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About this time a really great man was placed at the head of the Carthaginian army--a man who, at an earlier period of the war, might have brought the struggle to a very different termination. This was the celebrated Hamilcar Barca,[29] the father of the still more celebrated Hannibal. He was still a young man at the time of his appointment to the command in Sicily (B.C. 247). His very first operations were equally daring and successful. Instead of confining himself to the defense of Lilybaeum and Drepanum, with which the Carthaginian commanders had been hitherto contented, he made descents upon the coast of Italy, and then suddenly landed on the north of Sicily, and established himself, with his whole army, on a mountain called Hercte (the modern _Monte Pellegrino_), which overhung the town of Panormus (the modern _Palermo_), one of the most important of the Roman possessions. Here he maintained himself for nearly three years, to the astonishment alike of friends and foes, and from hence he made continual descents into the enemy's country, and completely prevented them from making any vigorous attacks either upon Lilybaeum or Drepanum.

On leaving Montrigone, with a pleasant sense of having made acquaintance with a new and, in many respects, interesting work, I could not get the sacristan and our difference of opinion out of my head. What, I asked myself, are the differences that unhappily divide Christendom, and what are those that divide Christendom from modern schools of thought, but a seeing of Joachims as the Virgin's grandmothers on a larger scale? True, we cannot call figures Joachim when we know perfectly well that they are nothing of the kind; but I registered a vow that henceforward when I called Joachims the Virgin's grandmothers I would bear more in mind than I have perhaps always hitherto done, how hard it is for those who have been taught to see them as Joachims to think of them as something different. I trust that I have not been unfaithful to this vow in the preceding article. If the reader differs from me, let me ask him to remember how hard it is for one who has got a figure well into his head as the Virgin's grandmother to see it as Joachim.

• Tolkien and Middle-earth - Tolkien Essays
• Tolkien and Middle-earth - Tolkien Essays
• Tolkien and Middle-earth - Tolkien Essays
• Tolkien and Middle-earth - Tolkien Essays
• Tolkien and Middle-earth - Tolkien Essays
• Tolkien and Middle-earth - Tolkien Essays
• Tolkien and Middle-earth - Tolkien Essays
• Tolkien and Middle-earth - Tolkien Essays

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