Battle of Metaurus, B. C. 207

The battle of Metaurus, the fourth of the Fifteen Battles, decided the struggle between the Carthaginians and the Romans for universal supremacy. For although the struggle lasted many years longer, yet Hannibal the Great, persistent enemy of Rome, and the greatest of Carthaginians, exclaimed after this battle, "Rome will be the mistress of the world! I see the doom of Carthage." The Roman historian Livy wrote in no spirit of exaggeration when he termed this struggle "The most memorable of all wars that ever were carried on." Modern historians have marked the similitude between the contest of Carthage and Rome, and that between France and England in the time of Napoleon. Arnold says: "For seventeen years Hannibal strove against Rome; for sixteen years Napoleon Bonaparte strove against England. The efforts of the first ended at Zama (202 B. C.); those of the second in Waterloo (1815 A. D.). In both cases it was the highest individual genius arrayed against the resources of a great nation, and in both cases the nation was victorious." Wellington has been called the modern Scipio. The great struggle between Carthage and Rome for the mastery of the West is known in history as the "Punic Wars." It was to decide the question whether the Aryan or the Semitic race should predominate in Europe. For more than a hundred years the contest lasted with a courage and pertinacity rarely equalled, never surpassed, in the annals of the world. It was not an issue to decide the fate of two cities or two empires; it was a strife on which depended the fate of two races of mankind; Japhet and Shem were arrayed against each other.

The first division comprised, besides the Indians and the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans and the Germans; the other the Jews and the Arabs, the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians. Japhet conquered.

Many generations passed away before the conflict was renewed, and it was then a conflict between the religions of the two races. Charles Martel repelled the Saracenic invasion in the Battle of Tours, 732, and thereby rescued our ancestors from the civil and religious yoke of the Koran. Metaurus was the political victory of the Aryan race over the Semitic; Tours was the victory of Christianity over Mohammedanism.