1538 The Zoologist — February, 1869. 



France, and tlinn over the Alps into Italy. Rome was thunderstruck at 

 the feat: and her commanders seemed paralyzed with fear: they con- 

 tinued for awhile to hover about the skirts of the Carthaginian army 

 without daring to venture a battle : at last Varro took the field with 

 80,000 infantry and 6000 cavalry, probably the finest army a Roman 

 general had ever led : the armies met, and the genius of the Cartha- 

 ginian prevailed : Cannae was fought and won, and Italy was prostrate 

 at the feet of the Carthaginian, who remained unconquered by Rome, 

 the so-called mistress of the world, for sixteen years. When the Roman 

 at last recovered himself, when his terrific fiat at length went forth, 

 " delenda est Cariliago" Carthage became a Roman province, and is 

 now but the shadow of a name. 



Romans. — U'here then are the Carthaginians ; and where are her 

 conquerors ? Does not the very title of Gibbon's great work convey 

 the clearest possible idea of that tribal decay which is directly at vari- 

 ance with evolution, progress, improvement ? Gibbon was certainly 

 no Darwinian ; he looked on Rome and the Romans as having equally 

 fallen into irretrievable ruin, Ut nunc omni decore iiudata, prostrata 

 jitcet, instar ijiyantei cadaveris corrupti atqiie nndique exesi. 



Greeks. — The Argives, also called Achaii, Hellenes and Greeks, 

 and sometimes, but erroneously, Acarnanians, have made an impression 

 on the literature of the world which grows deeper, and apparently more 

 enduring, as century after century rolls over our heads. The history 

 of Greece begins a thousand years before the Christian era, and ends 

 or nearly ends with the Birth of Christ. Her warriors, poets, painters 

 and historians still vie with each other as to which has the highest and 

 best claim to the applause of the present age ; and while we reckon it 

 our noblest intellectual feat to produce a worthy translation of her 

 poets and historians, or a faithful copy of her statues or temples, we 

 feel an almost breathless admiration of the prowess, skill and indomit- 

 able courage which those poets and historians record. Greece first 

 looms on us through the fog of fiction ; and the Homeric version of the 

 Greek triumph over the Assyrian race at Troy, is mainly remarkable 

 as evidence of poetic genius : except by a few spirit-rappers, mediums 

 and other impostors, the idea of physical force being employed by 

 gods, demigods and spirits is not now entertained ; yet it cannot be 

 denied that the blind poet who imagined these transactions, founded a 

 school or system of theology that made a deep and enduring impression 

 on the minds of men ; since we cannot refet the mythology of Greece 

 and Rome lo any other or earlier source than the teeming brain of 



