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The Father’s Eternal Freedom
 The Father’s Eternal
Freedom
The Personalist Trinitarian Ontology
of John Zizioulas

Dario Chiapetti

James Clarke & Co.

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The Father’s Eternal Freedom
The Personalist Trinitarian Ontology
of John Zizioulas

Dario Chiapetti

Edited with a Foreword by Norman Russell

James Clarke & Co.

 James Clarke & Co.
P.O. Box 60
Cambridge
CB1 2NT
United Kingdom
www.jamesclarke.co
publishing@jamesclarke.co

Hardback ISBN: 978 0 227 17773 0

Paperback ISBN: 978 0 227 17774 7
PDF ISBN: 978 0 227 17776 1
ePUB ISBN: 978 0 227 17775 4

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A record is available from the British Library

First published as «La libertà di Dio è la libertà del Padre»

by Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana, 2021
English translation first published by James Clarke and Co., 2022

Copyright © Dario Chiapetti, 2021

English Translation, 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this edition may be reproduced,

stored electronically or in any retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without
prior written permission from the Publisher
(permissions@jamesclarke.co).
Pro unitate Christianorum - Γιὰ τὴν ἑνότητα τῶν Χριστιανῶν
 Tu es sanctus Dominus Deus solus, qui facis mirabilia.
Tu es fortis, Tu es magnus, Tu es altissimus,
Tu es rex omnipotens, Tu Pater sancte, rex caeli et terrae.
Tu es trinus et unus Dominus Deus deorum,
Tu es bonum, omne bonum, summum bonum,
Dominus Deus vivus et verus.

Francis of Assisi, Laudes Dei altissimi,

La Verna, 1224
 Contents

Foreword ix
Preface xiii
Note on Citations xvii
Abbreviations xix

Introduction: General Aspects of the Figure and

Thought of Zizioulas 1

Part 1 Zizioulas’ Reading of the Fathers: The Notion

of Person and the Doctrine of the Monarchy of the Father 9
Chapter 1 The Emergence of the Attribution of
Primary Ontological Content to the Notion of Person in
Trinitarian Reflection 11
Athanasius: From the Nicene Doctrine of Homoousion
to Reflection on the Relational Character of Ousia 12
The Cappadocians: The Ontological View of Hypostasis
as Tropos Hyparxeōs of Ousia 23
Maximus the Confessor: The Personalist Deepening of
the Notion of Hypostasis as an Ontological Principle of the
Freedom of Nature 84
Chapter 2 The Father, the Ontological Principle of the
Triune and One Being of God 102
Data Learned from Scripture: God is Father 102
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics:
God as the Aitia of the Trinitarian Being 104
viii The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Part 2 Zizioulas’ Theological Development: The Father,

Free Cause of Being as Personhood-Freedom 161
Chapter 3 The Father: ‘The Ultimate Reality of God’s
Personal Existence’ 163
The Freedom of the Causativity of the Father’s Being 163
The Father as Trinity, as Ontological Principle of God’s
Triune Being 191
The Father as the One, as the Ontological Principle
of the One Being of God 208
One Trinitarian Principle of the Triune and One
Being of God: The Father as Existence for the Other
for the Sake of Personal Reality 232
Chapter 4 The Freedom that ‘Springs from the Very Way
the Hypostases are Constituted’: From the Freedom of the
Father, the Freedom of God 235
Divine Personhood: Freedom as a Mode of Existence
Caused in the Timelessness of the Unity of Nature 236
A Single Qualitative Freedom 256
Concluding Remarks: Zizioulas’ Bold Exercise in
Theological Reflection 257

Bibliography 265
Index 275
 Foreword

John Zizioulas, metropolitan of Pergamon, is one of the most significant

theologians of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He
is well known not only to Orthodox Christians but also more widely
through the publication of his books in several Western languages
and, more importantly, his engagement with fundamental theological
and philosophical themes that transcend confessional boundaries. He
is a thinker, however, who frames his thoughts in essays and articles
rather than in monographs. His most influential books, Being as
Communion (1985) and Communion and Otherness (2006) are indeed
collections of articles united by a common theme. This means that his
seminal ideas are not developed systematically, as one would expect
to find in a monograph. He returns to them frequently in different
articles, examining them from various angles in ways that are not easily
summarised. Herein lies the first important feature of Dario Chiapetti’s
book: its systematic exposition of Zizioulas’ personalist trinitarian
ontology gathered from a great many of the metropolitan’s occasional
writings. Such a systematic exposition, already initiated by Aristotle
Papanikolaou in his book Being with God (2006), has now been carried
forward in a significant way.
The second important feature of Chiapetti’s book is its thorough
examination of Zizioulas’ patristic sources and its demonstration that
he stands in continuity with the patristic age. This continuity has often
been controverted. Although hailed by some as ‘a modern Father of
the Church’, Zizioulas has been accused by others of mishandling his
patristic sources under the guise of expounding them, and of insidiously
introducing ideas deriving from modern personalism and existentialism.
His philosophical enterprise has been ably defended by a number of
scholars – to engage with contemporary personalism and existentialism
x The Father’s Eternal Freedom

does not make him an ‘existentialist’ any more than engaging with
the dominant philosophical tradition of their own time made the
Cappadocians ‘Neoplatonists’ – but the interpretation of the patristic
sources on which Zizioulas bases his arguments remains problematic.
Chiapetti carefully examines the key notions of ousia (being), hypostasis
(subsistent entity), tropos hyparxeōs (mode of existence), prosōpon (person
as a relational concept), and koinōnia (communion) in their patristic
setting and shows convincingly that Zizioulas’ reflection on these
notions, while treating them creatively, does not distort their meaning as
determined by patristic usage.
The third important feature of the book is its demonstration of the
internal coherence of Zizioulas’ thinking. The metropolitan’s theology
of communion has often been welcomed as a counterweight to Western
individualism. It is certainly true that he regards Western individualism
(which he traces to Augustine and Boethius) as deplorable because it
treats the ‘other’ as a threat rather than as a necessary constituent of
relation. Yet at the same time, he lays great emphasis on the particular,
on the hypostatic. This approach has yielded important results for how we
are to conceive of the Trinity. Traditionally, we have tended to think of
the one God as a unified essence differentiated as three hypostaseis or
persons. Logically, the unity comes first (reflecting, perhaps, the monistic
ontology of the ancient Greek philosophers), with the differentiation of the
persons following upon this. Zizioulas, basing himself on Athanasius
and the Cappadocians, has reversed the generally assumed logical order:
it is the three persons who constitute the oneness, not the oneness that
is differentiated as three persons. This is because the cause of the divine
being is the Father, who is a particular hypostasis, not an undifferentiated
essence. The Father has priority (in a causal, not a temporal, sense) and is
thus the cause of the being of the Son and of the Spirit. ‘Father’ is a relational
term. The persons of the Trinity are constituted by their relations. They
are not the relations themselves, but it is their relations that determine
their being. As St John Damascene says, ‘the Father never existed when
the Son did not exist, but at the same time there was a father and a son
begotten from him, for a father cannot be called such without a son’
(De fide orthodoxa, 8). The oneness of God rests not in the sameness
of essence but in the monarchy of the Father, who freely and eternally
begets the Son and pours forth the Spirit.
The taxis of the Trinity thus conceived, an ordering and a unity
inseparable from the mutual perichoresis of the persons, fully accords
with the economic Trinity as revealed in the Scriptures. The Son and
the Spirit are sent into the world by the Father, in economic but not
Foreword xi

ontological subordination to him, in order to make the Father known.

Such a patterning is also reflected in the communion of Church, where,
at least in principle, the faithful are united in the body of Christ under
the presidency of the bishop in order to be transformed eucharistically
and become in communion with each other what they were created to be.
In the twenty-fi rst century, students of patristic thought have been
much influenced by John Zizioulas. Some, however, such as Sarah
Coakely and Morwenna Ludlow, have attacked Zizioulas’ insistence
on the priority of persons over substance; in her volume, Gregory
of Nyssa, Ancient and (Post)modern (2007), Ludlow claims that this
priority ‘does not do full justice to the richness of the Cappadocian
understanding of divine being’. Others, such as Lucian Turcescu and
Alan Torrance, have objected strongly to what they see as Zizioulas’
illegitimate use of modern ‘personalist’ ontology. Dario Chiapetti in
this outstanding book faces these challenges squarely, vindicating
Zizioulas as an accurate patristic scholar an enabling us to appreciate
in considerable detail the brilliant structure and coherence of his
trinitarian thinking.
Norman Russell
February 2021
 Preface

This study is an examination of John Zizioulas’ personalist trinitarian

ontology. The expression ‘personalist trinitarian ontology’ refers to
Zizioulas’ reflection on being, founded on the notion of person, as en-
countered at the intra-trinitarian level (for it is within the Trinity that
Zizioulas sees the full realisation of personal reality), the understand-
ing of which is rooted epistemologically in the event of divine-
human communion, particularly in the Eucharistic synaxis. That
said, attention is focused on Zizioulas’ reflection on the person of the
Father as the primary ontological reality of trinitarian personal being.
His understanding of the Father as the principle of distinction and
foundation of the trinitarian personal union will therefore be studied
as the incausate ontological cause of being as personal being, trinitarian
being and ontological freedom. The study will conclude with an exami-
nation of the notion of ontological freedom in the case of the caused
person, with reference to the Son, the Holy Spirit and humanity.
The question of the ontological principle of the Trinity, on which
much of Zizioulas’ speculative activity has focused, concerns the heart
of the trinitarian mystery and therefore of the Christian faith. When this
question is examined in relation to the reality of the person – primarily
that of the Father – and of freedom, it reveals important implications
on the level of anthropology, ecclesiology and pastoral care, as well as
of Christian ecumenism and dialogue with the Abrahamic religions.
Zizioulas’ thought acquires even more relevance when one considers ‘how
little ontological investigation into the meaning of freedom is carried out
by modern theologians’, according to Tillich, ‘given the immense role
the problem of freedom has played in the history of theology’.1 It should

1.
As recalled by R. Knežević, ‘Homo Theurgos: Freedom According to John
Zizioulas and Nikolai Berdyaev’, p. 1, at: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:
xiv The Father’s Eternal Freedom

be added that the evaluation of Zizioulas’ proposal by scholars is still

debated and, although there are many publications on the subject, there
is still no specific doctoral study. In fact, many critics object to Zizioulas’
lack of adherence to the Fathers of the Church on whom he claims to
base his reflection, which reveals a subordinationist understanding of
the Trinity, they claim, due to modern philosophical projections. Other
scholars, while favouring his ontology of the person, seem to waver
when their examination reaches the theological vulnus represented by
the assumption that the Father constitutes the only ontological principle
of trinitarian being. On the other hand, it is worth noting that Zizioulas
has always endeavoured to show that the doctrine of the ontological
monarchy of the Father is the most appropriate one for accounting for
the data of Scripture, patristic texts, conciliar formulations and the
lex orandi, as well as the salvific content of trinitarian dogma, with its
existential value for humanity today.
There are a number of difficulties in approaching Zizioulas. The first
consists in the unsystematic nature of Zizioulas’ reflection, which requires
patient exegetical and hermeneutical work on his vast, fragmented
production, which in some cases is not easy to find. The second difficulty
lies in the very object of the reflection. The question of the cause of being,
in the horizon of trinitarian ontology, poses complex questions, which
are located ‘at the limits of ontology’2 and meet an obstacle in the human
mind itself, marked as it is by the ‘experience of fragmented time’.3
The third difficulty consists in the interpretation of the Fathers, and in
particular of their intra-trinitarian reflection. This is a very difficult task,
as will be seen with regard to the patristic studies that will be examined,
which from time to time present a multiplicity of interpretations that
are often not easy to harmonise.
At a general level, this study aims to present Zizioulas’ proposal in a
systematic way and to verify its conformity to dogma and its internal
coherence. Specifically, it intends to ascertain what role should be

089576a0-a649-43ba-9055-86474e4f0964/download _fi le?fi le _formatpdf

&safe_filenameHomo%2520Theurgos-3.pdf&type_of_workThesis
(accessed 29 April 2020). Knežević refers to P. Tillich, Systematic Theology
(Digswell Place: James Nisbet, 1968), p. 202.
2.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, ed. by D.H. Knight (London and New
York: T. & T. Clark, 2008), p. 60.
3.
‘Trinitarian Freedom: Is God Free in Trinitarian Life?’, in G. Maspero and
R. Wozniak (eds), Rethinking Trinitarian Theology: Disputed Questions and
Contemporary Issues in Trinitarian Theology (London: T. & T. Clark, 2012),
pp. 193–207, here at p. 202.
Preface xv

given to the patristic foundation of Zizioulas’ theological discourse, the

plausibility of his reading of the Fathers, his theological development
and the role played by his recourse to modern philosophy, especially
existentialist philosophy.
After analysing the sources and the hermeneutical and epistemological
questions, I shall examine Zizioulas’ patristic reading, proceeding in a
historical-comparative way and comparing it with the texts of the Fathers
themselves and patristic studies of them. On that basis I shall identify and
examine the theological development that Zizioulas brought to patristic
reflection. Accepting the hermeneutic principle that Zizioulas says he
kept in mind when approaching the Fathers, namely, that a systematic
theologian, unlike a historian, must ‘make explicit what is implicit’4 in
order to deepen our understanding of dogma, I shall try to make explicit
what seems to be implicit in Zizioulas himself.
The primary sources of my research are Zizioulas’ literary corpus,
which consists almost entirely of articles, mainly in Greek, English and
French. First, there are the trinitarian writings – including the more
Christological and pneumatological ones – and the anthropological
writings. In second place, there are the epistemological, sacramental and
ecclesiological writings. These sources are studied in chronological order,
in order to grasp the development of the author’s thought, using the
editions in the original language and comparing them with the official
translations, where present. Alongside Zizioulan sources are patristic,
magisterial and scriptural sources. Studies on the author, together with
patristic, philosophical, theological and historical studies of dogma, as
well as manuals, dictionaries, lexicons and encyclopaedias, complete the
bibliographical apparatus.
After a general introduction to the life and thought of John Zizioulas,
in which a first look is taken at Zizioulas’ notion of personhood and
his Eucharistic epistemology, the work is divided into two parts, each
consisting of two chapters. The first part is on Zizioulas’ reading of the
patristic texts that form the basis of his reflection. Such an analysis is
necessary, first, because of the authority Zizioulas acknowledges in the
Fathers, second, in order to assess the possible merits of criticisms that
have been made of aspects of his theology that he traces back to patristic
teaching and, third, in order to identify the theological developments in
his proposal in Part II.

4.
‘Person and Nature in the Theology of St Maximus the Confessor’, in M.
Vasiljevic (ed.), Knowing the Purpose of Creation through the Resurrection
(Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press, 2013), pp. 85–113, here at p. 108.
xvi The Father’s Eternal Freedom

The second part aims to identify and examine the elements that
constitute Zizioulas’ theological development with regard to patristic
thought. The first of its two chapters examines his personalist ontology,
specifically that which constitutes the fundamental reality of God’s
personal existence, namely the person of the Father. After clarifying
the fundamental meanings of the notion of freedom in reference to the
Father, in its meanings of freedom for and freedom from, I address two
fundamental questions: the role of the Father in the Trinity, as a principle
of distinction – ‘the Father is Trinity’ – and his role as the foundation of
henōsis – ‘the Father is the One’. I shall thus attempt to clarify in
what sense the Father is understood by Zizioulas to be the sole cause
of trinitarian being, and how his being is understood as an uncaused
cause, ontologically free and the cause of ontological freedom.
The second chapter of Part II addresses the question of the personal
being of the person caused and therefore tries, with reference to the Son
and the Holy Spirit, to verify whether there is a difference, qualitatively
speaking, between the ontological freedom of the person caused and
that of the person causing. I conclude with a comprehensive and critical
survey of the results of my research.
Patristic texts are cited in the standard form, with the titles in Latin.
With regard to Gregory of Nyssa’s Contra Eunomium, the following
should be noted. The work is cited by Zizioulas mainly from Migne,
sometimes from Jaeger, and sometimes in an unspecified manner. For
consistency the bibliographical references of this work are to Migne.
This book is the English language edition, abridged, adapted and with
some modifications, of the Italian original, La libertà di Dio è la libertà
del Padre. Uno studio sull’ontologia personalista trinitaria in Ioannis
Zizioulas, which was based, in turn, on my doctoral research, conducted
under the direction of Professors Basilio Petrà and Konstantinos Agoras,
and successfully defended in December 2020 at the Facoltà Teologica
dell’Italia Centrale, Florence. I thank Norman Russell for the valuable
work of editing the text. Special gratitude goes to my mother.
Dario Chiapetti
May 2021
 Note on Citations

Zizioulas’ texts are quoted without mentioning the author’s name. These
texts were mostly published initially as articles. Subsequently many
were translated and collected in book form. Bibliographical references
are generally to the first published edition. Where the text has been
republished without change in a more readily available publication,
however, I have generally referred to that publication.
 Abbreviations

CChr.SL Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina (Turnhout:

Brépols, 1954-).
DZ H. Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum Definitionum
et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum, ed. by
P. Hünermann, Italian trans. by A. Lanzoni and
G.B. Zaccherini, Bologna, 5th edn, 2009 (original
version: Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1991).
GNO Gregorii Nysseni Opera, ed. by W. Jaeger et al. (Leiden:
Brill, 1921).
GNOD Gregorio di Nissa, Opere Dogmatiche [Dogmatic Works],
ed. by C. Moreschini (Milan: Bompiani, 2014).
PA St Gregory of Nazianzus, Poemata Arcana, ed. by
D.A. Sykes and C. Moreschini (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1997).
PG J.P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series
Graeca, 161 vols (Paris, Imprimerie Catholique, 1857–66).
PL J.P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series
Latina, 217 vols (Paris: Garnier, 1844–64).
SCh Sources Chrétiennes, 2nd edn (Paris: Cerf, 1955-).
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Hannibal's
daughter
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
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laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Hannibal's daughter

Author: Andrew Haggard

Release date: November 20, 2023 [eBook #72182]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Hutchinson & Co, 1898

Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HANNIBAL'S

DAUGHTER ***
Hannibal’s Daughter
BY
LIEUT. COL. ANDREW HAGGARD, D.S.O.
Author of
“Tempest Torn,” “Under Crescent and Star,” etc., etc.

LONDON
HUTCHINSON & CO.
PATERNOSTER ROW
1898
 Dedication.
TO HER ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCESS LOUISE,
MARCHIONESS OF LORNE.

Madam,
Surely never, in the history of the world, have events more
romantic been known than the career of Hannibal and of his eventual
conqueror, the youthful Scipio. Therefore, under the title of
“Hannibal’s Daughter,” it has been my humble effort to present to the
world in romantic guise such a story as may impress itself upon the
minds of many who would never seek it for themselves in the classic
tomes of history.
Having been commenced on the actual site of Ancient Carthage,
the local colouring of the opening chapters may be, with the aid of
history, relied upon as being correct. Throughout the whole work,
moreover, the thread of the story has been interwoven with a
network of those wonderful feats that are so graphically recorded for
us in the pages of Polybius and Livy.
To Your Royal Highness, with the greatest respect, I have the
honour to dedicate my work. Should there appear to be aught of art
in the manner in which I have attempted to weave a combination of
history and romance, may I venture to hope that a true artist like
Your Royal Highness, of whose works the nation is justly proud, may
not deem the results of my efforts unworthy.

I have the honour to be,

Madam,
Your most obedient servant,
ANDREW C. P. HAGGARD.

Alford Bridge, Aberdeenshire, May, 1898.

 CONTENTS
PART I.
I. HAMILCAR
II. CARTHAGE
III. HANNIBAL’S VOW
PART II.
I. ELISSA
II. MAHARBAL
III. FOREWARNED
IV. FOUR CARTHAGINIAN NOBLES
V. PLOTS AND COUNTER-PLOTS
VI. CLEANDRA’S CUNNING
VII. MELANIA’S MISERY
VIII. LOVE FULFILLED
IX. A LAUGH AND A LIFE
PART III.
I. SOSILUS AND CHŒRAS
II. A GIGANTIC SCHEME
III. HANNIBAL’S DREAM
IV. FIRST BLOOD
V. AT THE FOOT OF THE ALPS
VI. OVER THE ALPS
VII. HANNIBAL’S FIRST TRIUMPH
VIII. EUGENIA
IX. THRASYMENE
X. FRIENDS MUST PART
XI. ELISSA AS A WARRIOR
XII. SOPHONISBA AND SCIPIO
XIII. ON THE BRINK
XIV. CANNÆ
PART IV.
 I. AFTER THE BATTLE
II. WIFE OR MISTRESS
III. FIGHTING WITH FATE
IV. THE FRUITS OF FOLLY
V. MARS VICTORIOUS
VI. CŒCILIA’S DEGRADATION
VII. A RENUNCIATION
PART V.
I. TO SYRACUSE
II. FROM SYRACUSE TO MACEDON
III. A SACRIFICE
IV. A LETTER FROM SCIPIO
V. A SCENE OF HORROR
PART VI.
I. A SPELL OF PEACE
II. ELISSA WRITES TO SCIPIO
III. A TERRIBLE SEA FIGHT
IV. ELISSA’S MISERY
V. HIS LEGAL WIFE
VI. A MOMENTOUS MEETING
VII. ZAMA
VIII. CONCLUSION
HANNIBAL’S DAUGHTER.
 PART I.

CHAPTER I.
HAMILCAR.

On a point of land on the Tœnia, a hundred paces or so to the south

of the canal connecting the sea with the Cothon or double harbour of
Carthage, stood a palatial residence. Upon the balcony, which ran
completely round the house on the first storey, stood a man gazing
steadily across the gulf towards the north-east, past the end of the
Hermæan Promontory, to the left, of which the distant Island of
Zembra alone relieved the monotony of the horizon. His face was
grave, and his short hair and beard were slightly grey, but he was
evidently a man from whom the fire of youth had not yet departed.
His eye was the eye of one born to command; his straight-cut, sun-
burned features told the tale of many campaigns. Near him, on a
stool covered with a leopard skin, was carelessly thrown a steel
helmet richly incrusted with gold, and with the crest and the crown
deeply indented, as if from recent hard usage. The golden crest was
in one place completely divided by a sword cut, the brighter colour of
the gold within the division plainly showing that the blow had been
but lately delivered. On the floor of the balcony, at the foot of the
stool, lay a long straight sword. Although the hilt was of ivory, and
the scabbard of silver inlaid with gems, the blood-stains on the
former and the absence of many of the gems from their sockets, told
that this was no fair-weather weapon for state occasions, but a lethal
blade which had been borne by its owner in the brunt of many a
combat. Only, the armour which the warrior wore—consisting as it
did merely of a bright steel breast-piece, upon the breast of which
was emblazoned in gold a gorgeous representation of the sun, the
emblem of the great god Baal or Moloch, and the back of which was
similarly inlaid with the two-horned moon, the attribute of the glorious
Astarte, Queen of Heaven, and further studded with golden stars, the
emblems of all the other and lesser divinities—seemed on first
appearance as if more intended for the court than the camp. A closer
examination, however, revealed the fact that this also was no mere
holiday armour, for it, too, bore severe marks of ill-usage. The
warrior’s arms were bare from the elbow downwards, save for a
couple of circlets of gold upon each wrist, which from their width
seemed more intended for defence than ornament. Beneath the
armour he wore a bright toga of pure white cloth, the lower part
falling in a kilted skirt below the knee, being adorned with a narrow
band of Tyrian purple. Upon his feet he wore cothurns or sandals
strongly attached with leather thongs, the thongs being protected
with bright chain mail. Some steel pieces for the protection of the
thigh and knee were lying close at hand.
Such was the attire of the great General Hamilcar Barca, as with
an ever-deepening frown upon his anxious brow, he gazed sternly
and steadily in deepest reverie across the sea.
At length his reverie seemed to be broken.
“Why gaze thus towards Sicily,” he muttered; “why dream of
vengeance upon the hated Romans, who now occupy from end to
end of that fair isle, where, for many years, by the grace of
Melcareth, the invisible and omnipotent god, I was able with my
small army of mercenaries to deal them so many terrible and
crushing blows?
“Have they not almost as much cause to hate and to dread me,
who did so much to lower their pride and wipe out the memory of
their former victories? Did I not brave them for years from Mount
Ercte, descending daily like a wolf from the mountain crest, to ravage
the country in front of their very faces in strongly-fortified Panormus,
from the shelter of whose walls, for very fear of my name, they
scarcely dared to stir, so sure were they that their armies would be
cut to pieces by Hamilcar Barca?
“Did I not firmly establish myself in Mount Eryx, half-way up its
slope in the city on the hill, and there for two years, despite a huge
Roman army at the bottom, and their Gallic allies holding the fortified
temple at the top, snap my fingers at them, ay, laugh them to scorn
and destroy them by the thousand? For all that time, was not their
gold utterly unable to buy the treachery of my followers—were not
their arms utterly futile against my person? Did they not indeed find
to their cost that I was indeed the Hamilcar my name betokens—him
whom the mighty Melcareth protects?”
Proudly glancing across the sea with a scornful laugh, he
continued:
“Oh, ye Romans! well know ye that had not mine own countrymen
left me for four long years without men, money, or provisions, Sicily
had even now been mine. Oh, Prætor Valerius! what was thy much
boasted victory of the Œgatian Islands over the Admiral Hanno but
the conquest of a mere convoy of ill-armed cargo vessels, whom
mine economical countrymen were too parsimonious to send to my
relief under proper escort. Where was then thy glory, Valerius? And
thou, too, Lutatius Catulus? how did I receive thy arrogant proposals
that my troops should march out of Eryx under the yoke? I, a
Hamilcar Barca, march out under the yoke!” The General’s swarthy
cheek reddened at the thought. “Did not I but laugh in thy beard and
lay my hand upon this sword—which I now lift up and kiss before
heaven,” he raised and kissed the blood-stained hilt. “Did not I, even
as I do now, but simply bare the well-known blade,” here he drew it
from its sheath, “and thou didst fall and tremble before me, and in
thine anxiety to rid Sicily of me didst willingly take back thine insult
and offer to Hamilcar and all his troops the full and free liberty to
march out with all the honours of war? Ah!” he continued, stretching
forth his sword menacingly across the sea, “for all that it hath been
mine own countrymen who were the main cause of my downfall, I yet
owe thee a vengeance, Rome, a vengeance not for mine own but for
my country’s sake, and, with the help of the gods, in days not long to
come, those of my blood shall redden the plains and mountains of
Europe with the terrible vengeance of the Barcine sword.”
The General returned his sword to its sheath with an angry clang,
then striding across the wide balcony to where it overlooked a
beautiful garden on the other side of the house, he shouted loudly:
“Hannibal, Hannibal!”
 There was no reply, but down beneath the shelter of the fig trees
Hamilcar could plainly perceive three little boys engaged in a very
rough game of mimic warfare. They were all three armed with
wooden swords and small shields of metal. One of them was up in a
fig tree and striking downwards at the head of one who stood upon
the crown of a wall; while the third boy, who stood below the wall,
was striking upwards at his legs. The din of the resounding blows
falling upon the shields was so great that the boy at first did not hear.
“Hannibal, come hither at once,” cried out his father again in
louder tones.
Looking up and seeing his father, the boy on the wall threw down
his shield, a movement which was instantly taken advantage of by
each of the two other boys to get a blow well home. He did not,
however, pause to retaliate, but crying out, “That will I revenge later,”
threw down his sword also and rushed into the house and up to the
balcony, for even at his early age the boy had been taught discipline
and instant obedience, and he knew better than to delay. He
appeared before his father all out of breath and with torn clothing.
Notwithstanding that his forehead was bleeding from the result of the
last cut which had been delivered by the boy in the tree, he did not
attempt to wipe the wound, but with cast-down eyes and hands
crossed over his breast, silently awaited his father’s commands.
“What wast thou doing in the garden, Hannibal?”
“Waiting until Chronos the slave could take me up to see the burnt
sacrifice to Baal of the mercenaries whom thou hast conquered,” he
answered—then added excitedly, “Matho, who murdered Gisco and
his six hundred after mutilating them first, is to be tortured, thou
knowest, oh, my father, Chronos told me so, and I am going to see it
done.”
Hamilcar frowned.
“Nay, it is not my will that thou shalt go to see Matho tortured and
burnt; now, what else wast thou doing down there?”
The boy’s face fell; he did not like to be deprived of the pleasure of
seeing Matho tortured first and burned afterwards, for, boy as he
was, he knew that if ever man in this world deserved the torture, that
man was this last surviving chief of his father’s revolted mercenaries.
 But he made no protest at the deprivation of his expected
morning’s amusement, answering his father simply.
“I was playing with my brothers Hasdrubal and Mago at thine
occupation of the City on Mount Eryx, oh! my father. Mago was up in
the tree and represented the Gauls who had deserted and joined the
Romans. Hasdrubal was down below and took the place of the
Roman Army.”
“And thou wast in thy father’s place between the two, and like thy
father himself, hast been wounded,” replied Hamilcar, smiling grimly.
“Come, wipe thy face, lad, and tell me why didst not thou, being the
strongest, take the part of the Romans at the bottom of the hill?”
Fiercely the youth raised his head, and, looking his father straight
in the face, replied:
“For two reasons, my father. First, I am much stronger than
Hasdrubal, and the war would have been too soon over; secondly, I
hate the Romans, and for nothing in the world would I represent
them even in play.”
“Ah! thou hatest the Romans! And wilt thou then fight them one
day in earnest and avenge the torrents of Carthaginian blood they
have caused to flow, the hundreds of Carthaginian cities whose
inhabitants they have put to the sword; avenge, too, our defeat and
loss of forty-one elephants before Heraclea; the sacking of
Agrigentum and enslavement of 25,000 of its citizens; the terrible
loss of three hundred warships at Ecnomos; the invasion of
Carthaginia by Regulus; his sacking and burning of all the fair
domain between here and Clypea, across yonder Hermæan
Promontory; the capture by Cœcilius Metellus before Panormus of
120 elephants from Hasdrubal, all of them slaughtered in cold blood
as a spectacle for the Roman citizens in the Roman circus; the fight
at—”
“Stop, father, stop!” cried the young Hannibal, stamping his foot. “I
can bear no more. By thy sword here, which I can even now draw—
see I do so—I swear to fight and avenge all these disasters. By the
favour of the great god Baal, whose name I bear, I will wage war
against them all my life as soon as ever I am old enough to carry
arms.”
 “Good,” said his father, “thou art a worthy son of Hamilcar, and this
very day shalt thou swear, not in the bloody temple of Moloch, but in
the sacred fane of Melcareth, the god of the city, the god of thy
forefathers in Tyre, and the god of the divine Dido, the foundress of
Carthage, that never wilt thou relax the hatred to the Romans thou
hast even now sworn by thy father’s sword. Never shalt thou, whilst
life lasts thee, cease to fight for thy native city, thy native country.
Look forth, my lad, upon all thou canst see now, and say, is it not a
fair domain? Let all that lies before thine eyes now sink down deep
into the innermost recesses of thy memory, for soon I shall take thee
hence; but I would not have thee, when far away, forget the sacred
city for whose very existence thou and I must fight. When thou hast
gazed thy fill upon all that lies before us, thou must perform thine
ablutions, arrange thy disordered dress, and then thou shalt
accompany me, not to see the sacrifice of the mercenaries in the pit
of fire before the brazen image of Moloch, but to make thy vow in the
temple of the invisible and all-pervading mighty essence of godhead,
the eternal Melcareth.”
 CHAPTER II.
CARTHAGE.

The terrible war, known as the inexpiable or the truceless war, was
just at an end, after three years’ duration. The mercenaries who had
served so faithfully under Hamilcar in Sicily had by the bad faith of
the Carthaginian Government, headed by Hamilcar’s greatest
enemy, Hanno, been driven to a revolt to try and recover the arrears
of pay due to them for noble services for years past. When the effete
Hanno, after a first slight success, had allowed his camp to be
captured, the Government, at the last gasp, had begged Hamilcar to
fight against his own old soldiers. For the sheer love of his country,
he had, although much against the grain, consented to do so. But
the towns of Utica, the oldest Phœnician town in Africa, and of Hippo
Zarytus were joining in the revolt; the Libyans and Numidians had
risen en masse to join the revolutionists, and the Libyan women,
having sold all their jewellery, of which they possessed large
quantities, for the sake of the revolted mercenaries, there was soon
so much money in the rebel camp that the very existence of
Carthage itself was at stake. Therefore, although Hamilcar well knew
that all the mercenaries, whether Libyans or Ligurians, Balearic
Islanders, Greeks, or Spaniards, were personally well disposed to
himself, he had been forced to take up arms against them.
Under Spendius, a Campanian slave, and Matho, an African in
whom they had formerly placed great trust, the rebels had gained
various successes, and, on visiting them in their camp, had
treacherously made prisoner of Gisco, a general in whom they had
previously expressed the greatest trust, and whom they had asked to
have sent to them with money to arrange their difficulties. Hamilcar
had been at first much hampered by his enemy, Hanno, an
effeminate wretch, being associated in the command with himself;
but when the Carthaginians found that, by leaving Hanno to hamper
Hamilcar, with all these well-trained soldiers against them, they had
got the knife held very close to their own luxurious throats, they
removed Hanno, and left the patriotic Hamilcar in supreme military
command. Their jealousies of him would not have allowed the
aristocracy and plutocracy to have done so much for the man whom
they had deserted for so long in Sicily had they not known their own
very existence to be at stake. For they ran the risk of being killed
both by the Libyans and mercenaries outside, and by the
discontented people inside the walls.
When Hamilcar assumed supreme command, the war had very
soon commenced to go the other way. He forced the easy, luxurious
Carthaginian nobles to become soldiers, and treated them as
roughly as if they had been slaves. And he made them fight. He got
elephants together; he made wonderful marches, dividing the
various rebel camps; he penned them up within their own fortified
lines. Many deserted and joined him; many prisoners whom he took
he released; a great African chief named Naravas came over to his
side. All was going well for Carthage when Spendius and Matho
mutilated and murdered the wretched General Gisco and his six
hundred followers in cold blood. After that no more of their followers
dared to leave them for fear of the terrible retaliation that they knew
awaited them. But how Spendius and all his camp were at length
penned up and reduced to cannibalism, eating all their prisoners and
slaves, how Spendius and his ten senators were taken and crucified,
while Matho, at the same time issuing from Tunis, took and crucified
a Carthaginian general and fifty of his men, and how at length, after
slaughtering or capturing the 30,000 or 40,000 remaining rebels,
Hamilcar took Matho himself prisoner, are all matters of history.
On the morning of the opening of our story, there was to be a
terrible sacrifice offered up to the great Baal Hammon, the sun god
Moloch, the Saturn of the Romans: the terrible monster to whom in
their hours of distress the Carthaginians were in the habit of offering
up at times their own babies, their first-born sons, or the fairest of
their virgins, whose cruel nuptials consisted not in being lighted with
the torch of Hymen, but in being placed bound upon the
outstretched, brazen, red-hot hands of the huge image, from whose
arms, which sloped downwards, they rolled down into the flaming
furnace at his feet. And fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers,
yea, even the very lovers of the girls, looked on complacently,
thinking that in thus sacrificing their dearest and their best to the
cruel god, they were consulting the best interests of their country in a
time of danger. Nor were the screams of the victims, many of whom
were self-offered, allowed to be heard, for the drums beat, the
priests chanted, and the beautiful young priestesses attached to the
temple danced in circles around, joining the sound of their voices
and their musical instruments to the crackling of the fire and the
rolling of the drums.
When Hamilcar bid his boy, Hannibal, look forth upon the city
before him, on the sea in front and behind him, and upon the country
around, it was a lovely morning in early summer. The weather was
not yet hot; there was a beautiful north-west breeze blowing down
the Carthaginian Gulf straight into the boy’s face, tossing up little
white horses on the surface of the sea, of which the white-flecked
foam shone like silver on its brilliantly green surface. Across the gulf,
upon whose bosom floated many a stately trireme and quinquireme,
to the east side arose a bold range of rugged mountains with steep,
serrated edges. Turning round yet further and facing the south, the
young Hannibal could see the same mountain range, dominated by a
steep, two-horned peak, sweeping round, but gradually bearing back
and so away from the shores of the shallow salt water lake then
known as the Stagnum, now called the Lake of Tunis. This lake was
separated, by the narrow strip of land called the Tœnia, from the
Sirius Carthaginensis, or Gulf of Carthage, upon the extremity of
which is now built the town of Goletta. There was in those days, as
now, a canal dividing this isthmus in two, and thus giving access for
ships to Tunis, a distance of ten miles from Carthage, at the far end
of the Tunisian lake.
Turning back again and looking to the north and north-west,
Hannibal saw stretching before him the whole noble City of
Carthage, of which his father’s palace formed one of the most
southern buildings within the sea wall. Close at hand were various
other palaces, with gardens well irrigated and producing every kind
of delicious fruit and beautiful flower to delight the palate or the eye.
Here waved in the breeze the feathery date palm, the oleander with
its wealth of pink blossom, the dark-green and shining pomegranate
tree with its glorious crimson flowers. Further, the fig, the peach tree,
the orange, the lemon, and the narrow-leaved pepper tree gave
umbrageous shelter to the winding garden walks. Over the
cunningly-devised summer-houses hung great clusters of blue
convolvulus or the purple bourgainvillia, while along the borders of
plots of vines gleaming with brilliant verdure, clustered, waist-high,
crimson geraniums and roses in the richest profusion. Between
these palaces lay stretched out the double harbour for the merchant
ships and war ships, a canal forming the entrance to the one, and
both being connected with each other. The harbour for the merchant
ships was oblong in shape, and was within a stone’s throw of the
balcony upon which the boy was standing. The inner harbour was
perfectly circular, and surrounded by a fortification; and around its
circumference were one hundred and twenty sets of docks, the gates
of each of which were adorned with beautiful Ionic pillars of purest
marble.
In the centre of this cup, or cothon as it was called, there was an
island, upon which was reared a stately marble residence for the
admiral in charge of the dockyards, and numerous workshops for the
shipwrights. All were designed and built with a view to beauty as well
as utility.
For that day only, the clang of hammers had ceased to be heard,
and all was still in the dockyards, for there was high holiday and
festival throughout the whole length and breadth of the City of
Carthage on the glad occasion of the intended execution, by fire, of
Matho and the remaining rebels who had not fallen by the sword in
the last fight at Tunis.
Just beyond the war harbour, there was a large open place called
the Agora, and a little beyond and to the left of it Hannibal could
descry the Forum placed on a slight elevation. It was a noble
building, surrounded by a stately colonnade of pillars, the capitals of
which were ornamented in the strictly Carthaginian style, which
seemed to combine the acanthus plant decoration of the Corinthian
capital, with the ram’s horn curves of the Ionic style. Between the
pillars there stood the most beautiful works of art, statues of Parian
marble ravished in the Sicilian wars, or gilded figures of cunning
workmanship of Apollo, Neptune, or the Goddess Artemis, being the
spoils of Macedon or imported from Tyre. The roof of the Forum was
constructed of beautiful cedar beams from Lebanon, sent as a
present by the rulers of Tyre to their daughter city, and no pains or
expense had been spared to make the noble building, if not equal in
grandeur, at any rate only second in its glorious manufacture to the
magnificent temple of Solomon, itself constructed for the great king
by Tyrian and Sidonian workmen.
A couple of miles away to the left could be seen the enormous
triple fortification stretching across the level isthmus which
connected Carthage, its heights and promontories, with the
mainland. This wall enclosed the Megara or suburbs, rich with the
country houses of the wealthy merchant princes. It was forty-five feet
high, and its vaulted foundations afforded stabling for a vast number
of elephants. It reached from sea to sea, and completely protected
Carthage on the land side. Between the city proper and this wall
beyond the Megara, everywhere could be seen groves of olive trees
in richest profusion, while between them and the frequent intervening
palaces, were to be observed either waving fields of ripening golden
corn, or carefully cultivated vegetable gardens, well supplied with
running streams of water from the great aqueduct which brought the
water to the city from the mountains of Zaghouan sixty miles away.
To the north of the Forum and beyond the Great Place, the city
stretched upwards, the width of the city proper, between the sea and
the suburbs, being only about a mile or a mile and a half. It sloped
upwards to the summit of the hill of the Byrsa or Citadel, hence the
boy Hannibal, from his position on the sea level in rear of the
harbours, was able to take in, not only the whole magnificent coup
d’œil of palaces and temples, but also that of the high and
precipitous hill forming Cape Carthage, which lay beyond it to the
north, whose curved and precipitous cliffs enclosed on the eastern
side a glittering bay, wherein were anchored many vessels of
merchandise.
The summit of this mountain was, like the suburbs of the Megara
to the west of the city, studded with the rich country dwellings of the
luxurious and ease-loving inhabitants of Carthage.
But it was not on the distant suburbs that the lad fixed his eager
gaze, it was on the gleaming city of palaces itself. Here, close at
hand on the right, he could see the temple of Apollo with its great