ONE: THE VOW
1. We do not know if this story about Hannibal under his father’s chair is true. Our best source is Valerius Maximus (first century CE), in his Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium (Memorable Deeds and Words), bk. 9, 3.2. Here Valerius mentions four sons of Hamilcar, but most historians acknowledge only three: Hannibal, Hasdrubal, and Mago. In any case, Hannibal appears to be the eldest male sibling.
2. Patrick Hunt, “The Locus of Carthage: Compounding Geographical Logic,” African Archaeology Review 26, no. 2 (2009): 137–54.
3. Commentaries on the Aeneid by Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) tell a different story about the founding of Carthage. Romans tell of a family feud in which one brother king of Tyre was murdered by another brother. The widow queen, known as Elissa or Dido, fled with her loyal Tyrians and founded Carthage. The grudging local African chiefs gave nominal permission to the Phoenician exiles, telling them they could have as much land as a bursa, or “ox hide,” could measure. Dido’s clever counselors capitalized on this stingy land permit by “treacherously” cutting the hide into one long strip, enough to measure out the territory for a whole citadel. It is more historically likely that the original seafaring Phoenicians found this location with its deep bay and a potential ideal harbor to be the perfect stepping-stone from Africa across to Italy by way of Sicily, opening new trading colonies and markets beyond.
4. Dexter Hoyos. Hannibal’s Dynasty: Power and Politics in the Western Mediterranean, 247–183 BC (London: Routledge, 2003), 21.
5. The Atlas Mountains were then fairly heavily forested (note Virgil, Aeneid, bk. 4, 248–49, “pine-wreathed head” Atlantis, cinctum . . . piniferum caput), but they have been much deforested since the late Roman Empire. Whole cities such as Hippo, Hadrametum, Sabratha, and Leptis Magna were later gradually abandoned as alluvial silt from the deforested Atlas slopes clogged the rivers. The waterways eventually stopped flowing when rainfall mostly ceased in the long subsequent Saharization of North Africa; most likely partly anthropogenic, or human influenced, by a combination of overpopulation and deforestation. Again see Hunt, “Locus of Carthage,” 137–54, esp. 142 and the following pages (ff.).
6. Raymond Chevallier, review of Hannibal, by G.C. Picard, L’Antiquité Classique 36, no. 2 (1967): 730–33, esp. 730.
7. M. E. Aubet, The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 1–5, 6–11ff.
8. Serge Lancel, Hannibal, trans. Antonia Nevill (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998), 23.
9. Polybius, The Histories, trans. W. R. Paton, bk. 3, 10.4.
10. Aaron Brody, “From the Hills of Adonis Through the Pillars of Hercules: Recent Advances in the Archaeology of Canaan and Phoenicia,” Near Eastern Archaeology 65, no. 1 (2002): 69–80, esp. 76.
11. This needs further study. See F. Brown, S. F. Driver, and C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), 1075; H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 1761.
12. Phoenician and Punic religions are very complicated. Interpretations are contentious regarding what happened in normative Phoenician and Punic sacrifice. See Richard Clifford, “Phoenician Religion,” Bulletin of the American Society of Oriental Religion 279 (1990): 55–64. On the tophet at Carthage, see Lawrence E. Stager, “The Rite of Child Sacrifice at Carthage,” in New Light on Ancient Carthage, ed. John Griffiths Pedley (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1980), 1–11; Stager, “A View from the Tophet,” in Phönizier im Westen, ed. H. G. Niemeyer (Mainz, Ger.: Philip von Zabern, 1982), 155–66; Lawrence E. Stager and Samuel R. Wolff, “Child Sacrifice at Carthage: Religious Rite or Population Control?,” Biblical Archaeology Review 10 (1984): 30–51; Patricia Smith and Gal Avishai, “The Use of Dental Criteria for Estimating Postnatal Survival in Skeletal Remains of Infants,” Journal of Archaeological Science 32, no. 1 (2005): 83–89.
Diodorus Siculus (first century BC) also wrote in his Library of History (Bibliotheca Historia), bk. 20, 6–7, a contentious passage about human sacrifice that has usually been deemed Roman propaganda but seems credible nonetheless. On the other side, among those who argue against Lawrence Stager and Joseph Greene and the interpretation of Carthaginian child sacrifice are credible Italian and Tunisian archaeologists and historians such as Sabatino Moscati, M’hamed-Hassine Fantar, and Piero Bartoloni, and most recently Jeffrey Schwartz. It is understandable that Tunisians and Italians who might consider their ancestry to be of mixed Punic descent would challenge any idea that such sacrifice was normative or even occasionally casual. Instead, the counterargument maintains that these child bones are merely a children’s cemetery and may reflect high infant mortality or disease. With almost seven centuries of accumulated stratigraphic evidence piled up layer after layer, and more than three thousand votive urns (that is, offered with vows) containing infant and animal human remains excavated in 10 percent of the total possible tophet in Carthage, Stager’s premise that it was infant human sacrifice is bolstered by the presence of animal remains mixed in some urns and votive inscriptions to deities such as Tanit and Baal. Furthermore, Carthage is not the sole location of a tophet; other Punic tophets can be found at Motya in Sicily as well as Sousse in Tunisia, and Tharros, Sulcis, and Monte Sirai in Sardinia. One primary question is whether this was a normative practice or merely occasional; perhaps the even more important question is whether this was truly sacrificial or merely a sacral deposit of stillborn at the earliest age or already dead children at a more advanced age.
13. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 11.5–8; repeated in Livy, The History of Rome, and Valerius, Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium, among others.
14. Polybius, Histories, bk. 2, 1.6.
TWO: YOUNG HANNIBAL
1. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 9.6, specifically the “wrath” (thumós) of Hamilcar.
2. Giovanni Brizzi, “L’armée et la guerre,” in La civilization phénicienne et punique: Manuel de recherche, ed. V. Krings, Handbuch der Orientalistik, sec. 1: Near and Middle East, vol. 20 (Leiden, Neth.: E. J. Brill, 1995), 303–15, esp. 303 and 304–6.
3. J. S. Richardson, “The Spanish Mines and the Development of Provincial Taxation in the Second Century BC,” Journal of Roman Studies 66 (1976): 139–52.
4. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, From Saguntum to the Trebia, trans. Aubrey de Selincourt, 10.
5. Cassius Dio, fragment 46. This story is not attested anywhere else and seems dubious.
6. Diodorus, Library of History, bk. 25, 10.3–4; Polybius, Histories, bk. 2, 1.8; Cornelius Nepos, Hamilcar 4.2; Lancel, Hannibal, 37, dismisses the tale of Appian of Alexandria (Roman History: Iberia 5) as too fantastic a death, where circling wagons were set afire by Celtiberians, and Hamilcar perished inside the flaming circle.
THREE: SPAIN
1. Brizzi, “L’armée et la guerre,” 303–4ff.
2. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 8.1–9.5.
3. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 24, 41.7.
4. Ibid., bk. 21, 4 (translation mine).
5. Richard Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization (New York: Viking, 2011), 263–64.
6. Polybius, Histories, bk. 1, 68.6; Lancel, Hannibal, 12–19.
7. Ora Negbi, “Early Phoenician Presence in the Mediterranean Islands: A Reappraisal,” American Journal of Archaeology 96, no. 4 (October 1992): 601.
8. Roger Collins, Spain: Oxford Archaeological Guide (New York: Oxford University Press), 1998, 13, 100, 104–6.
9. R. F. Glover, “The Tactical Handling of the Elephant,” Greece & Rome 17, no. 49 (1948): 1–11; F. E. Adcock, The Greek and Macedonian Art of War, Sather Classical Lectures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957, esp. chap. 4, “Cavalary, Elephants, and Siegecraft”), 47–63.
10. Vicki Constantine Croke, Elephant Company (New York: Random House, 2014, chap. 26, “The Elephant Stairway”), 269–77. Regarding elephants and mountains, here is excellent corroboration about how Asian elephants can climb very narrow paths on steep cliffs in mountains step by step, recounted from a trek experience in World War II in Burma, while noting Hannibal’s difficult mountain experience as precedent.
FOUR: SAGUNTUM
1. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 30.1.
2. Brian Caven, The Punic Wars (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980), 88–99; Adrian Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars (London: Cassell, 2000), 144, notes that Saguntum should have been included or mentioned in the Ebro declaration if the link was strong at that time (226 BCE).
3. Ernle Bradford, Hannibal, reprint (repr.) (London: Folio Society, 1998), 26.
4. Lancel, Hannibal, 47.
5. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 17.5–7.
6. John F. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War: A Military History of the Second Punic War (Warminster, UK: Aris and Phillips, 1978), 25.
7. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 30.4.
8. Paul Erdkamp. “Polybius, the Ebro Treaty and the Gallic Invasion of 225 BCE,” Classical Philology 104 (2009): 495–510, esp. 508.
9. Thomas F. Madden, Empires of Trust: How Rome Built—and America Is Building—a New World (New York: Penguin, 2008). In pers. comm. (2008), this author has corresponded with Madden about this as he raises this issue from his thesis onward: that Rome’s late republic and eventual empire were built on trust, and Saguntum was the first breach of trust that needed such a huge repair as to forever become policy.
10. Silius Italicus, Punica, bk. 1, 350–64.
11. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 30.3.
12. Klaus Zimmerman, “Roman Strategy and Aims in the Second Punic War,” chap. 16 in A Companion to the Punic Wars, ed. Dexter Hoyos (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 280–98, esp. 281–82.
13. Lancel, Hannibal, 54.
FIVE: OVER THE PYRENEES
1. For his invasion of Greece in 480 BCE, Xerxes had an army that Herodotus claims was over 2 million people, which is most unlikely, regardless of how many were mercenaries or even slaves pressed into battle. For the Battle of Issus in 333 BCE, Arrian claims 600,000 soldiers in the Persian army, which is generally considered implausible, and even his 10,000 Greek mercenaries seems small. Diodorus Siculus claims 400,000 soldiers for Darius III, and Quintus Curtius Rufus claims 250,000 soldiers for Darius III. See, by way of comparison, Donald Engels, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); Peter Green. Alexander of Macedon, 356–323 B.C, repr., A Historical Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992; John Warry. Warfare in the Classical World: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Weapons, Warriors, and Warfare in the Ancient Civilisations of Greece and Rome (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press), 1995.
2. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 40.2.
3. Patrick Hunt. “Ebro River,” in The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, ed. Roger S. Bagnall et al. (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 2259–60.
4. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 35.2.
5. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 23.4–6.
6. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 43.14–16.
7. Ibid., 44.4–9.
8. Ibid., 40.7–8.
9. Francis Dvornik, Origins of Intelligence Services: The Ancient Near East, Persia, Greece, Rome, Byzantium, the Arab Muslim Empires, the Mongol Empire, China, Muscovy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1974), esp. chaps. 3–5 on the ancient classical world. Dvornik relates some of the Greek and Roman types of spycraft; also see Chester G. Starr, “Political Intelligence in Classical Greece,” supplement (supp.) 31, Mnemosyne: A Journal of Classical Studies (1974); N. J. E. Austin and N. B. Rankov, Exploration: Military and Political Intelligence in the Roman World from the Second Punic War to the Battle of Adrianople (London: Routledge, 1995), esp. 10, 13, 35, 53, 60, 63, 90–91.
10. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 34.2 and 48.1–4.
11. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, The Disaster of Cannae, 33.1. Note the recommendation that spies live in dense urban environments where they can mingle in crowds undetected. Anon. Strat. 42.7 quoted in J. A. Richmond, “Spies in Ancient Greece,” Greece & Rome 45, no. 1 (April 1998): 6.
12. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22.1; Richard Gabriel, Hannibal: The Military Biography of Rome’s Greatest Enemy (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2011), 239n36.
SIX: CROSSING THE RHÔNE
1. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 42.1.
2. Ibid., 42.2–4.
3. Dexter Hoyos, Hannibal: Rome’s Greatest Enemy (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008), 109, makes the relevant point that the Volcae were aware of the advancing Roman army and left the field to allow the two intruder armies to fight it out to the reduction of both without any further loss to themselves.
4. S. O’Bryhim, “Hannibal’s Elephants and the Crossing of the Rhone,” Classical Quarterly 41, no. 1 (1991): 121–25.
5. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 44.5.
6. Ibid., 45.1–4.
7. Ibid., 49.1.
8. Hoyos, Hannibal: Rome’s Greatest Enemy, 109.
SEVEN: GATEWAY TO THE ALPS
1. Livy, History of Rome, 21, 31.9. Most reputable and serious philologists competent in Greek and Latin (Walbank) and philologists-archaeologists (Lancel) dispute Livy on this matter regarding Hannibal’s route. Livy, in obvious confusion—“veered now to the left (ad laevam),” as if he now turned west—and then has Hannibal return to the Durance River watershed through other montane passes to the southeast after traveling north. Walbank, as the preeminent modern Polybius historian, and Lancel, as a classical archaeologist of the first order—who was also more familiar because he lived long term in this region—refute Gavin de Beer’s arguments on this geography. See Lancel, Hannibal, 74–76, and Walbank, “Hannibal’s Pass,” 37–45, and Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World: Essays and Reflections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), which maintain that de Beer was utterly mistaken because he was not trained as a classical philologist and makes untenable linguistic claims. Again, see Walbank, “Hannibal’s Pass” and Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World, 24, 164–68ff.
2. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 49.6.
3. Lancel, Hannibal, 74.
4. Jean-Pascal Jospin, “Grenoble de Cularo à Gratianopolis,” in Atlas culturel des Alpes occidentales, ed. C. Jourdain-Annequin (Paris: Picard, 2004), 128–29; Jospin, Allobroges, Gaulois et Romains des Alpes.
5. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 49.5.
6. Hunt, “Rhône,” 5843–44.
7. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 49.10–11.
8. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 49.7.
9. Jean-Pascal Jospin. “Des Allobroges Alpins: Souverainetés, Résistances et Autonomies,” Rester Libres! Les expressions de la liberte des Allobroges a nos jours (Grenoble, Fr.: Musee Dauphinois, 2006), 13–21.
10. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 50.3.
11. Geoffroy de Galbert, Hannibal en Gaule (Grenoble, Fr.: Editions Belledone, 2007); Patrick Hunt, “Hannibal in the Alps: Alpine Archaeology, 1994–2006,” chap. 8 in Alpine Archaeology (New York: Ariel Books, 2007), 97–108. Carefully researched by French historian de Galbert and others, this newly found probable Celtic oppidum is the focus of a planned joint French-American collaboration, including a team from Stanford directed by this author.
12. Barry Cunliffe, The Ancient Celts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 76.
13. Stephen Allen. Celtic Warrior 300 BC–AD 100 (Oxford: Osprey, 2001), 44.
14. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 52.1.
EIGHT: THE SECOND AMBUSH
1. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 34.2.
2. Ibid., 48.1–3.
3. Ibid., 34.6.
4. Walbank, “Hannibal’s Pass,” 37. Walbank says that too much ink has been wasted on this problem and that the past half century of research has not solved it.
5. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 52.3–6.
6. This is plausible where the French national road D215 runs today between Modane, Fort Saint-Gobain, Villarodin-Bourget, and Aussois, at which point an army could easily descend eastward back to the Arc River at a much shallower topography somewhat following the French national D83 road, but exiting the low plateau near the Ruisseau d’Ambin-Arc River confluence around Les Glières just west of Bramans.
7. The local Musée Archéologique at Sollières has accumulated some of this material (much from the Grotte des Balmes, spanning a minimum of six thousand years of antiquity); French archaeologist René Chemin of the Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie de Maurienne has documented a high degree of Celtic activity in the region of the Val Cenis between Bramans and Lansvillard. This society has sponsored many archaeological projects in the region and has presented exhibitions and lectures. The author attended one such lecture in Lanslebourg in August 2013 by René Chemin on Celtic activity in the local region; another 2013 exposition was Jean Barthélémy’s “L’expédition d’Hannibal dans les Alpes: Etat des hypothèses”; another exposition in 2013 was by Jean-Pascal Jospin of the Musée Dauphinois, Grenoble.
8. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 32.
9. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 53.6. The Greek word for “white rock” is leukopetron. While this landscape of white rock might be expected in many places in the Alps, it is most likely a more dramatic topographic feature of vast rock framed by dark forest. This suggests that the second ambush took place still below the tree line—normally between six thousand and seven thousand feet in the Alps—and snow would be redundant if a place is so named “white [or bare] rock.”
10. Our Stanford team has verified the antiquity of this gorge as an exposed anticline of layered dolomite and gypsum for at least 2,500 years based on chemical solubility rates of the stone. Richard A. Jolly, “Hannibal’s Pass: Results of an Empirical Test,” Alpine Journal 67, nos. 304/305 (1962): 246, 248, suggests that the leukopetron “white rock” location is the nearby L’Echeillon Gorge, one and a half miles west of the Bramans Gorge, although both share geological circumstances.
11. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 35.
12. Shean, “Hannibal’s Mules,” 175.
13. Polybius, Histories, bk. 9, 24.4–8.
14. Giovanni Brizzi, “Carthage and Hannibal in Roman and Greek Memory,” chap. 27 in A Companion to the Punic Wars, ed. Dexter Hoyos (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 483–98.
NINE: SUMMIT OF THE ALPS
1. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 45.
2. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 53.6. The phrase “highest pass of the Alps” has caused near endless contention. One of the weakest arguments some use since Gavin de Beer is that Polybius must have intended the Col de la Traversette, but this is specious if the Romans and, furthermore, Polybius had no knowledge of its existence. The ancients, especially Romans, were limited in their montane geography, and the Col de la Traversette might not even be that ancient geologically, based on the current rate of its deterioration: its tiny window of no more than 100 feet wide is strewn with fresh rockfall, and inscriptions there since its first known foray in late medieval times are half eroded away. Even in the late medieval period, a tunnel had to be made under it for “safer” passage. Its tiny summit makes it impossible for an army to encamp there, as Polybius says, and its lack of any vegetation at its height (9,600 feet.) makes it extremely unlikely that animals—especially elephants with capacious appetites—could manage to find anything to eat for the several days necessary, as Polybius also states. Much more reasonable is the grassy Lac du Savine summit valley of the Col du Clapier-Savine Coche Pass. These are only a few of many possible arguments against Col de la Traversette, not even including philology, as argued by Walbank, “Hannibal’s Pass,” 37–45, esp. 43–45. When our Stanford team of twenty, including engineering students, as always, crossed the Col de la Traversette on foot in 2006, none found it a credible match for Polybian criteria.
3. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 54.9–54.1.
4. In 2000 our Stanford team found this to be fact in a field season at the 2,450-meter-high (8,300 feet) Gran San Bernardo, in conjunction with the Soprintendenza of the Valle da Aosta, codirected by Dr. Cinzia Joris and Davide Casagrande. Along the old Roman road Via Alpis Poenina, a partial burial had covered the torso of a man with scattered stone but left the arms and legs covered only with soil. Wolves had dug up the arms and legs and carried away bones; only one upper arm (the squarish humerus bone) we found within a few meters’ radius had deep canine fang puncture holes. Also see P. Framarin, “La ripresa defli scavi e l’aggiornamento della topographia del sito di Plan de Jupiter. I sondaggi 2000 e 2007,” in Alpis Poenina, Grand Saint-Bernard: Une Voie À Travers l’Europe, ed. L. Appolonia, F. Wiblé, and P. Framarin (Aosta, It.: Interreg IIIA, Italia-Svizzera, 2008), 33–39; for context, also see fig. 2 in Stefano Galloro, 40.
5. M. Arnold. “The Radiative Effects of Clouds and Their Impact on Climate,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 72 (June 1991): 795–813; Patrick Hunt, “Alpine Climate and Its Effects on Archaeology,” chap. 2 in Alpine Archaeology (New York: Ariel Books, 2007), 19–28; also Hunt, “Alpine Archaeology: Some Effects of Climate and Altitude,” Archaeolog, a website of Stanford University, last modified December 5, 2005, https://web.stanford.edu/dept/archaeology/cgi-bin/archaeolog/?p=17.
6. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 54.2.
7. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 35.
8. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 54.2–3.
9. Ibid., 54.7. Kuhle and Kuhle argue capably from the Greek that this is not a scree slope of tiered avalanche deposit from above but a sheer drop-off of broken-away rock. See “Hannibal Gone Astray?,” 591–601, and “Lost in Translation,” 759–71.
10. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 37.
11. Lancel, Hannibal, 78–79; Patrick Hunt, “Hannibal’s Engineers and Livy (XXI.36–7) on Burned Rock—Truth or Legend?,” Archaeolog, a website of Stanford University, last modified June 6, 2007, https://web.stanford.edu/dept/archaeology/cgi-bin/archaeolog/?p=127; Erin Wayman, “On Hannibal’s Trail: The Clues Are in the Geology,” Earth (2010).
12. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 54.8.
13. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 37.2; Lancel, Hannibal, 78–79.
14. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 56.1; Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 46.
15. Ibid., 60.5.
16. Ibid., 60.6.
17. Louis Rawlings, “The War in Italy, 218–203,” chap. 17 in A Companion to the Punic Wars, ed. Dexter Hoyos (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 299–319, esp. 305.
TEN: TICINUS
1. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 47–48, aptly suggests that this fifteen-day alpine passage should be reevaluated, that it is perhaps only a partial numbering of the total time it took through the entire mountain region. He also writes that Polybius might have intended that this was the time needed for summiting the difficult pass from its approach to its descent.
2. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 43.
3. Andreas Kluth, Hannibal and Me: What History’s Greatest Strategist Can Teach Us About Success and Failure (New York: Riverhead Books, 2011), 92–93.
4. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 56.4.
5. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 48.
6. Enrica Culasso Gastaldi and Giovanella Cresci Marrone, “I Taurini ai piedi delle Alpi,” in Storia di Torino dalla Preistoria al commune medievale, vol. 1, ed. Giulio Einaudi Editore (Torino, It.: Accademia della Scienze di Torino, 1997), 95–134, esp. Gastaldi, “Annibale e i Taurini,” 116–21. Also see F. Landucci Gattinoni, “Annibale sulle Alpi,” Aevum 43 (1984): 38ff.
Also see the collections of the Museo Archeologico Piemonte (Museo di Antichità di Torino); also see Walter Finsinger and Willy Tinner, “Holocene Vegetation and Land-Use Changes in Response to Climatic Changes in the Forelands of the Southwestern Alps, Italy,” Journal of Quaternary Science 21, no. 3 (March 2003): 243–58, esp. 254, discussing anthropogenic change in the history of the region; also see Martha D. Pollak, “From Castrum to Capital: Autograph Plans and Planning Studies of Turin, 1615–1673. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 47, no. 3 (September 1988): 263–80.
7. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 38.6.
8. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 60.9.
9. John Prevas, Hannibal Crosses the Alps: The Invasion of Italy and the Punic Wars (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001), 178.
10. A. E. Astin, “The Second Punic War,” Cambridge Encyclopedia of Ancient History, vol. 8 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 76.
11. Gastaldi, “Annibale e i Taurini,” 118–20.
12. O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 90, 107.
13. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 64.1–11.
14. Ibid., 62.1–14; Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 44.9.
15. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 45.
16. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 61.1–6.
17. Bradford, Hannibal, 69–70.
18. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 46.
19. Lancel, Hannibal, 84.
20. Ibid.
21. “Placentia-Piacenza, Italy,” in Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, ed. Richard Stillwell, William L. MacDonald, and Marian Holland McAlister (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976).
22. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 47.1.
23. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 68.8.
24. John T. Koch, Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2006), 895: “Severed heads were proof of a warrior’s valor, confirming the number of enemies he had slain in a battle.” But judging by the frequency of decapitation in Celtic literary accounts, it was more than fascination with verifying an enemy death and clearly tied to Celtic ritual. Also see Cunliffe, Ancient Celts, 127–28: “A recurring theme is the cult of the severed head [as displayed in the columnar sculptures] of Roquepertuse with niches for severed heads.”
25. Thomas George Eyre Powell, The Celts, repr. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1995), 130; Gerhard Herm, The Celts (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976), 54: “The most hideous Celtic custom, in Greek historians’ eyes, was head-hunting.” Herm also notes, “Diodorus once saw Celtic warriors with whole wreaths of victims’ heads hanging on their bridles,” quoted in Herm, 55.
26. Also note Miranda Green, “A Carved Stone Head from Steep Holm,” Britannia 24 (1993): 241–42. According to Galbert (pers. comm., 2009), there is also a circa 1909 cache of at least nineteen decapitated skeletal heads, presumably victims of Celtic raids, found at the Grotte de Fontabert in the Grenoble area of Savoie. Also see Galbert, Hannibal et César dans les Alpes (Grenoble, Fr.: Editions de Belledonne, 2008), 158–59; H. Müller, “Tombes gauloises de la Tène II, découvertes au pied des Balmes de Voreppe,” Bibliothèque municipal de Grenoble, Fonds Dauphinois, 1909; Stephen Fliegel, “A Little-Known Celtic Stone Head,” Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 77, no. 3 (March 1990): 89, 91: “It is known from the classical literary sources as well as the representational and archaeological evidence that the Celts practiced ritualistic headhunting, that is to say, the act of severing the head from the body after death” and “The Celts placed considerable importance on their collections of heads, particularly from distinguished enemies. Diodorus [Library of History, vol. 29] explains that their owners displayed them to strangers with great pride.”
27. Astin, “Second Punic War,” 76.
ELEVEN: TREBIA
1. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 68.9; Michael P. Fronda, “Hannibal: Tactics, Strategy, and Geostrategy,” chap. 14 in A Companion to the Punic Wars, ed. Dexter Hoyos (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 243.
2. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 68.11.
3. A maniple (speira in Polybian Greek) is a term for a fighting military unit of sixty to a hundred men and is often confused with the Latin word cohors (cohort). See M. J. V. Bell. “Tactical Reform in the Roman Republican Army,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 14, no. 4 (October 1965): 404–22.
4. William O’Connor Morris, Hannibal: Soldier, Statesman, Patriot, and the Crisis of the Struggle Between Carthage and Rome, 1937), 127.
5. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 53; Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 55; O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 112.
6. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 51.6ff.
7. O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 111, with good reason, as the time of year would be long beyond the safe sailing season in the Mediterranean, which generally closes in late September. This is another one of those Livian versions of the story that reduce his credibility compared with Polybius’.
8. J. A. Cramer, A Dissertation on the Passage of Hannibal over the Alps (London: J. W. Parker and G. and W. B. Whittaker, 1820), xix.
9. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 173.
10. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 17.
11. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 53.6–15.
12. Millennia later, Napoléon I tried to follow this same Hannibalic strategy in the Padana and along the Trebia as well. See John Peddie, Hannibal’s War (Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1997), 32.
13. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 70.12.
14. Ibid., 70.11.
15. Rivergaro is approximately where many of the most credible historians place the combined Roman camp of Scipio and Sempronius on the east Trebia side (about 5.5 miles from the battlefield near Canneto). The likeliest Trebia battlefield lies just north of Canneto on the west side of the river, with Hannibal’s camp slightly farther northwest (about 1.75 miles) of the Canneto battlefield near Campremoldo di Sopra on the west Trebia side. See map, Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 174.
16. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 177.
17. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 72.13.
18. Hannibal seems to have often used his Celt allies this way, putting them at the center, where they would absorb the greatest damage. It is possible that he was exploiting them as cannon fodder, although he no doubt promised them great reward for their feckless bravery at taking the very brunt of the battle.
19. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 74.11.
20. Bradford, Hannibal, 79.
21. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 180.
22. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 77.5–6.
23. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 75.1–2.
24. Peddie, Hannibal’s War, 58.
25. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 15 and 63. Note bk. 23, Hannibal at Cannae, 37, where Livy says that Sempronius helped in a successful battle against Hannibal’s brother and forced him out of Lucania. Sempronius’ son, of the same name, was made consul in 194 and, redeeming the family name somewhat, oversaw Roman colonists in parts of Gaul. (See, by way of comparison, Livy, History of Rome, bk. 34, Close of the Macedonian War, 42.)
TWELVE: THE APPENNINES AND THE ARNO MARSHES
1. Lancel, Hannibal, 91; Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, 270.
2. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 78.1–4; Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 1.
3. Lancel, Hannibal, 90; Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 181–82.
4. While Polybius is our best source, his historical lens is at times imperfect, being after the fact.
5. Giovanni Brizzi, Scipione e Annibale: La Guerre per Salvare Roma. (Rome: Bari: Editore Giuseppe Laterza e Figli, 2007), 48: “il quale partiva per raggiungere il fratello Cneo in Spagna.”
6. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 57. It includes the fortified town Victumulae, belonging to Roman ally the Celts. Livy says that Hannibal even had another battle with Sempronius, but this is not taken as fact.
7. Lancel, Hannibal, 91.
8. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 58.
9. Colin Hardie, “The Origin and Plan of Modern Florence,” Journal of Roman Studies 55, nos. 1/2 (1965): 122–40.
10. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 62.
11. Ibid.
12. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 60.
13. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 78.6.
14. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 11. Lazenby also suggests that Hannibal took the internal route through Etruria hoping that the Etruscans might defect to him.
15. This pass, or the Porretta Pass, according to Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 61; Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 184; and O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 117.
16. Technically, both the Porretta and the Collina Passes mostly follow the Italian Trans-Apennine national road SS-64 and the Reno River (Fiume Reno) much of their route until the Commune Granaglione. Then the Reno River follows the SP-632 road mostly the rest of the way to the source of the Reno River. The Porretta Pass is on the north half of the Apennine route (Emilia Romagna), and the Collina on the south portion (Tuscany). Near Collina, the SS-64 is roughly 13 miles west of the main Italian primary north-south autostrada A1, which goes from modern Bologna to modern Prato. Although the modern autostrada A1 partly follows the Reno River Valley, leaving Bologna it diverges from the Reno River while still in Emilia Romagna. The Reno River’s source is around 2,390 feet high (745 meters), about 3 miles west of the Collina Pass. So if Hannibal followed the Porretta-Collina Pass route, he would have traveled along the Reno River watershed until cresting the Apennines at a slightly higher place.
17. Mark Healy, Cannae 216 BC: Hannibal Smashes Rome’s Army (Oxford: Osprey, 1994), 52.
18. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 79.4–5.
19. O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 117.
20. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 79.1–12.
21. Atkins, 270.
22. Shean, “Hannibal’s Mules,” 159–87.
23. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 2.
24. Ibid.
25. Justin Denholm and Patrick Hunt, “Hannibal’s Ophthalmia” (unsubmitted article manuscript under peer review in various medical journals, 2014). Denholm is a medical doctor in Australia with the Victorian Infectious Disease Service, Royal Melbourne Hospital and University of Melbourne. The authors suggest any number of possible infections from bacterial or viral agents, including but not limited to conjunctivitis, each of which is known to cause blindness. “Hippocrates tells us ophthalmia is more common in spring, at the time when Hannibal went through the marshes; Herodotus (VII.229ff.) reports two Spartans afflicted before the battle at Thermopylae.”
26. Thomas W. Africa, “The One-Eyed Man Against Rome: an Exercise in Euhemerism,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 19, no. 5 (1970): 528–38.
27. Robert Garland, Hannibal, Ancients in Action Series (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2010), 75.
28. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, vol. 8, 5.11.
29. De Beer, 96.
30. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 79; Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 2.
31. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 184.
32. There is considerable debate over Hannibal’s route after the Arno. On the one hand, if Hannibal were trying to avoid meeting Flaminius and his army, he could have followed the abundantly fertile plains of the Val di Pesa and Val d’Elsa route (although this would have been the easier, expected route) from modern Scandicci to Poggibonsi and Siena west of Arezzo, and then turned east toward modern Sinalunga and the Valdichiana. Or, after Faesulae, he could have followed south from modern Bagno a Ripoli to San Donati in Collina or the curving Arno Valley southeast from Pontassieve through to Figline Valdarno, Montevarchi, Pergine Valdarno, and so on (mostly parallel to the modern A1 autostrada after Bagno a Ripoli) to the Valdichiana—although it too had a fair share of marshes that weren’t drained until the nineteenth century.
The Val di Pesa and Val d’Elsa routes were laden with rich farmland, and he could have leisurely bypassed south of Arretium altogether without any need to engage Flaminius. On the other hand, the Arno Valley route was not at all the expected passage due to its spring flooding, but it would have led Hannibal directly to Arretium unless he marched covertly at the end and crossed southwest from near modern Bucine to Rapolano Terme around the Monte San Savino Hills. Placed strategically at Arretium, Flaminius could have either gone west to meet Hannibal crossing the Etrurian plains after the Apennines or north to aid Servilius Geminus at Ariminum if Hannibal had marched east instead along the Po Valley to the Adriatic coast. The author notes that the year 2013 was a wet year for much of the Arno reaches between Florence and Arezzo, and many of the river’s channels and oxbows flooded considerably, even though civil engineering draining projects throughout the last several centuries has mitigated much of the former flooding.
33. Michael P. Fronda. Between Rome and Carthage: Southern Italy During the Second Punic War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 14.
34. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 60.
THIRTEEN: TRASIMENE
1. Bettina Diana, “Annibale e il Passagio degli Apennini,” Aevum 61 (1987): 108–12.
2. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 82.1–3.
3. O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 118.
4. Healy, Cannae 216 BC, 52.
5. Lancel, Hannibal, 93.
6. Timothy P. Wiseman, New Men in the Roman Senate, 139 B.C. to A.D. 14 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971); also see Andrew W. Lintott, “Novi Homines,” Classical Review 24, no. 2 (1974): 261–63.
7. Lily Ross Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies: From the Hannibalic War to the Dictatorship of Caesar, Jerome Lectures, 8th series (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1966); also see (although it concentrates on the first century BCE) Fergus Millar, The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998).
8. Andrew W. Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 1–4. At the outset, Lintott connects Polybius’ association of Rome’s ultimate “phenomenal military success with the excellence of her constitution” as well as the “constitutional innovations that the [Second Punic] war brought about” and unwritten tradition and precedent.
9. A censor was a Roman officer in charge of the census and some financial duties as well as oversight of public morality.
10. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 62.
11. Ibid.
12. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 185. Without necessarily agreeing, Goldsworthy notes the “tradition which places the sole blame for the disaster on the commander.”
13. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 80.3–4.
14. Garland, Hannibal, 75.
15. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 4.
16. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 83.3–4.
17. Ovid, Fasti, bk. 6, 767–68. Lancel, Hannibal, 93, keeps to June 21, although, before Julian calendar reform, this actual day might have been in May, not the summer solstice, according to Briscoe, “Second Punic War,” 49.
18. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 187, notes, however, that advancing Roman armies able to see their enemy—in this case, the only visible contingent of African and Spanish heavy infantry at the end of the valley—rarely “reconnoiter” just before battle.
19. Peddie, Hannibal’s War, 69.
20. O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 119.
21. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 84.4–5.
22. Ibid.
23. O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 119.
24. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 84.9–10. Polybius also stated that the Roman soldiers, seeing the merciless death all around, also begged their own comrades to dispatch them, no doubt in fear of Hannibal’s army and knowing Celtic customs of decapitation.
25. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 6.1.
26. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 84.6.
27. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 6.1–2.
28. Ibid, 6.4–6.
29. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 64.
30. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 6. The 75 percent casualty rate is correct only if I am accurately extrapolating the thirty thousand dead and captured alongside the ten thousand escapees.
31. O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 118.
32. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 85.5; Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 7.
33. Briscoe, “Second Punic War,” 49.
34. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 65.
35. Sabin, “Face of Roman Battle,” 4, notes that a 14 percent casualty rate for the loser is more in keeping with earlier classical Greek hoplite defeats but that a casualty/capture rate of more than 50 percent is not unusual for Roman infantry battles. But the Trasimene Roman casualty figures of up to 75 percent—and 100 percent of the following cavalry encounter—are simply catastrophic. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 65, claims that Hannibal’s army at Trasimene was around sixty thousand, including allies.
36. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 7.
37. Ibid.
FOURTEEN: FABIUS MAXIMUS AND ESCAPE
1. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 67.
2. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 191.
3. Garland, Hannibal, 78.
4. Ibid.
5. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 90.4–6.
6. Hoyos, Hannibal’s Dynasty, 117.
7. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy: The Classic Book on Military Strategy, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Meridian, 1991), 26–27.
8. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 89.9.
9. Walter Scheidel, “Human Mobility in Roman Italy, I: The Free Population,” Journal of Roman Studies 94 (2004): 1–26, esp. 4. Noting problems with demographic data, Scheidel qualifies his quantitative estimates with several caveats and reservations about his and others’ extrapolations while showing the harmony with Polybian accounts; also see D. W. Baronowski, “Roman Military Forces in 225 BC (Polybius 2.23–24),” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 42 (1993): 183–202. Walter Scheidel also notes Italian historian Elio Lo Cascio’s contribution to this demographic problem, “Recruitment and the Size of the Roman Population from the Third to First Century BCE,” in Debating Roman Demography, ed. Walter Scheidel (Leiden, Neth.: E. J. Brill, 2001), 111–38.
10. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 90.11ff.
11. Fronda, “Hannibal: Tactics, Strategy, and Geostrategy,” 250.
12. Rawlings, “War in Italy, 218–203,” 305.
13. Paul Erdkamp, “Manpower and Food Supply in the First and Second Punic Wars,” chap. 4 in A Companion to the Punic Wars, edited by Dexter Hoyos (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 68–69.
14. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 23.4.
15. O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 127.
16. “Casilinum,” in Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World (Brill’s New Pauly), ed. H. Cancik, H. Schneider, and M. Landfester (Leiden, Neth: E. J. Brill, 2012); cross-referenced to Livy, History of Rome, bk. 23, 17.
17. Peddie, Hannibal’s War, 83.
18. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 93.2.
19. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 17.
20. Ibid., 18; Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 71.
21. Lancel, Hannibal, 100, suggests that Hannibal had also previously tried this stratagem successfully in the Alps against the Celts, possibly after one of the mountain ambushes.
22. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 94.4–5.
23. Bradford, Hannibal, 99.
24. Kluth, Hannibal and Me, 149.
25. Fronda, Between Rome and Carthage, 41.
FIFTEEN: CANNAE
1. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 113.5.
2. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 41.
3. Gregory Daly, Cannae: The Experience of Battle in the Second Punic War (London: Routledge, 2002), 16.
4. Back in Rome in 219, Paullus was said to have not shared the spoils equally, and although charges were brought against him, along with his fellow leader Marcus Livius Salinator, Aemilius Paullus was acquitted (Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 35).
5. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 198–99.
6. Lancel, Hannibal, 103.
7. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 199.
8. Lancel, Hannibal, 103, quoting Livy’s vilification, non humilis solum, sed etiam sordido loco ortus, or “not only humble but also foul and impure.”
9. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 39.
10. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 110.3, 116.13.
11. Erdkamp, “Manpower and Food Supply,” 69.
12. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 108.3–109.13; Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 39. Livy places the essence of this exhortation not in the mouth of Paullus to his men, like Polybius does, but in the mouth of Fabius Maximus to Paullus back in Rome.
13. As related by Bradford, Hannibal, 115.
14. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 43.
15. Silius Italicus asserts it in his epic poem Punica, vol. 1, trans. J. D. Duff (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Loeb Classical Library, 1961), bk. 8, 663–64 and bk. 9, 495, as well as in his notes, 440.
16. Lancel, Hannibal, 105.
17. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 110.2.
18. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 200.
19. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 110.3.
20. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 77ff.
21. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 113.3.
22. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 205.
23. This figure does not include the ten thousand soldiers who were guarding the Roman camp and therefore were out of the battle.
24. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 46, says Maharbal, but Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 114.7, says that Hanno commanded the Numidian cavalry.
25. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 207.
26. Ibid., 208.
27. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 47.
28. Fernando Quesada Sanz, pers. comm., February 21, 2011. Also see Sanz, “Patterns of Interaction: ‘Celtic’ and ‘Iberian’ Weapons in Iron Age Spain,” in Celtic Connections: Papers of the Tenth International Congress of Celtic Studies, Edinburgh, 1995, vol. 2, Archaeology, Numismatics, Historical Linguistics, ed. W. Gillies and D. W. Harding (Edinburgh, Scot.: International Congress of Celtic Studies, 2006), 56–78. Quesada Sanz noted the “falcata was accepted as the ‘national’ weapon of the Iberians,” 58. Note in his fig 2. the high concentration of falcata finds distribution in Andalucia and around Cartagena, where the Carthaginians were concentrated.
29. Polybius, Histories, trans. Paton, bk. 3, 114.3.
30. Ibid., 115.3.
31. O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 141.
32. Dexter Hoyos, “The Age of Overseas Expansion,” in A Companion to the Roman Army, ed. Paul Erdkamp (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 63–80. Hoyos discusses Cannae especially in 66–69 and notes the old phalanx on 68.
33. William Desmond, “Lessons of Fear: A Reading of Thucydides,” Classical Philology 101, no. 4 (2006): 359–79; speaking in general of a climate of fear as a political current but also in specifics, Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, bk. 3, 82.2, where “war is a violent master (or teacher).”
34. Daly, Cannae, 167–68.
35. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 83.
36. O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 91.
37. The presence and impact of the falcata at Cannae is still debated. Iberian Iron Age weapons expert Fernando Quesada Sanz (pers. comm.) at the Universidad Autonóma de Madrid notes that the falcata was not any more important at Cannae than other weapons were, also publishing on this elsewhere in addition to the above note (for instance, Fernando Quesada Sanz, Arma y Símbolo: la Falcata Iberica, Instituto de Cultura Juan Gil-Albert, Diputación de Alicante, 1992). Also see John Gibson Warry, Warfare in the Classical World: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Weapons, Warriors, and Warfare in the Ancient Civilisations of Greece and Rome (London: Salamander Books, 1993), 103, 218. A modern weapons maker from Los Angeles, Dave Baker, has reconstructed in his studio foundry the Iberian falcata that some scholars maintain (for example, Lancel, Hannibal, 36, 107; Healy, Cannae 216 BC, 22–25) was used at Cannae. I have held and swung one of these vicious blades and have seen it chop through entire pig necks and watched the flesh fly off—easily cleaved and flensed because the incredibly sharp piercing blade of Spanish steel flares out behind a center of gravity that makes its lethal force even greater as its drops. I shudder to think of it at Cannae in experienced hands if it was used at all there. It might be interesting to note a ceramic relief of a falcata-like blade from the third century BCE on an underground tomb pier in Cerveteri’s Etruscan Necropolis, Tomb of the Shields.
38. Daly, Cannae, 167; he also mentions that this could equally exhaust the heavy infantry Libyans on the other side.
39. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 117.6, says 4,000 Celts, 1,500 Spaniards and Africans, and 200 cavalry; Lancel, 2000, 108. I might be tempted to side with Polybius here because Livy quotes the same number of Carthaginians (55,000) to perish later at Metaurus, and he may have tried to create parity for justification of a Roman triumph equal to the Cannae loss.
40. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 49. He numbers as Roman prisoners the 10,000 guarding the larger camp who had been kept out of battle, the 7,000 who had fled to the smaller camp only to be captured, and the 2,000 who had fled and sought refuge in the fortified village of Cannae itself and were taken prisoner there.
41. Patrick Hunt, When Empires Clash: Twelve Great Battles in Antiquity, 88.
42. O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 160.
43. Healy, Cannae 216 BC, 69, also notes how much Polybius needed to preserve the honor of the Aemilii family name, his ultimate sponsors.
44. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 51.6ff.
45. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 215.
46. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 51.2.
47. Bernard Montgomery (Field-Marshal Viscount Montgomery, Victor of El Alamein), A History of Warfare (Cleveland: World, 1968), among them.
48. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 88, referring to Livy, History of Rome, bk. 23, 14.7, and bk. 24, 2.8, respectively.
49. O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 174.
50. Fronda, Between Rome and Carthage, 46, suggests that Hannibal could have drawn different conclusions from Pyrrhus’ example, such as the need to fight in Italy and remain there, and additionally that Rome might capitulate if none came to its aid; also see Kluth, Hannibal and Me, 123.
51. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 117.4.
SIXTEEN: THE CAMPAIGN FOR SOUTH ITALY
1. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 118.5.
2. Healy, Cannae 216 BC, 94.
3. Lancel, Hannibal, 110.
4. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 61.
5. Elena Isayev, “Identity and Culture,” chap. 2 in “Inside Ancient Lukania, Dialogues in History and Archaeology,” supp. 90, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 2007: 25–26.
6. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 58.6–7.
7. Bradford, Hannibal, 129. While seemingly desperate, this type of recruitment has been a not-infrequent conscription method in history, especially with people convicted of minor crimes but unable to secure freedom, partly due to poverty, and Rome needed able bodies more than moral right.
8. O’Connor Morris, Hannibal, 194–95.
9. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 25, 5.
10. Jean-Michel David, The Roman Conquest of Italy, trans. Antonia Nevill (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 61.
11. Lancel, Hannibal, 113.
12. Healy, Cannae 216 BC, 87.
13. Cassius, fragment 57.30; Appian, Punica, 63; Valerius, Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium, 9.6.
14. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 23, 15.
15. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 222.
16. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 118.10.
17. Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, 16.
18. Livy, History of Rome, trans. Aubrey de Selincourt, bk. 23, 45.3–4, says of the Punic army, “[They] have lost their sap in luxury and Campanian vice—worn out by a winter of drinking and whoring and every other excess . . . melted away is that strength of limb and staunchness of heart that brought them over the Alps and Pyrenees. Those were men, these but their relics and shadows . . . in Capua was put out the name of their valour, their discipline, their former fame, their hope of things to come.”
19. Lancel, Hannibal, 116.
20. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 225–26.
21. Lancel, Hannibal, 112–13.
22. Bradford, Hannibal, 124–25.
23. Kluth, Hannibal and Me, 174.
24. Healy, Cannae 216 BC, 87.
25. Plutarch, Life of Marcellus, 10.1.
26. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 23, 32.
27. Lorena Jannelli and Fausto Longo, eds., The Greeks in Sicily (San Giovanni Lupatoto, It.: Arsenale Editrice, 2004), 61; Lancel, Hannibal, 118.
28. This is interesting because Bradford, Hannibal, 136, makes the case that the changing landscape of individual farm owners in South Italy—whose livelihood was destroyed in the Second Punic War, leaving them as spoils of war for the ager publicus—led to a land policy that may have paved the way for subsequent vast latifundia estates in later years in Magna Graecia. Some historians have challenged aspects of this assumption. These latifundia also drew a despairing comment from Pliny the Elder, Natural History, bk. 18, 35, in the first century CE: that what had been the backbone of an army made up of independent farmers in the Republic working the land had reverted in his day to the work of slaves. “[T]he latifundial,” he claims, “destroyed Italy.”
Also see Christopher Francese, Ancient Rome in So Many Words (New York: Hippocrene Books, 2007), 79, on fundus. This is also intriguing because even today, Apulia is by far the largest producer of grapes in Italy on huge agribusiness estates. But new studies argue against this large devastation of Apulia and nearby regional loss of individual farmers: see Nathan Rosenstein, “Italy: Economy and Demography After Hannibal’s War,” chap. 23 in A Companion to the Punic Wars, ed. Dexter Hoyos (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 412–29, esp. 416–19.
29. Erdkamp, Hunger and the Sword, 161.
30. Cicero, De Divinatione (On Divination), bk. 1, 24.49, trans. W. A. Falconer, repr. (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1996), 277–78.
31. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, bk. 3, 103; Appian, The Hannibalic War, bk. 7, 43, in History of Rome.
32. Lancel, Hannibal, 124; Gabriel, Hannibal, 14.
33. Polybius, Histories, bk. 8, 24–34.
34. Timothy W. Potter, Roman Italy: Exploring the Roman World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 127–30; Patrick Hunt, “Via Appia,” in Encyclopedia of Ancient History, ed. Roger S. Bagnall et al. (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).
35. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 25, 9.
36. Lancel, Hannibal, 129, aptly suggests it was the old Taranto avenue now called Corso Due Mari; also see Livy, History of Rome, bk. 25, 11. This avenue is also now the border of the new island where the original peninsula has been divided with a more recent late-nineteenth-century north-south channel, connected by the Ponte Girevole. The Aragonese Castello di Taranto on the peninsular-island side immediately west of the newer channel is too far east from the original natural channel to be in the same location as the old acropolis of Taras and the Roman citadel farther to the west that guarded the natural waterway.
37. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 25, 11.
SEVENTEEN: THE MARCH ON ROME
1. Plutarch, Life of Marcellus, 9.4. Here Plutarch says he quotes Poseidonius.
2. Ibid., 13.2. The most thorough account and analysis of this is O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae.
3. A team led by 1978 Nobel laureate physicist Arno Penzias, mathematician and computer scientist Rob Cook, and this author has reconstructed some of this defense of Siracusa by Archimedes, beginning in 2009 and with collaborative on-site research in Siracusa since 2012. Cook, incidentally, a pioneer at Pixar, was a cowinner of the 2001 Academy Award for significant advancements to the field of motion picture rendering.
4. Polybius, Histories, bk. 8, 5–6. This passage provides details about Siracusa defended by Archimedes by various war mechanisms. Among others, he names an “iron hand” attached to a chain, capsizing Roman ships when it was dropped after raising them vertically. Polybius also describes unknown war machines of Archimedes as “small scorpions.”
5. Plutarch, Marcellus, 17.1.
6. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 25, 31.
7. Nigel Bagnall, The Punic Wars: Rome, Carthage, and the Struggle for the Mediterranean (London: Macmillan, 2005), vii; Lancel, Hannibal, 133.
8. Chester G. Starr, A History of the Ancient World, 4th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 486; Starr also notes that the year 212 was the “high point of Roman drafts.”
9. Michael P. Fronda, “Hegemony and Rivalry: The Revolt of Capua Revisited,” Phoenix 61, nos. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 2007): 83–108.
10. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 26, 7; Lancel, Hannibal, 130.
11. Gregory K. Golden, “Emergency Measures: Crisis and Response in the Roman Republic (From the Gallic Sack to the Tumultus of 43 BC)” (PhD diss., Classics, Rutgers University, 2008), 163.
12. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 26, 9.
13. Erdkamp, Hunger and the Sword, 178.
14. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 26, 10.
15. Augustine of Hippo, De Civitate Dei, bk. 3, 20.
16. Polybius, Histories, bk. 9, 7.3.
17. Bagnall, Punic Wars, 259.
18. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 27; Scipio in Spain, 16.
19. Caven, Punic Wars, 201.
20. Dexter Hoyos, The Carthaginians (New York: Routledge, 2010), 67.
21. Barry Strauss, Masters of Command: Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, and the Genius of Leadership (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), 7–8.
EIGHTEEN: WAR IN SPAIN
1. O’Connor Morris, Hannibal: Soldier, Statesman, Patriot, 259.
2. Hoyos, Hannibal’s Dynasty, 117–18. Hoyos also notes that, from the beginning, Fabian strategy alarmed Hannibal. This must also be true partly because it would take away his blitzkrieg field advantage as an invader against cumbersome armies with split leadership. Time and attrition were not in his favor; he needed battles where he could win by cunning and by exposing and exploiting Roman weaknesses.
3. Fronda, Between Rome and Carthage, 235.
4. Hunt, “Ebro River.”
5. Roman fleets had taken and then lost Pantelleria between 255 and 254 BCE in the First Punic War but recaptured it in 217. At least 30 anchors quickly abandoned with a treasure hoard of 3,500 bronze coins from this period have been found at Punta Tracino and in the sheltered harbor of Cala Levant on Pantelleria; see, by way of comparison, Dr. Leonardo Abelli, University of Sassari. L. Abelli, ed. Archeologia subaquea a Pantelleria, “ . . . de Cossurensibus et Poenis navalem egit . . .” Ricerca series maijor 3. (Ante Quem, Sicilia:, 2012, esp. 55–62, 107–120.
6. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 97.3; also see Howard Hayes Scullard, “The Carthaginians in Spain,” chap. 2 in Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd ed., vol. 8, Rome and the Mediterranean to 133 BC, ed. A. E. Astin et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 56.
7. Lancel, Hannibal, 135, although Livy, History of Rome, bk. 24, 49, claims he was seventeen.
8. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 25, 33. This story may or may not be true. Hasdrubal certainly had the means to do so with Cartagena silver.
9. Ibid., 36.
10. Howard Hayes Scullard, A History of the Roman World 753–146 BC (London: Routledge, 2004), 225.
11. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 26, 17.
NINETEEN: SCIPIO CAPTURES CARTAGENA
1. Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumwissenschaft, ed. G. Wissowa et al. [n.d.] (Stuttgart), 7, cols 1462–70.
2. Polybius, Histories, bk. 10, 3.3–6.
3. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 53.
4. R. T. Ridley, “Was Scipio Africanus at Cannae?,” Latomus 34, no. 1 (1975): 161–65.
5. The epigraphic evidence in the Corpus Inscriptorum Latinarum is without a definable year date: CIL I,1, 280 (201) [P. Cornelius P. f.] Scipio Africanus cos bis censor aedilis curulis trib mil.
6. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 26, 19; Polybius, Histories, bk. 10, 2.
7. Among many others, see Theodor Mommsen, History of Rome, 5 vols., trans. William Purdie Dickson (1901), vol. 2, 160; Arnold, 300–302; Theodore Ayrault Dodge, Hannibal, new introduction by Ian M. Cuthbertson, repr. (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2005), 571–72; O’Connor Morris, Hannibal: Soldier, Statesman, Patriot, 256; B. H. Liddell Hart, Scipio Africanus: Greater Than Napoléon, repr. (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2004), 7; Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 136–37; Bradford, Hannibal, 170; Lancel, Hannibal, 138; Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 271, among many others.
8. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 26, 19, names as absurd the sightings of huge serpents and other prodigies at Scipio’s birth in his mother Pomponia’s bedroom.
9. Liddell Hart, Scipio Africanus, 5.
10. Polybius, Histories, bk. 10, 2.12–13.
11. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 270.
12. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 26, 20.6, says near Saguntum, but this would have deterred Scipio from marching south of the Ebro to Cartagena, as Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 134, rightly points out.
13. Polybius, Histories, bk. 10, 2.13; Ridley, “Was Scipio Africanus at Cannae?,” 161.
14. Peter van Dommelen, “Carthago Nova (Cartagena),” in Encyclopedia of Ancient History, ed. Roger S. Bagnall et al. (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).
15. Polybius, Histories, bk. 10, 8.1.
16. Peddie, Hannibal’s War, 149.
17. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 271.
18. Polybius, Histories, bk. 10, 9.7; Livy, History of Rome, bk. 26, 42.6.
19. Polybius, Histories, bk. 10, 11.4, making it about thirteen thousand feet in circumference.
20. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 136–37.
21. Polybius, Histories, bk. 10, 8.4.
22. Polybius, Histories, bk. 10, 10.10–12; Livy, History of Rome, bk. 26, 45.
23. A. Lillo and M. Lillo, “On Polybius X.10.12: The Capture of New Carthage,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 37 (1988): 477–80; Dexter Hoyos, “Sluice-gates or Neptune at New Carthage, 209 BC?,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 41 (1992): 124–28; Benedict J. Lowe. “Polybius 10.10.2 and the Existence of Salt Flats at Carthago Nova,” Phoenix 54, nos. 1/2 (2000): 39–52.
24. Lowe, “Polybius 10.10.2,” 49.
25. Sheldon, Intelligence Activities in Ancient Rome, 7 and esp. chaps. 12–13.
26. Polybius, Histories, bk. 10, 15.4–6.
27. Ibid., 18.1–2.
28. Jan Libourel, “Galley Slaves in the Second Punic War,” Classical Philology 68, no. 2 (1973): 116–19, esp. 117.
29. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 139; Livy, History of Rome, bk. 26, 50.
30. Garland, Hannibal, 102.
31. R. Bruce Hitchner, “Review: Roman Republican Imperialism in Italy and the West,” American Journal of Archaeology 113, no. 4 (October 2009): 651–55, esp. 654. Hitchner notes the “striking intentionality” that these three venues were also the main ethnic communities—Celtiberian in Tarraco, Punic in Carthago Nova, and Greek in Emporion—but also that initial Roman interest was military and strategic.
32. Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, 301.
33. Scullard, History of the Roman World, 227.
34. J. S. Richardson, Hispaniae: Spain and the Development of Roman Imperialism, 218–82 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 60–61; S. J. Keay, Roman Spain: Exploring the Roman World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 50; Keay, review of Roman Spain: Conquest and Assimilation, by L. A. Curchin, Brittania 24 (1993): 332–33.
35. Naturally, this should also be factored by Roman recall of any Punic coins from circulation to remint them as Roman. See Paolo Visona, “The Punic Coins in the Collection of Florence’s Museo Archeologico: Non nulla Notanda,” Rivista di Studi Fenici 27 (1999): 147–49; Visona, “A New Wrinkle in the Mid-Carthaginian Silver Series,” Numismatic Chronicle 166 (2006): 15–23; Visona, “The Serrated Silver Coinage of Carthage,” Schweizerische Numismatische Rundschau 86 (2007): 31–62.
36. Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, 49–54, 110, 116–17, 229.
37. The Archaeological Museum of Cartagena (Museo Arqueologico Municipal, Cartagena) has a highly useful permanent exhibition on the economic history of mining in the region from Punic through Roman periods; where silver is or was once found, lead ore is a corollary metal source (silver and lead pairing in igneous sulfide metal deposition), and Rome also fully exploited this metal too, as historic traces of lead oxide even in Greenland ice demonstrate.
TWENTY: METAURUS
1. Bradford, Hannibal, 186.
2. The number of Hasdrubal’s troops is greatly disputed both en route and at Metaurus. Bagnall, Punic Wars, 263, says they numbered thirty thousand before the Battle of Metaurus. En route, Hasdrubal picked up Celtic recruits passing through Gaul, possibly swelling his numbers to forty-eight thousand if Appian, Roman History, bk. 8, 52, is trustworthy, although many doubt this high figure. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 239, suggests that Hasdrubal had “significantly less than the Roman troop strength of forty thousand soldiers at Metaurus” and goes on to say that while Hasdrubal spent gold lavishly to acquire Celtic mercenaries, he did not have the numerical advantage. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 190, also suggests there were twenty thousand to thirty thousand soldiers in Hasdrubal’s army. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 27, 49, seems more unreliable than usual, suggesting far more than sixty thousand Hasdrubal soldiers, a number that Bradford, Hannibal, 193, calls “fanciful.”
3. Polybius, Histories, bk. 11, 1.1.
4. Appian, Hannibal’s War, 52.
5. Patrick Hunt, “Rubicon,” in Encyclopedia of Ancient History, ed. Roger S. Bagnall et al. (Malden. MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).
6. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 27, 39; this may be debatable, Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 189.
7. “Grumentum,” in Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites.
8. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 27, 44.
9. Garland, Hannibal, 105.
10. According to Austin and Rankin, Exploration, 90–91, the Romans were learning to copy Hannibal’s military intelligence gathering.
11. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 239.
12. Bagnall, Punic Wars, 263.
13. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 27, 38.
14. A propraetor was an appointed chief administrator of a province, serving after fulfilling his office of praetor, usually as a military commander or an elected magistrate. Also see Pat Southern, The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 331, 339.
15. Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol. 4, ed. G. Wissowa et al. (Stuttgart, Ger., n.d.), 7, 246.
16. Plutarch, Life of Marcellus, 11.3–12.3.
17. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 27, 41, claims that Hannibal lost eight thousand men and six elephants. Although he identifies these soldiers as Carthaginian, it is far more probable they were Bruttians or the like.
18. Ibid., 46. Livy doesn’t fully indicate the route after the Piceni (of Picenum) and the Praetuti people (around Aprutium or the region of Praetutium?, roughly modern Abruzzo). Also see Colin Adams and Ray Laurence, eds, Travel and Geography in the Roman Empire (London: Routledge, 2001), 74, although far later, also see Sonia Antonelli, Il Territorio di Aprutium, Aspetti e forme delle dinamiche insediative tra Ve XI seculo (Palombi Editore, 2010).
19. Strabo, Geography, bk. 5, 4.2.
20. Lancel, Hannibal, 147.
21. Potter, Roman Italy, 135–37.
22. N. Alfieri, “Sena Gallica,” in Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites.
23. Warry, Warfare in the Classical World, 128.
24. Elizabeth Keitel, “The Influence of Thucydides 7.61–71 on Sallust Cat. 20–21,” Classical Journal 82, no. 4 (1987): 293–300, esp. 295n8. She points out five distinctive narrative rhetorical elements: reflections, harangues, exhortations, summaries, and repetition.
25. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 27, 47.
26. Bradford, Hannibal, 192.
27. Caven, Punic Wars, 214, suggests that the battle was near or above Sant-Angelo.
28. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 188.
29. Peddie, Hannibal’s War, 179.
30. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 27, 47.
31. Polybius, Histories, bk. 11, 3.1.
32. Ibid., 1.12; Livy, History of Rome, bk. 27, 49.
33. Polybius, Histories, bk. 11, 1.11.
34. Bagnall, Punic Wars, 263–67.
35. Although Polybius, Histories, bk. 11, 3.2–3, does not give statistics for the number of Hasdrubal’s original troops, he estimates just ten thousand casualties at Metaurus. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 27, 49, on the other hand, claims that fifty-seven thousand Carthaginians died there. This is highly suspect, especially because much earlier (bk. 25, 6), he says that Cannae (where he contends fifty thousand Romans perished) is thus avenged. Livy seems to be trying to compensate with his seven thousand more Carthaginian dead at Metaurus alongside their general (Hasdrubal) than Roman dead at Cannae with their general (Aemilius Paullus). He may have wanted to mitigate the humiliation of Cannae for Rome, like an infernal balance book, but this didn’t fully happen in Italy, which may have frustrated Livy.
36. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 190.
TWENTY-ONE: ROMAN TRIUMPH, ITALY TO SPAIN
1. Bagnall, Punic Wars, 89.
2. Philip C. Schmitz, “The Phoenician Text from the Etruscan Sanctuary at Pyrgi,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 115, no. 4 (1995): 559–75.
3. In the Aeneid, book 4, Virgil plays up the close relationship between the goddess Juno and Queen Dido of Carthage, making Dido a priestess of Juno who seems to sacrifice herself to the goddess. Juno’s divine wrath then pursues Aeneas by the dying queen’s curse. Virgil’s partial explanation for the enmity between Carthage and Rome is that Aeneas abandoned Dido. Henry Purcell’s famous mournful song “Dido’s Lament” from the opera Dido and Aeneas relates the queen’s sorrow in her suicide.
4. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 28; Final Conquest in Spain, 46.16.
5. Polybius, Histories, trans. Paton, bk. 3, 33.18. Polybius writes, “The fact is that I found on the Lacinian promontory a bronze tablet on which Hannibal himself had made out these lists during the time he was in Italy, and thinking this a first-rate authority, decided to follow the document.”
6. Lancel, Hannibal, 157.
7. Mary K. Jaeger, “Livy, Hannibal’s Monument and the Temple of Juno Lacinia at Croton,” Transactions of the American Philological Association (TAPA) 136 (2006): 389–414, esp. 390; others call Livy’s text here a “caesura” (390n3).
8. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 27, 12.
9. Polybius, Histories, bk. 11, 21.2.
10. Lancel, Hannibal, 150.
11. Liddell Hart, Scipio Africanus, 58.
12. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 27, 13.
13. Polybius, Histories, bk. 11, 22.3.
14. Polybius, Histories, trans. Robin Waterfield, notes Brian McGing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), xiv.
15. Polybius, Histories, bk. 11, 24.3.
16. Lancel, Hannibal, 150.
17. Polybius, Histories, bk. 11, 25–33.
18. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 28, 16.
19. Lancel, Hannibal, 159.
20. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 28, 18. Livy says the two generals did this to please Syphax.
21. Ibid., 18.9.
22. Richard A. Gabriel, Scipio Africanus: Rome’s Greatest General (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2008), 139.
23. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 28, 38.
24. Lancel, Hannibal, 161.
25. Polybius, Histories, bk. 10, 5.6.
26. Andrew W. Lintott, “Electoral Bribery in the Roman Republic,” Journal of Roman Studies 80 (1990): 1–16, esp. 4, using the word ambitus in relation to electoral bribery, illegal in Rome while noting Scipio’s munificence; also apropos are Lintott’s etymologies: ambitus from the verb ambire, “to go around” and “to canvas support,” and ambitio was “pursuit of office and political fame (perhaps to excess),” 1.
27. Helmut Berneder, Magna Mater-Kult und Sibyllinen (Innsbruck, Aus.: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität Innsbruck, 2004).
28. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 29, 10, 14.
29. For example, see Juvenal, Satires, bk. 3, 126ff; Appian, Hannibalic War, 56 (a source for the story of Claudia pulling the boat stuck in the river).
30. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 29, 14.9; Lancel, Hannibal, 163.
31. Liddell Hart, Scipio Africanus, 83.
TWENTY-TWO: ZAMA
1. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 28, 44.
2. F. W. Walbank, Selected Papers: Studies in Greek and Roman History and Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 328.
3. Polybius, Histories, bk. 12, 56.
4. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 287–88. It seems Scipio’s numbers at Zama were closer to thirty-four thousand if counting Massinissa’s reinforcements of Numidian cavalry and men.
5. Bradford, Hannibal, 206.
6. Frontinus, Strategemata, bk. 1, 12.1.
7. Hunt, “Locus of Carthage,” 137–38.
8. Polybius, Histories, bk. 14, 3.
9. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 4.9; bk. 22, 6.12; bk. 28, 44.4; also see Erich S. Gruen, Rethinking the Other in Antiquity, Martin Classical Lectures (Prince-ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 13ff.
10. Azedine Beschaouch, “De l’Africa latino-chrétienne à l’Ifriqiya arabo-musulmane: questions de toponymie,” Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (CRAI) 130, no. 3 (1986): 530–49.
11. P. G. Walsh, “Massinissa,” Journal of Roman Studies 55, nos. 1/2 (1965): 149–60; Haley. “Livy, Passion and Cultural Stereotypes,” 375–81. Wife stealing was apparently not unusual for Numidians, a people considered as tribal rather than as a nation by the Romans. While it was reputedly practiced by barbarians (how the Romans saw the Numidians), Roman writers such as Livy are implying that Numidians are inherently very different than lawful Romans in their accepted mores.
12. Appian, Punic Wars, 28.
13. Fronda, Between Rome and Carthage, 36–37.
14. Diodorus, Library of History, bk. 27, 9, says Hannibal slaughtered three thousand horses; also see Garland, Hannibal, 108.
15. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 30, 20.
16. D. L. Stone, D. J. Mattingly, and N. Ben Lazreg, eds., Leptiminus (Lamta): The Field Survey, Report No. 3, supp. 87, Journal of Roman Archaeology (2011).
17. Paul Davis, 100 Decisive Battles: From Ancient Times to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 51.
18. Fronda, Between Rome and Carthage, 237. Along with most reasonable historians, Fronda doubts Livy’s dramatic assertion in History of Rome, bk. 30, 20, that the Italians in the sacred shrine of Juno Lacinia who refused to accompany Hannibal were then butchered, deducing that others who repeat this (Diodorus, Library of History, bk. 27, 9.1; Appian, Hannibalic War, 59) are only attempting to reinforce Hannibal’s alleged brutality.
19. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 30, 20.
20. Davis, 100 Decisive Battles, 47, maintains that Hannibal had forty-five thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry at Zama. Others, such as Lancel, Hannibal, 175, suggest he had an army of fifty thousand, possibly counting his cavalry, in agreement with G. C. Picard, Hannibal (Paris: Hachette, 1967), 206, who adjusts the number upward to fifty thousand, based on Appian. The best estimates seem closer to forty thousand if we can trust Polybius, as suggested by Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 307.
21. Nowhere is this better told than in O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 13, 245–52.
22. Polybius, Histories, bk. 15, 5.
23. P. S. Derow, “Polybius, Rome and the East,” Journal of Roman Studies 69 (1979): 1–15, esp. 3–4.
24. Davidson, “Gaze in Polybius’ Histories,” 10–24, esp. 12.
25. Liddell Hart, Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American, Boston: Da Capo, 1993 (originally Dodd, Mead & Co., 1929), x.
26. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 53.
27. Polybius, Histories, bk. 14, 9.6; Davidson, “Gaze in Polybius’ Histories,” 20.
28. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 30, 30.
29. Polybius, Histories, bk. 15, 7.
30. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 30, 31.
31. Ibid., bk. 31–32.
32. Hoyos, Hannibal’s Dynasty, 177.
33. Polybius, Histories, bk. 15, 10–11.
34. F. M. Russell, “The Battlefield of Zama,” Archaeology 23, no. 2 (1970): 120–29; “Zama (‘Aelia Hadriana Augusta’) Tunisia,” in Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, 1976.
35. T. A. Dorey, “Macedonians at the Battle of Zama,” American Journal of Philology 78, no. 2 (1957): 185–87; unless they were possibly there without official Macedonian sanction.
36. Gabriel, Scipio Africanus, 187–88.
37. Peddie, Hannibal’s War, 212.
38. Hoyos, Hannibal’s Dynasty, 177–78.
39. Gabriel, Scipio Africanus, 188.
40. Caven, Punic Wars, 251.
41. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 30, 33.
42. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 112–13, 115–16. Polybius details how Aemilius Paullus was not happy with the potential battleground at Cannae (112.2); how close the Romans were to the River Aufidus (113.3), how crowded the Roman maniples were (115.6), and how impossible movement became for the Romans finally compressed on all sides (116.10–12).
43. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 30, 34.
44. Polybius, Histories, bk. 15, 12.
45. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 30, 33.
46. Polybius, Histories, bk. 15, 14.
47. Howard Hayes Scullard, Scipio Africanus: Soldier and Politician (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1970), 154, claims instead that only 1,500 Romans perished at Zama.
48. Hoyos, Hannibal’s Dynasty, 178.
49. Polybius, Histories, bk. 15, 15.
50. Picard, Hannibal, 208.
51. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 225.
52. Jakob Seibert, 474.
53. O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 252n93 and 286, uses 2009 estimates at $13.25 per-ounce spot price; in 2016 the per-ounce spot price was $16.62.
54. Lancel, Hannibal, 182.
55. Note that the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 assigned responsibility of blame for World War I to Germany. Two years later, following negotiations, the London Schedule of Payments assessed Germany 132 billion gold marks (equivalent to $33 billion) in reparations, to be paid in installments—although in the end, the actual payments were insignificant. See William N. Goetzmann and K. Geert Rouwenhorst, eds., The Origins of Value: The Financial Innovations That Created Modern Capital (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 329.
56. O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 252, calls Hannibal without an army “a military oxymoron.”
57. J. Roger Dunkle, “The Greek Tyrant and Roman Political Invective of the Late Republic,” Transactions of the American Philological Association (TAPA) 98 (1967): 151–71, esp. 156–57.
58. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 28, 42. Here Fabius implies that Scipio fancies himself more a king than a consul; if Scipio’s character were different, this might have been possible, especially after Zama.
59. Lancel, Hannibal, 179.
60. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 30, 37.7.
61. Ibid., bk. 30, 44.4–11.
62. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 8.6–10. As mentioned at the outset of this book, even Polybius, in the first paragraph of bk. 3 (1.1), called it the “Hannibalic War” (ton ’Annibiakon). However, surely he was not the first.
63. Ibid., bk. 15, 15.
TWENTY-THREE: EXILE
1. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 33.
2. Serge Lancel, Carthage: A History, trans. Antonia Nevill (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 118–19.
3. David J. Mattingly and R. Bruce Hitchner, “Roman Africa: An Archaeological Review,” Journal of Roman Studies 85 (1995): 165–213, esp. 200 and 204.
4. Aurelius Victor, De Caesaribus, 37.2–3.
5. Virgil, Aeneid, bk. 4, 60ff.
6. Walter Ameling, Karthago: Studien zu Militär, Staat und Gesellschaft. Vestigia: Beiträge zur Alten Geschichte 45. Munich: C. H. Beck Verlag, 1993, 82.
7. E. Lipinski, ed. (dir.), “Suffète,” Dictionnaire de la civilisation phénicienne et punique (Paris: Brepols, [Turnhout] 1992), 429. Lipinski also references an earlier Semitic word in shapitum from Akkadian.
8. F. Brown, S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), 1047: “judge, lawgiver” with Punic cognate sufet noted.
9. Robert Drews, “Phoenicians, Carthage and the Spartan Eunomia,” American Journal of Philology 100, no. 1 (Spring 1979): 45–58, esp. 54.
10. G. C. Picard, “Hannibal,” in Dictionnaire de la civilisation phénicienne et punique, ed. (dir.) E. Lipinski (Paris: Brepols, [Turnhout] 1992), 207.
11. Cornelius Nepos, Life of Hannibal, 7.4. The Roman biographer also equates the office with a Roman praetor.
12. Hoyos, Hannibal’s Dynasty, 210.
13. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 33, 46.
14. Bradley, 228.
15. Nepos, Life of Hannibal, 7. 7.
16. Hoyos, Hannibal’s Dynasty, 129ff.; Fronda, Between Rome and Carthage, 298.
17. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 33, 47.
18. Lancel, Hannibal, 192.
19. Nepos, Life of Hannibal, 7.10ff. Undermining some of Nepos’ credibility is that he follows these details with Hannibal returning to Cyrene with five ships within three years of flight (8.1–3).
20. John Ray, The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 133–34; Patrick Hunt, Ten Discoveries That Rewrote History (New York: Penguin/Plume, 2007), 4–5.
21. Gabriel, Hannibal, 221.
22. While in qinah (lament) poetic form over its future destruction, Ezekiel 27 surveys one of Tyre’s great periods in the early sixth century BCE. See I. M. Diakonoff. “The Naval Power and Trade of Tyre.” Israel Exploration Journal 42, nos. 3/4 (1992) 168–93; its purple dye murex trade and Carthaginian connections are noted on 176.
23. Roger Batty, “Mela’s Phoenician Geography,” Journal of Roman Studies 90 (2000): 70–94, esp. 79–83.
24. Fergus Millar, “The Phoenician Cities: A Case-Study of Hellenization,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 209 (1983): 55–71; Andrea J. Berlin, “From Monarchy to Markets: The Phoenicians to Hellenistic Palestine,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 306 (May 1997): 75–88, esp. 76–77.
25. Lancel, Hannibal, 193.
26. Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae (Attic Nights), V.v.5: Satis, plane satis esse credo Romanis haec omnia, etiamsi avarissimi sunt.
27. Lancel, Hannibal, 203.
28. Among others, see Livy, History of Rome, bk. 35, 14; Plutarch Flamininus, 21.3–4; Appian, The Syrian Wars, bk. 11 in Roman History.
29. Arthur M. Eckstein, Rome Enters the Greek East: From Anarchy to Hierarchy in the Hellenistic Mediterranean 230–170 BC (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).
30. R. M. Errington, “Rome Against Philip and Antiochus,” chap. 8 in Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd ed., vol. 8, Rome and the Mediterranean to 133 BC, ed. A. E Astin et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 285–86.
31. Nepos, Life of Hannibal, 9; Justin (Marcus Junianus Justinus), Epitome of Pompeius Trogus, bk. 32, 4.3–5; Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), Epode 9. Lancel, Hannibal, 205, however, suggests the story should be taken with a considerable grain of salt.
32. Francis Cairns, “Horace Epode 9: Some New Interpretations, Illinois Classical Studies 8, no. 1 (1983): 80–93; Bradley, 235.
33. Tullia Linders, Studies in the Treasure Records of the Temple of Artemis Brauronia Found in Athens (Stockholm: Svenska Institutet i Athen, 1972); Linders. “The Treasures of Other Gods in Athens and Their Functions,” Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie 62 (1975); Meisenheim; Georges Roux, “Trésors, Temples, Tholos,” in Temples et Sanctuaires, ed. Roux (Lyon, Fr.: Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient 7, 1984), 153–72; Josephine Shaya, “The Greek Temple as Museum: The Case of the Legendary Treasure of Athena from Lindos,” American Journal of Archaeology 109, no. 3 (2005): 423–42, esp. 425–27ff. on temple treasury and ensuing record lists of votive gifts. “Hellenistic” refers to the culture fusing Greek and Oriental influences in the Greek cities after the reign of Alexander the Great.
34. Joan R. Mertens, “Greek Bronzes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 43, no. 2 (1985): 5–66, esp. 13; Bruce Christman, “The Emperor as Philosopher,” Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 74, no. 3 (1987): 100–13; Carol Mattusch, Greek Bronze Statuary: From the Beginnings Through Fifth Century B.C., Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989, 15–17ff.; Alessandra Giumlia-Mair, “Techniques and Composition of Equestrian Statues in Raetia,” in From the Parts to the Whole, vol. 2, Acta of the 13th International Bronze Congress at Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1996, supp. 39, Journal of Roman Archaeology (2002): 93–97, esp. 95.
35. Strabo, Geography, bk. 11, 14.6; Plutarch, Life of Lucullus, 31.4–5
36. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, bk. 5, 148.
37. Nepos, Life of Hannibal, 10; Justin, Epitome, bk. 32, 4.6.
38. Gavin de Beer, Hannibal: The Struggle for Power in the Mediterranean (London: Thames and Hudson, 1969), 299; James W. Martin, George W. Christopher, and Edward M. Eitzen, “History of Biological Weapons: From Poisoned Darts to Intentional Epidemics,” in Medical Aspects of Biological Warfare, ed. Z. F. Dembek (Washington DC: Borden Institute, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 2007), 1–20, esp. 2; also see Adrienne Mayor, Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological Warfare in the Ancient World (London: Duckworth, 2009), 188: “the Carthaginian general had many ad hoc animal tricks.”
39. Plutarch, Flamininus, 2.1–2.
40. Eckstein, 89; Prusias’ wife, Apama, was the half sister of Philip V of Macedon.
41. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 39, 51.2.
42. Flavius Eutropius (or Victor), De Viris Illustribus, 4.42.
43. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, bk. 5, 43.
44. Lancel, Hannibal, 210.
45. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 39, 51.9–11; Plutarch, Flamininus, 20.5, 21.1–3; Appian, Syrian Wars, 11; Nepos, Life of Hannibal, 13.
TWENTY-FOUR: HANNIBAL’S LEGACY
1. Vegetius (Publius Flavius Vegetius Renaus), De Re Militari (The Military Institutions of the Romans), bk. 1, 1.
2. Valerius, Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium, V.3.2b: “Ingrata patria, ne ossa quidem habebis.” He continues: “Cineres ei suos negavit quam in cinerem collabi passus non fuerat.” (“Ungrateful fatherland, you will not have my bones.” “He denied his ashes to her whom he had not let collapse into ash.”)
3. Seneca, De Ira (On Anger), bk. 2, 5.4.
4. Horace, Ode 3, 6.36; Juvenal, Satires, bk. 7, 161.
5. Ovid, Fasti, bk. 3, 148, bk. 6, 242.
6. Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, 375n2.
7. Plutarch, Life of Flamininus, 21.2, Life of Fabius, 5.3, Life of Marcellus, 24.6.
8. Diodorus, Library of History, bk. 36, 14.2; bk. 27, 9.1–10.1.
9. Cassius, fragment, 15.57.25.
10. Polybius, Histories, bk. 9, 24.4–8; Rawlings, “Hannibal the Cannibal?,” 1–30.
11. Brizzi, “Carthage and Hannibal in Roman and Greek Memory,” 483–98, esp. 484.
12. Garland, Hannibal, 136–37; Virgil, Aeneid, bk. 4, 622–26. Some of this interpretation of Virgil is from Fairclough; other parts are my own. (I had to translate this passage as part of my graduate Latin assignment at the University of California, Berkeley, in the summer of 1982.) The phoenix allusion and metonymy between ashes and bones is a wordplay device called subtle or concealed paronomasia. See Patrick Hunt, “Subtle Paronomasia in the Canticum Canticorum: Hidden Treasures of the Superlative Poet,” Goldene Äpfel in silbernen Schalen. Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des Antiken Judentums 20 (1992): 147–54. The phoenix was known from Greek writers, including Hesiod, fragment, 171.4, and Herodotus, 2.73. The phoenix building a funeral pyre—like Dido—is also known in the first century to Statius (Silvae II.4.22 ducite flammis funera). That the phoenix progeny emerges from the bones only every few hundred years, see Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 15, 393; Pliny the Elder, Natural History, bk. 10, 2.4; also “phoenix” in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, 1372. That both the actual phoenix and Hannibal are unnamed reinforces the brilliant wordplay, also because Virgil knows that it would be anachronistic for Dido to mention Hannibal.
13. Valerius, Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium, bk. 5, 1.6, putting these honorable acts in a different light than Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 52.6 (Aemilius Paullus), bk. 35, 17.4–7 (Tiberius Gracchus), and bk. 27, 28.2ff. (M. Marcellus).
14. Frontinus, Strategemata, bk. 1, 5.28 (Volturnus), bk. 1 7.2 (Rhone?), bk. 1, 8.2 (slander Fabius), bk. 2, 2.6 (choosing topography at Numistro against Marcellus), bk. 2, 3.7 (Cannae), bk. 2, 3.9 (topography against Marcellus), bk. 2, 3.16 (Zama), bk. 2, 5.13 (against Romans gorging), bk. 2, 5.21 (against Fulvius), bk. 2, 5.22 (against Minucius), bk. 2, 5.23 (Trebia), bk. 2, 5.24 (Trasimene), bk. 2, 5.25 (against Junius), bk. 2, 5.27 (Numidians at Cannae), bk. 2, 6.4 (Trasimene), bk. 2, 7.7 (Carpetani in Italy), bk. 3, 2.3 (Hannibal spies), bk. 3, 3.6 (Tarentum), bk. 3, 9.1 (Cartagena), bk. 3, 10.3 (Himera), bk. 3, 10.4 (Saguntum), bk. 3, 16.4 (deserters), bk. 4, 3.7 (Hannibal’s self-discipline), bk. 4, 3.8 (Hannibal’s self-discipline), bk. 4, 7.10 (vipers in sea battle), bk. 4, 7.25 (Hannibal at Trasimene), to name but a few.
15. Valerius, Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium, bk. 7, 4.2.
16. Ibid., bk. 3, 7.6.
17. Colonel John R. Elting, The Super-Strategists: Great Captains, Theorists and Fighting Men Who Have Shaped the History of Warfare (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1985), 17.
18. Albert Merglen, Surprise Warfare: Subversive, Airborne and Amphibious Operations, trans. K. Morgan (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1968), 11.
19. Frontinus, Strategemata, bk. 1, 1.9.
20. Valerius, Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium, bk. 7, 3.8.
21. Valerius, Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium, bk. 6.1b.
22. Michael Grant, The Army of the Caesars (New York: Evans Books, 1974), 4.
23. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 117.4–5.
24. Leslie J. Worley, Hippeis: The Cavalry of Ancient Greece (Oxford: Westview Press, 1994), 59.
25. A. Hyland, Equus: The Horse in the Roman World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 74, 123, 129, 174–75. Hyland also copiously notes that “the Numidians were most effective at Ticinus where they swamped the Roman Gallic flanks,” 175; how Hannibal used Numidians at Trebia to cross the icy river to harass and goad the Romans, 129, 175; how he employed cavalry at Trasimene, 123, 175; and how Hannibal’s envelopment at Cannae successfully implemented Numidian and other cavalry from the rear, 166, 175, 189. Hyland also explains the Numidian charge and disperse tactics on smaller, nimbler horses, and how Numidians rode without a bridle, using a long, flexible willow or wood sapling around the horse’s neck for control, 174–75.
26. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 40.
27. Harold Winters, Battling the Elements: Weather and Terrain in the Conduct of War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 47, 164.
28. Valerius, Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium, bk. 7, 4.2.
29. Cassius, fragment, bk. 15, 57.25.
30. Frontinus, Strategemata, bk. 3, 9.1.
31. Valerius, Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium, bk. 7, 4.4.
32. O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 212.
33. Frontinus, Strategemata, bk. 3, 2.3.
34. R. M. Sheldon, “Hannibal’s Spies,” Espionage 2, no. 3 (August 1986): 149–52; Sheldon, “Hannibal’s Spies,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence (IJIC) 1, no. 3 (1987): 53–70.
35. Paul Kennedy, Grand Strategies in War and Peace (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), 79.
36. Fronda, Between Rome and Carthage, 330.
37. Juvenal, Satires, bk. 10, 147–48, 161–62.
38. Dexter Hoyos, “Hannibal,” in Encyclopedia of Ancient History, ed. Roger S. Bagnall et al. (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 3057. Hoyos notes correctly other critical assessments such as Jakob Seibert, Hannibal (Darmstadt, Ger.: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993) and lists these as generally admiring: Lazenby, Hannibal’s War; Lancel, Hannibal; Goldsworthy, The Fall of Carthage (Phoenix, 2003); and Barceló, Hannibal—with Picard’s 1967 Hannibal as adulatory.
39. Gianni Granzotto, Annibale (Milan, It.: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1980), 310: “Annibale, tutto sommato, non poteva vincere. Di questo occorre rendersi conto, pur considerando che egli era indubbiamente un uomo di genio superior . . . Se Annibale fu grande, Roman fu ancora piu grande di lui.” (“Hannibal, after all, could not win. Of this you have to realize, even considering that he was undoubtedly a man of superior genius . . . If Hannibal was great, Rome was far greater.”)