Roman History, Books I-III | Page 5

what his sword could take, without friends save what his genius and his fortune could win, he maintained his place and his superiority not for one or for two but through fourteen years, during all which time we hear no murmur of mutiny, no hint of aught but obedience and devotion among the incongruous and unruly elements from which he had fashioned his invincible army; and at the end we see him leaving Italy of his own free will, at the call of his country, to waste himself in a vain effort to save her from the blunders of other leaders and from the penalty of inherent weakness, which only his sword had so long warded off.
When I consider the means, the opposition, and the achievement--a combination of elements by which alone we can judge such questions with even approximate fairness--I can not but feel that of all military exploits this invasion of Italy, which we shall read of here, was the most remarkable; that of all commanders Hannibal has shown himself to be the greatest. Some of Livy's charges against him as a man are doubtless true. Avarice was in his blood; and cruelty also, though it ill became a Roman to chide an enemy on that score. Besides, Livy himself tells how Hannibal had sought for the bodies of the generals he had slain, that he might give them the rites of honourable sepulture; tells it, and in the next breath relates how the Roman commander mutilated the corpse of the fallen Hasdrubal and threw the head into his brother's camp. So, too, his na?ve explanation that Hannibal's "more than Punic perfidy" consisted mainly of ambushes and similar military strategies goes to show, as I have said, that whatever is unjust in our author's estimate was rather the result of the prejudiced deductions of national egotism than of facts wilfully or carelessly distorted by partisan spite.
To the reader who bears well in mind the points I have ventured to make, I predict profit hardly less than pleasure in these pages; for Livy is perhaps the only historian who may be said to have been honest enough to furnish much of the material for criticism of himself, and to be, to a very considerable extent, self-adjusting.
DUFFIELD OSBORNE.

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE [1]
Whether in tracing the history of the Roman people, from the foundation of the city, I shall employ myself to a useful purpose, I am neither very certain, nor, if I were, dare I say; inasmuch as I observe that it is both an old and hackneyed practice, later authors always supposing that they will either adduce something more authentic in the facts, or, that they will excel the less polished ancients in their style of writing. Be that as it may, it will, at all events, be a satisfaction to me that I too have contributed my share to perpetuate the achievements of a people, the lords of the world; and if, amid so great a number of historians, my reputation should remain in obscurity, I may console myself with the celebrity and lustre of those who shall stand in the way of my fame. Moreover, the subject is of immense labour, as being one which must be traced back for more than seven hundred years, and which, having set out from small beginnings, has increased to such a degree that it is now distressed by its own magnitude. And, to most readers, I doubt not but that the first origin and the events immediately succeeding, will afford but little pleasure, while they will be hastening to these later times, in which the strength of this overgrown people has for a long period been working its own destruction. I, on the contrary, shall seek this, as a reward of my labour, viz., to withdraw myself from the view of the calamities, which our age has witnessed for so many years, so long as I am reviewing with my whole attention these ancient times, being free from every care that may distract a writer's mind, though it can not warp it from the truth. The traditions that have come down to us of what happened before the building of the city, or before its building was contemplated, as being suitable rather to the fictions of poetry than to the genuine records of history, I have no intention either to affirm or to refute. This indulgence is conceded to antiquity, that by blending things human with divine, it may make the origin of cities appear more venerable: and if any people might be allowed to consecrate their origin, and to ascribe it to the gods as its authors, such is the renown of the Roman people in war, that when they represent Mars, in particular, as their own parent and that