CAUSE OF WAR WITH CARTHAGE. The Carthaginians were angry at the way
the Romans treated them. They watched with alarm the steady growth of
the Roman power, and feared that the Romans, if masters of Italy,
would attack their trade with the cities of the western Mediterranean.
A quarrel broke out over a city in Sicily. At first the Carthaginians
seemed to have the best of it, because they had a strong war fleet
while the Romans had only a few small vessels. But the Romans
hurriedly built ships and placed upon each a kind of drawbridge,
fitted with great hooks called grappling-irons. These they let down
upon the enemy's decks as soon as the ships came close enough, and
over these drawbridges the Roman soldiers rushed and captured the
Carthaginian ships.

When the Carthaginians asked for peace, the Romans demanded a great
sum of money and a promise that the Carthaginians would leave the
cities in Sicily which they occupied. Soon afterward the Romans took
advantage of a mutiny in the Carthaginian army to demand more money
and to seize Sardinia and Corsica. No wonder the Carthaginians were
angry. The result was a new and more terrible war.

HANNIBAL. The Carthaginians in the new war were led by Hannibal, who
understood how to fight battles better than any of the generals whom
the Romans sent against him. The story is told that when he was a boy
his father made him promise, at the altar of his city's gods, undying
hatred to Rome. Even the Romans thought him a wonderful man. Their
historians said that toil did not wear out his body or exhaust his
energy. Cold or heat were alike to him. He never ate or drank more
than he needed. He slept when he had time, whether it was day or
night, wrapping himself in a military cloak and lying on the ground in