Excerpt from Hannibal a History of the Art of War Among the Carthaginians and Romans Down to the Battle The author desires once more to disclaim the writing of a military text-book. Apart from the peculiar qualifications requisite for such work, it is doubtful whether history can be written on lines suitable for a treatise of the kind. History is a consecutive narrative of facts accompanied by suitable comment; a text-book should enunciate certain principles and select historical facts as illustrations. So far as history, pure and simple, is valuable to the military student, and it has always been pronounced by great leaders and critics to be the most fruitful of studies, - so far will these volumes reach. But they aim rather, for the benefit of the general reader, to enlarge upon those military facts to which the histories devote small Space, and thus narrate the origin and growth of the art of war, than to spread before the young military student those principles which lie at the basis of the profession he proposes to embrace. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.