The Historians' History of the World 05

The issue of the war was thus decided. From the moment when Rome determined not to give Hannibal a chance of another pitched battle but to confine herself to defensive measures and guerilla warfare, the latter could gain no further success. The fact that by this time he had won a great stretch of territory and was bound to defend it, hampered the mobility to which his successes had hitherto been due; the zenith of his victorious career was passed, he too was obliged to stand on the defensive, and could not avoid being steadily forced from one position after another. And now for the first time the vast strength of the Roman state stood forth in all its imposing majesty; for while defending itself against Hannibal in Italy it was able to take the offensive with absolute success in every other theatre of war, Spain, Sicily, and Greece.

How there arose on the Roman side a statesman and commander of genius in the person of Publius Scipio the Younger, who, after the conquest of Spain carried the war into Africa and there extorted peace, need not be recounted in this place. Rome had gained a complete victory, and with it the dominion over the western half of the Mediterranean; thenceforth there was no power in the world that could oppose her successfully in anything she chose to undertake. The war of Hannibal against Rome is the climax of ancient history; if up to that time the development of the ancient world and of the Christian Teutonic nations of modern times have run substantially on parallel lines, here we come to the parting of the ways. In modern history every attempt made since the sixteenth century to establish the universal dominion of a single nation has come to naught; the several peoples have maintained their independence, and in the struggle political conglomerates have grown into states of distinct nationality, holding the full powers of their dominions at their own disposal to the same extent as was done by Rome only in antique times. On this balance of power among the various states and the nations of which they are composed, and upon the incessant rivalry in every department of politics and culture, which requires them at each crisis to strain every nerve to the utmost if they are to hold their own in the struggle, depends the modern condition of the world and the fact that the universal civilisation of modern times keeps its ground and (at present at least) advances steadily, while the leadership in the perpetual contest passes from nation to nation.

In ancient times, on the contrary, the attempt to establish a balance of power came to naught in the war of Hannibal; and from that time forward there is but one power of any account in the world, that of the Roman government, and for that very reason this moment marks first the stagnation, and then the decline, of culture. The ultimate result which grows out of this state of things in the course of the following centuries is a single vast civilised state in which all differences of nationality are abolished. But this involves the abolition of political rivalry and of the conditions vital to civilisation; the stimulus to advance, to outstrip competitors, is lacking; all that remains to be done is to keep what has already been gained, and, here as everywhere, that implies the decline and death of civilisation.

Rome herself, and with her the whole of Italy, was destined while endeavouring to secure the fruits of victory to experience to the full its disastrous consequences. She was dragged into a world-policy from which there was no escape, however much she might desire it; a return to the old Italian policy, with its circumscribed agrarian tendencies, had become impossible. Thus it comes about that the havoc wrought in Italy by the war of Hannibal has never been made good to this day, that the wounds it inflicted on the life of the nation have never been healed or obliterated. The state of Italy and the embryo Italian nation never came to perfection because the levelling universal empire of Rome sprang up and checked them.