Hannibal Barca
247–183 BC 1 entry
Biography
Hannibal Barca was a Carthaginian general, one of the greatest military commanders of antiquity. Born in Carthage in 247 BC, the son of the general Hamilcar Barca, he was taken to Spain by his father as a boy and, according to the story told by Livy and Polybius, made to swear eternal hostility to Rome. He took command of the Carthaginian army in Spain at twenty-six, and in 218 BC he began the Second Punic War.
That year he led his army, with its famous war elephants, over the Pyrenees and the Alps into Italy, and in the following years he won great victories at the Trebia, at Lake Trasimene and at Cannae in 216 BC, a battle still studied in military schools. Yet for fifteen years he could not take Rome, and in 202 BC, called back to defend Carthage, he was defeated at Zama by Scipio Africanus. After the war he led the government of Carthage, then went into exile in the East, where he died around 183 BC in Bithynia rather than be handed over to the Romans.
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