Hannibal
Hannibal (247 - c. 183–181 BC) was a Carthaginian general who is regarded as one of the great military leaders of antiquity. He commanded the Carthaginian forces against Ancient Rome in the Second Punic War (218–201 BC), with large initial Roman defeats, but eventual Roman victory. He continued to oppose Rome until his death. His most famous victory was at the Battle of Cannae (216 BC). However, Rome actually suffered a larger, but less known defeat, at the Battle of Arausio (105 BC), against the Germanic Cimbri and Teutons. The race of Hannibal has become controversial, with Afrocentric supporters claiming that Hannibal and Carthaginians were Blacks. See the Phoenicians article on their origins, with at least the upper classes in Carthage mainly being Phoenicians.
Life
His father Hamilcar Barca was the leading Carthaginian commander during the First Punic War, his younger brothers were Mago and Hasdrubal, and he was brother-in-law to Hasdrubal the Fair. Hannibal lived during a period of tension in the Mediterranean, when Rome (then the Roman Republic) established its supremacy over other great powers such as Carthage, and the Hellenistic kingdoms of Macedon, Syracuse, and the Seleucid empire. One of his most famous achievements was at the outbreak of the Second Punic War, when he marched an army, which included war elephants, from Iberia over the Pyrenees and the Alps into northern Italy. In his first few years in Italy, he won three dramatic victories Trebia, Trasimene and Cannae and won over several Roman allies. However, after 17 years, a Roman counter-invasion of North Africa forced him to return to Carthage, where he was decisively defeated by Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Zama. Scipio studied Hannibal's tactics and brilliantly devised some of his own, and finally defeated Rome's nemesis at Zama after previously driving Hasdrubal, Hannibal's brother, out of Spain.
After the war Hannibal successfully ran for the office of suffete. He enacted political and financial reforms to enable the payment of the war indemnity imposed by Rome. However, Hannibal's reforms were unpopular with members of the Carthaginian aristocracy and Rome, and he fled into voluntary exile. During his exile, he lived at the Seleucid court, where he acted as military advisor to Antiochus III in his war against Rome. After Antiochus met defeat and was forced to accept Rome's terms, Hannibal fled again, making a stop in Armenia. His flight ended in the court of Bithynia, where he achieved an outstanding naval victory against a fleet from Pergamum. He was afterwards betrayed to the Romans.
Hannibal would later be considered as one of the greatest generals of antiquity, together with Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Scipio, and Pyrrhus of Epirus. Plutarch gives that, when questioned by Scipio as to who was the greatest general, Hannibal is said to have replied either Alexander, Pyrrhus, then himself,[1] or, according to another version of the event, Pyrrhus, Scipio, then himself.[2] Military historian Theodore Ayrault Dodge once famously called Hannibal the "father of strategy",[3] because his greatest enemy, Rome, came to adopt elements of his military tactics in its own strategic arsenal. This praise has earned him a strong reputation in the modern world and he was regarded as a "gifted strategist" by men like Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington. His life has been the basis for a number of films and documentaries.
He has been attributed with the famous quotation, "We will either find a way, or make one."
Quotes
- Hannibal had been the favourite hero of my later school days. Like so many boys of my age, I had sympathized in the Punic Wars not with the Romans but with the Carthaginians. And when in the higher classes I began to understand for the first time what it meant to belong to an alien race, and anti-semitic feelings among the other boys warned me that I must take up a definite position, the figure of the semitic general rose still higher in my esteem. To my youthful mind Hannibal and Rome symbolized the conflict between the tenacity of Jewry and the organization of the Catholic Church. – Sigmund Freud, creator of psychoanalysis.
External links
- Operation Hannibal – The rescue of the Germans from East Prussia at the end of the Second World War
Encyclopedias
- Ancient History Encyclopedia: Hannibal
- Encyclopedia Britannica: Hannibal
- Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 Edition: Hannibal
- Encyclopedia.com: Hannibal
References
- ↑ Plutarch, and when asked what his choices would be if he had beaten Scipio, he replied that he would be the best of them all Life of Titus Flamininus 21.3-4.
- ↑ Plutarch, Life of Pyrrhus 8.2.
- ↑ Ayrault Dodge, Theodore (1995). Hannibal: A History of the Art of War Among the Carthagonians and Romans Down to the Battle of Pydna, 168 BC. Da Capo Press.
