However, the rapidly emerging Roman Republic had ambitions to expand its own influence, and a clash between the two empires was inevitable. Hannibal Barca was born during the war, around BC. After 23 years of war across the island, Rome emerged victorious in BC.
The Barca family wielded considerable influence in Carthage, making them de-facto leaders. After the war, Rome inflicted heavy taxes on Carthage. At that time, Carthage relied mainly on mercenary fighters for its armies, who had to be paid.
After getting the mercenaries under control, Hamilcar planned to take them to Spain. Now aged nine, Hannibal begged to accompany his father, who agreed on one condition. He made his son swear an oath that he would never be a friend to Rome, and Hannibal agreed. Hannibal Barca spent 16 years growing up around the army, learning how to command soldiers and employ ingenious tactics. At 23 years old, Hannibal was given command of the cavalry, and he quickly proved his mettle as an officer.
However, during the campaign, Hamilcar was killed in BC while fighting in Spain. Then Hasdrubal was assassinated in BC, and Hannibal of Carthage applied to take over command of the army. He was well known to several senior officers as well as the rank-and-file, and the army supported his case. Carthage had been permitted to retain its influence in Spain through the treaty signed with Rome after the First Punic War.
However, the Romans installed their own puppet government in the city of Saguntum, near modern-day Valencia. Despite their outrage, the Romans seemed to act slowly. They complained to the Carthaginian senate, demanding that Hannibal be punished. When Carthage refused, Rome dispatched an army to intercept Hannibal. But by the time the Roman forces reached Seguntum , the city was in ruins, and Hannibal was already moving north. Hannibal continued to fight the native tribes, his soldiers gaining experience.
Aware that the Romans were on his tail, he left a portion of the army in Spain under the command of his brother, Hasdrubal. Carthage lost and was obliged to evacuate Sicily. When the Romans seized the valuable Carthaginian dependency of Sardinia in the s, members of one prominent Carthaginian family, the Barcids, set off for Spain, where Carthage had a longstanding presence, with troops and war elephants to recover some of her lost prestige.
For nearly 20 years from to BC this Carthaginian force engaged in conquests in southern Spain. In BC, however, a Roman delegation arrived and told the Carthaginian commander not to cross the river Ebro which lay on the route north-eastwards from Spain to the Pyrenees and ultimately, therefore, in the direction of Italy. So he set about besieging Saguntum. In response, Roman ambassadors were sent to Carthage, with an offer of peace or war.
It was to be war again. This act initiates the First Punic War. Hannibal crosses the Ebro with his army in June. In Spring , King Pyrrhus of Epirus in north-western Greece brought troops, and war elephants, in aid of the Greek city of Tarentum, which was under attack from Rome. Pyrrhus won several victories, but he suffered heavy troop losses. Pyrrhus promised freedom from the Romans to the Greek cities of southern Italy and his military successes enabled him to advance almost to Rome.
However, he failed to press home his advantage and eventually was forced to withdraw to Greece. Hannibal knew about Pyrrhus; he could read and speak Greek and Greek historians accompanied him. Pyrrhus had been called a brilliant dice-thrower who could not exploit the results.
Hannibal, too, was said to know how to win, but not how to use a victory. However, Hannibal had more going for him that his predecessor. His victories were not Pyrrhic: they were crushingly one-sided triumphs. Neither Pyrrhus nor Hannibal made decisive use of their elephants, but Hannibal was a cavalry-king.
Whereas Pyrrhus was a Homeric Achilles in combat, Hannibal was a consummate trickster, more of an Odysseus. He was a master of ambushes, of cunning battle-plans and false letters. Like Pyrrhus, he came within a few miles of Rome in BC, on a diversionary march northwards but ultimately, like Pyrrhus, his liberation failed.
Robin Lane Fox, All rights reserved. The Battle of Cannae is considered one of the deadliest single days of combat ever fought by a Western army. And some did in southern Italy, where Hannibal and his army held out for more than a dozen years. But in the end, Hannibal was forced to abandon Italy by a general as bold as he was: Publius Cornelius Scipio.
Scipio took the offensive first to Spain and then to North Africa, reckoning that Hannibal would have to engage him there to defend his capital.
The two met in the climactic Battle of Zama in B. Hannibal lost the battle and the war. Carthage ceded to Rome all its territories outside Africa and disbanded its army.
Hannibal spent much of his remaining years in exile around the Mediterranean. He kept his blood oath and maintained his enmity of the Romans until the end, which came around B. Rather than surrender to the Roman forces that had surrounded him, Hannibal poisoned himself. Born Publius Cornelius Scipio in B. The historian Livy penned the first mention of Scipio in the historical record, recounting that in B.
After his father was killed in the Second Punic War in B. He was a brilliant tactician, and a string of victories in Spain led to his ultimate victory over Hannibal in North Africa, a triumph that earned him the title Africanus. The city prospered through silver mining and trade, particularly in purple dye. The imposing harbor was said to hold vessels. Merchants built large houses—some six stories high—above the harbor on Byrsa Hill.
Carthage reached its peak around B. After the Roman conquest in B. Email required. Click here to cancel reply. Get the best cultural and educational resources on the web curated for you in a daily email. We never spam. Unsubscribe at any time. Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. Hannibal studied his opponents very carefully, employing every means of gathering intelligence in enemy camps, including spies from allied populations who provisioned the Romans.
When necessary, Hannibal paid for credible intelligence with silver supplied from mines in Carthaginian Spain; as long as that silver lasted to pay for good intel, he was unbeatable. Hannibal usually went for the unpredictable surprise maneuver that had never been seen before, including crossing the Alps in winter and forcing the Romans to fight in the dead of winter and at night.
Hannibal got into the minds of his enemies with psy-ops, exposing their weaknesses, triggering their anger and vanity, and making them fall into his traps; undermining the confidence of the Roman foot soldiers in big battles and paralyzing them with fear. Because his armies were almost always smaller — especially after his difficult Alps crossing when he lost many soldiers — Hannibal augmented his arsenal with weapons of nature: forcing the Romans to cross the frozen Trebbia River, hiding his armies in the fog above Lake Trasimene, driving captured cattle with torches tied to their horns to fool the Romans into thinking he was on the move at night at Volturnus, making the Romans face the blinding dust and sand blowing from Africa at Cannae.
He even confused the Romans at Cannae with some of his troops outfitted with captured Roman gear. Similarly, after studying terrain and topography, Hannibal always chose his battle sites when possible for the best possible advantage, especially constricting the larger Roman armies where they would be unable to outflank him and instead they would be hemmed in by rivers or hills, etc.
Hannibal sagely exploited the 2-consul Roman alternating command rotated one day between an experienced military veteran and the next day with a political appointee populist leading. On at least three occasions, Hannibal annihilated the Romans on the days when fools were the supposed commanders.
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