52 years
148
War declared
}
III.
145
Carthage destroyed
3 years.
Character of the Punic wars.
Intervals between them.
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
