Hannibal biography

Synopsis

Early life

Hannibal was the son of the great Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca. According to Polybius and Livy, the main Latin sources for his life, Hannibal was taken to Spain by his father and at an early age was made to swear eternal hostility to Rome. From the death of his father in 229/228 until his own death about 183, Hannibal's life was one of constant struggle against the Roman Republic.

Hannibal's earliest commands were given to him in the Carthaginian province of Spain by Hasdrubal, son-in-law and successor of Hamilcar. It is clear that Hannibal emerged as a successful officer, for, on the assassination of Hasdrubal in 221, the army proclaimed him, at age 26, its commander in chief, and the Carthaginian government quickly ratified his field appointment.

Hannibal immediately turned himself to the consolidation of the Punic hold on Spain. He married a Spanish princess, Imilce, and then conquered various Spanish tribes. He fought against the Olcades and captured their capital, Althaea; he quelled the Vaccaei in the northwest; and in 221, making the seaport Cartagena (Carthage Nova, the capital of Carthaginian Spain) his base, he won a resounding victory over the Carpetani in the region of the Tagus River.

In 219 Hannibal attacked Saguntum, an independent Iberian city south of the Ebro River. In the treaty between Rome and Carthage subsequent to the First Punic War (264–241), the Ebro had been set as the northern limit of Carthaginian influence in the Iberian Peninsula. Saguntum was indeed south of the Ebro, but the Romans had “friendship” (though perhaps not an actual treaty) with the city and regarded the Carthaginian attack on it as an act of war. The siege of Saguntum lasted eight months, and in it Hannibal was severely wounded. The Romans, who had sent envoys to Carthage in protest (though they did not send an army to help Saguntum), after its fall demanded the surrender of Hannibal. Thus began the Second Punic War, declared by Rome and conducted, on the Carthaginian side, almost entirely by Hannibal.

The march into Gaul

Hannibal spent the winter of 219–218 at Cartagena in active preparations for carrying the war into Italy. Leaving his brother Hasdrubal in command of a considerable army for the defense of Spain and North Africa, he crossed the Ebro in April or May of 218 and marched into the Pyrenees (the Romans, shortly before they heard of this, decided on war). There his army—which consisted, according to Polybius, of 90,000 infantry, 12,000 cavalry (Polybius' figures are probably exaggerated; a total force of about 40,000 is more likely), and a number of elephants—met with stiff resistance from the Pyrenean tribes. This opposition and the desertion of some of his Spanish troops greatly diminished his numbers, but he reached the Rhne River with but little resistance from the tribes of southern Gaul. Meanwhile, the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio transported his army, which had been detained in northern Italy by a rebellion, by