Ab urbe condita

When I remember that in the first Punic war we fought at sea for twenty-four years, I think that Alexander would hardly have lived long enough to see one war through.

It is quite possible, too, that as Rome and Carthage were at that time leagued together by an old-standing treaty, the same apprehensions might have led those two powerful states to take up arms against the common foe, and Alexander would have been crushed by their combined forces.