But I fear that you, Publius, both because you are very young and because success has constantly attended you both in <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Spain&groupId=983&placeId=1735">Spain</a> and in <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Africa&groupId=300&placeId=294">Africa</a>, and you have never up to now at least fallen into the counter-current of Fortune, will not be convinced by my words, however worthy of credit they may be.
Consider things by the light of one example, an example not drawn from remote times, but from our own.
I, then, am that Hannibal who after the battle of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Cannae&groupId=430&placeId=797">Cannae</a> became master of almost the whole of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Italy&groupId=656&placeId=1199">Italy</a>, who not long afterwards advanced even up to <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rome&groupId=935&placeId=1669">Rome</a>, and encamping at forty stades from the walls deliberated with myself how I should treat you and your native soil.
And now here am I in <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Africa&groupId=300&placeId=294">Africa</a> on the point of negotiating with you, a Roman, for the safety of myself and my country.
Consider this, I beg you, and be not overproud, but take such counsel at the present juncture as a mere man can take, and that is ever to choose the most good and the least evil.
What man of sense, I ask, would rush into such danger as that which confronts you now? If you conquer you will add but little to the fame of your country and your own, but if you suffer defeat you will utterly efface the memory of all that was grand and glorious in your past.
What then is the end I would gain by this interview?
I propose the all the countries the were formerly a subject of dispute between us, that is <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Sicily&groupId=973&placeId=1724">Sicily</a>, <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Sardinia&groupId=947&placeId=1685">Sardinia</a>, and <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Spain&groupId=983&placeId=1735">Spain</a>, shall belong to <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rome&groupId=935&placeId=1669">Rome</a> and that <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Carthage&groupId=441&placeId=820">Carthage</a> shall never make war upon <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rome&groupId=935&placeId=1669">Rome</a> on account of them. Likewise that the other islands lying between <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Italy&groupId=656&placeId=1199">Italy</a> and <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Africa&groupId=300&placeId=294">Africa</a> shall belong to <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rome&groupId=935&placeId=1669">Rome</a>.
Such terms of peace would, I am convinced, be most secure for the Carthaginians and most honourable to you and to all the Romans."
Walbank Commentary