A Daring and Skillful General
Hannibal has been called one of the greatest generals of all time. The Greek historian Polybius (c. 200-c. 125 B. C.E.) wrote in The Histories that other Carthaginians thought Hannibal was greedy, and the Romans considered him cruel. That reputation led Roman adults to tell their children that unless they behaved, Hannibal would come after them (as reported in Allen Ward's A History of the Roman Peoples). But Hannibal won the respect of his troops by enduring the same hardships they did, eating the same food, and often sleeping on the ground. He planned his Roman campaign for two years and won several dazzling victories. His march across the Alps and his victories in the Italian peninsula showed Hannibal's skills as a planner and a leader. Into the 20th century, generals around the world still studied his tactics, especially his victory at Cannae.
Hannibal, legend goes, had promised his father Hamilcar Barca (d. c. 229 B. C.E.), that he would always consider Rome his chief enemy. Hamilcar had fought the Romans during the First Punic War. As tensions with Rome grew, Hannibal assembled a large army and marched from the Iberian peninsula across what is now southern France into the Italian peninsula. The Carthaginians, their mercenary forces, and their Gallic allies won several victories. Livy, in his History of Rome, wrote that “the loveliest part of Italy was being reduced to ashes and the smoke was rising everywhere from the burning farms.” The Carthaginian forces continued to move southward, bypassing Rome as they tried to find new allies. In 216 B. C.E., Roman troops lost their worst battle at Cannae (today it is spelled Canne), and Hannibal eventually took Tarentum.
Rome, however, still had a big advantage: Because the battles were in Roman territory, it could rebuild its army and keep it supplied. Hannibal lacked a navy that could bring supplies from Carthage or the Iberian peninsula and had to rely on what his men could take from the Romans. The Romans also had enough troops to slowly regain lost cities in the Italian peninsula while simultaneously invading the Iberian peninsula. The Roman general Publius Scipio (236-183 B. C.E.) eventually drove the Carthaginians out of the Iberian peninsula, then invaded Carthage’s African lands in 204 B. C.E. Hannibal returned to his homeland to fight the Roman invaders, but his forces lost at Zama in modern-day Tunisia two years later. Scipio won the nickname “Africanus” and was Rome’s greatest general of that era. With its victories, Rome took control of the Carthaginian territory in the Iberian peninsula and guaranteed its place as the western Mediterranean’s major military power.
World History
