he respected an independent and courageous people more than a worthless prince, and soon after withdrew his army from Rome, gaye Mutius his liberty, and returned to Tuscany.

5. About four hundred and eighty years after the foundation of the city, the Romans became masters of all Italy. They always made war for what they thought a good reason: generally the neighbouring states quarrelled and appealed to them to settle their difference, and they usually settled it by taking the victory into their own hands, and giving laws to the conquered people.

THE PUNIC WARS,

After the Romans had achieved the conquest of all Italy, Sicily was the next object of their ambition. Sicily was anciently called Trinacria from its shape, being an irregular triangle, each of the sides measuring about two hundred miles. Sicily was fertile and populous. It was so productive that it was called the granary of Rome, from the supplies which it furnished to that city. Its cities were, many of them, founded by Phoenicians, Greeks, and Carthaginians.

2. Carthage which was the capital of a powerful state in Africa, occupied nearly the site of modern Tunis, and was founded by a colony of Phoenicians, about a century before the foundation of Rome. The people of Messina, in Sicily, complained to the Romans of injuries received by them

from the Carthaginians, and the Romans eagerly availed themselves of this opportunity to assist their neighbours, and sent their armies into Sicily against the Carthaginians.

3. After a war of two years, the Romans conquered Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica; and to punish the Carthaginians for resistance to their arms, carried the war into the territory of Carthage; but here they suffered defeat, and their generals were made prisoners. Regulus, one of the Roman commanders, was despatched to Rome, to settle a peace between the two hostile powers, and when he departed, promised to return to captivity if the peace could not be accomplished. When he got to Rome he exhorted the senate to continue the war, and against the remonstrances of his friends, fulfilled his word, went back to Carthage, and suffered a cruel death. This instance of integrity is often mentioned, and is worthy of imitation though extorted promises from cruel enemies, are not real obligations. The war was prosecuted and ended in the defeat of the Carthaginians, with whom the Romans made peace on hard conditions.

HANNIBAL.

The Carthaginians did not long keep the peace hey had made, but they fitted out a large army against Rome. The Romans learned the art of ship-building from the Carthaginians. One of the Carthaginian vessels being wrecked, they got nos

session of it; and it served them as a model after which to construct their ships. They furnished themselves with a navy for the defence of their coasts, and the Carthaginians could no where directly approach Italy.

2. The command of the army which was destined to oppose the Romans, was given to Hannibal, a prince of Carthage. When a child, Hannibal had been compelled to swear upon the altars of the Carthaginian gods, that he would always hate the Romans, and devote himself to their destruction. He was instructed in the art of war; and when he was of a proper age to command, entrusted with 100,000 men, with whom he marched against the Romans.

3. The Carthaginian army landed in Spain, crossed the Pyrenees, traversed France, then Gaul, and surmounted the Alps, till then accounted impassable. In four successive battles Hannibal defeated the Roman forces: in the last, at Cannæ, 40,000 Romans were killed; but Italy was not conquered. The Romans intercepted provisions from the Carthaginians. Carthage could not, or did not, remit regular supplies to her armies; and Scipio, the Roman general, having first subdued Spain, marched to Carthage, and obliged the Carthaginians to recal their general. He obeyed, after having been engaged sixteen years in this unhappy war. He came to an engagement with the Romans, and was forced to yield them the victory. This ended, the second Punic war, but the Romans permitted the Carthaginians to retain their territory in Africa, and their former govern

ment.

4. Hannibal, upon his defeat, fled into Syria,

and persuaded Antiochus, the king, to declare war against the Romans. Antiochus took his advice and suffered for it. When the Romans made peace with the king of Syria, they required that Hannibal should be given up to them, and, in fear for his life, he fled to the protection of Prusias, king of Bithynia, in Asia Minor. The Roman senate despatched embassadors to Prusias to demand their enemy, and in dread of being delivered to them, Hannibal committed suicide.

5. When the Romans made peace with the Carthaginians, at the termination of the second Punic war, one of the conditions was, that the latter people should never make war without the consent of the former. During fifty years which followed this peace, the Carthaginians, by their industry, repaired many of their losses, but their inability to make war afforded impunity to their neighbours, the Numidians, who ravaged their borders without fear.

6. The Carthaginians applied in vain to the Roman senate for permission to repel their invaders, and when, at length, they took up arms against them, it was a signal for the Romans to go over and punish the infraction of their orders This they did, and the Roman army spent two years in accomplishing the final destruction of this devoted state, but at the expiration of that time the work was done.

7. Scipio, the descendant of him who concluded the second Punic war, surrounded the walls of Carthage with his troops, and succeeded in setting fire to it. During seventeen days it was burning, and its miserable inhabitants either perished in the flames or became slaves to their cruel conquerors.

B. C. 147. This is a shocking circumstanceone could wish to blot it from the history of na tions. About this time Attalus, king of Pergamus in Asia Minor, left his dominions to Rome.

8. The Mithridatic war lasted twenty-six years. Mithridates was a king of Pontus, who invaded Athens and other parts o. Greece subject to Rome; and the Roman generals, first Sylla, and afterwards Pompey, were sent against him; they succeeded in their design, and Sylla, when he recovered Athens, took from that city its valuable libraries which were conveyed to Rome, B. C. 89.

CIVIL WARS OF ROME.

The civil wars of Rome were the most dreadful. There were sometimes wars between the rich and the poor, and sometimes between military chiefs, each of whom wished to be supreme. The wars of Marius and Sylla, and of Cæsar and Pompey, are the most memorable. An American

painter has produced a picture from the history of Marius, which obtained the prize from an Academy of Arts in France. Mr. Vanderlyn represents the Roman exile viewing the ruins of Carthage.

2. Marius was born a peasant, but he rose to be a great general, and was seven times consul of Rome; he defeated the Teutones and Cimbri, barbarians of the countries, now Germany and Denmark, but he could not bear a rival. When