When the fighting was over, Hannibal addressed his men. The contest had been so enjoyable, he said, because the prisoners had fought so intensely. That was partly because the weakest man grows fierce when losing means death, but there was another reason as well: they had the chance to join the Carthaginian army, to go from being abject prisoners to free soldiers fighting for a great cause, the defeat of the hated Romans. You soldiers, said Hannibal, are in exactly the same position. You face a much stronger enemy. You are many miles from home, on hostile territory, and you have nowhere to
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