Alexander was the hero of the Greeks. He was King of Macedon, a country
lying north of Greece proper. He headed an army of his countrymen, and
made an excursion for conquest and glory into Asia. He made himself
master of all that quarter of the globe, and reigned over it in Babylon,
till he brought himself to an early grave by the excesses into which his
boundless prosperity allured him. His fame rests on his triumphant
success in building up for himself so vast an empire, and the admiration
which his career has always excited among mankind is heightened by the
consideration of his youth, and of the noble and generous impulses. The Carthaginian hero was Hannibal. We class the Carthaginians among the
European nations of antiquity; for, in respect to their origin, their
civilization, and all their commercial and political relations, they
belonged to the European race, though it is true that their capital was
on the African side of the Mediterranean Sea. Hannibal was the great
Carthaginian hero. He earned his fame by the energy and implacableness
of his hate. The work of his life was to keep a vast empire in a state
of continual anxiety and terror for fifty years, so that his claim to
greatness and glory rests on the determination, the perseverance, and
the success with which he fulfilled his function of being, while he
lived, the terror of the world.