Hannibal

Hannibal (247–183/2 BC), eldest son of Hamilcar Barca and the great leader of the Carthaginians against Rome in the Second Punic War. Hamilcar took him to Spain in 237, after making him swear eternal hatred to Rome, a story told by Hannibal himself. When Hasdrubal (1) was assassinated in 221, the army elected Hannibal commander-in-chief. For two years he extended Carthaginian power in Spain and then in 219 besieged Saguntum, a city in alliance with Rome, thus, as he expected, precipitating war with Rome. In 218 he reached Italy after an arduous winter journey over the Alps, during which many of the war elephants he brought with him perished (according to Appian he started with thirty-seven). After fifteen years of continuous warfare in Italy he was ordered in 203 to withdraw his undefeated army and return to Africa in order to defend Carthage from the invading Romans. Finally defeated by Scipio Africanus at Zama in 202, he escaped to Carthage and urged an immediate peace. When his enemies informed Rome that he was conspiring with Antiochus of Syria, Hannibal left to join Antiochus, who was on the verge of war with Rome. Hannibal was defeated in a naval engagement at Sidē, and subsequently fled to Crete and thence to king Prūsias of Bithynia. The Romans were uneasy as long as he remained alive, and eventually demanded his surrender. Hannibal, seeing all ways shut to him, took poison in 183 or 182. Acknowledged to be one of the world's greatest soldiers, Hannibal inspired the utmost loyalty in his troops (even in defeat and hardship) and dread among his enemies. He lived on in the imagination as the archetypal enemy of Rome, and Roman mothers frightened their children with the nursery threat: Hannibal ad portas (‘Hannibal is at the gates’).