text:  In the interval between the first and the second of those dire contests he was assiduously employed in conquering organizing and disciplining the forces by which his great object was to be effected; and such was his capacity that notwithstanding the untoward issue of the first Punic War the Carthaginians gradually regained the ascendant in the Peninsula while his manners were so winning that erelong he attracted all its military strength to his standard