Hannibal was the eldest son of the Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca, who reportedly made him swear at nine years old eternal hostility to Rome. He inherited the Carthaginian command in Spain at twenty-six and in 218 BCE — opening the Second Punic War — marched some 90,000 men, 12,000 cavalry and 37 war elephants across southern Gaul and over the Alps in winter, losing perhaps half his force to cold and Gallic ambush before descending into northern Italy. Across the next fifteen years on Italian soil he won three of the most one-sided battlefield victories in the historical record — Trebia, Lake Trasimene, and at Cannae in 216 BCE the annihilation of a Roman army of 86,000 by his 50,000 in a single afternoon. He could not, however, take the city itself. Recalled to defend Carthage when the Roman Scipio Africanus invaded North Africa, he was defeated at Zama in 202 BCE and Carthage made peace. He spent the rest of his life as an exile and adviser to anti-Roman kings of the eastern Mediterranean; in 183 BCE, cornered in Bithynia and about to be handed over to Roman authorities, he took poison.
All Figures
Carthaginian General
Hannibal Barca
247 BCE – 183 BCE
The Carthaginian general who crossed the Alps with elephants in mid-winter, ran circles around Rome for fifteen years on Italian soil, and lost his war anyway.
Lifetime
Date source not yet attached to this catalogue record.