Hannibal, 'the grace of Baal' 247-182BC
Carthaginian soldier

Hannibal was the son of Hamilcar and at the age of nine his father made him swear eternal enmity to Rome. He served in Spain under Hamilcar and his brother Hasdrubal, and was elected general after Hasdrubal's death. He won control of southern Spain up to the Ebro (221-219), and the fall of Saguntum in 218 sparked off the Second Punic War with Rome. In 218 he surprised the Romans by marching from Spain through southern Gaul, and crossing the Alps into Italy with an army including elephants. His troops, used to the African and Spanish climate, perished by the thousand amid ice and snow; but he defeated the Taurini, forced Ligurian and Celtic tribes to serve in his army, and at the River Ticinus drove back the Romans under Publius Cornelius Scipio, the Elder (218).

The first great battle was fought in the plain of the River Trebia, when the soldiers of the Roman consular army were either cut to pieces or scattered in flight. Hannibal wintered in the valley of the Po, and in spring crossed the Apennines, devastating Etruria and marching towards Rome. He awaited the consul Gaius Flaminius by Lake Trasimene, where he inflicted on him a crushing defeat; the Roman army was annihilated. Passing through Apulia and Campania, he wintered at Gerunium, and in the spring at Cannae (216) on the Aufidus utterly destroyed another Roman army under Quintus Fabius ('Cunctator').

After Cannae the tide turned. Rome's allies remained loyal, and Hannibal received inadequate support from Carthage. Although he was not defeated, as his veterans were lost to him he had no means of filling their places, while the Romans could put army after army into the field. He spent the winter of 216-215 at Capua. The Romans wisely avoided a further pitched battle, and allowed the Carthaginians to overrun Italy, taking towns and gaining minor victories. However, Capua fell in 210; and in 207 Hasdrubal, marching from Spain to his aid, was defeated and killed at the River Metaurus.

For four years Hannibal stood at bay in the hill-country of Bruttium, until in 203 he was recalled to Africa to meet a Roman invasion by Scipio. In the next year he met Scipio at Zama, his decisive defeat there ending the war. On the conclusion of peace, Hannibal devoted himself to political reform, but he aroused such strong opposition that he fled to the court of Antiochus III at Ephesus, and then to Bithynia. When the Romans demanded his surrender, he took poison.

Bibliography: Bernard Levin, Hannibal's Footsteps (1986); D S Bradford, Hannibal (1981); Dennis Proctor, Hannibal's March in History (1971); Gavin De Beer, Hannibal (1969).