Livy’s Ab urbe condita XXI

1. In a mere part of my work is permitted me to foreshadow what so many writers of history offer as preface at the outset of the whole, that I am about to author the most memorable war of all those which have ever been fought, — the one the Carthaginians waged with Hannibal as Chief against the Roman people. Now, no states and peoples of more powerful resources had born arms against each other, nor did these very people ever have such store of forces and strength; and they clashed in military prowess fairly well-known to each other, the arts of war proven in the First Punic War, and so inconsistent was the war’s fate, and war-god Mars so full of doubt, that those nearer to danger were they who did conquer. They fought with hatred nearly greater than their strengths, the Romans refusing to accept that conquered people would again take up arms against their conquerors, the Carthaginians believing that Roman rule was arrogant and rapacious toward the conquered. Yet the story is that Hannibal, at nearly nine years old, childishly coaxing his father Hamilcar to bring him to Hispania, since he was about to dispatch the army there to offer sacrifice with the African war wrapped-up, he, brought forth to the sacred altars as touched, swore an oath that as soon as he was able, he would be an enemy to the Roman people. Sicily and Sardinia’s loss tormented Hamilcar’s magnanimous spirit: Because he thought Sicily had been surrendered in over-hasty hopelessness and that Sardinia had been seized in the middle of an African disturbance as a Roman trick, to which a tribute-tax was imposed besides.