Smithsonian Newsletter
July 2017
It’s one of the most famous moments in military history: the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca crossing the Alps with his battle elephants in 218 B.C. In the July/August issue of Smithsonian,Franz Lidz travels to Italy to meet Chris Allen, a lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast, who has used 2,000-year-old fecal matter to make a case that the crossing may have happened at the pass called Col de la Traversette. Patrick N. Hunt, an archaeologist, historian and biographer who has taught humanities, archaeology and mythology at Stanford University since 1993, believes the crossing happened further north at Col du Clapier. He spoke to us about the evidence and stories laid out in his new book, Hannibal. [Simon and Schuster].
New Books Network
Amherst College Press
Mark Klobas
In 218 BCE, the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca launched an invasion of Italy designed to bring the Roman Republic to its knees. Yet for all of his success in defeating Rome’s legions on the battlefield, Hannibal ultimately failed in his lifelong goal. In Hannibal (Simon and Schuster, 2017), Patrick N. Hunt recounts the triumphs and frustrations of the legendary commanders dramatic military career. The son of a Carthaginian leader who fought Rome in the First Punic War, Hannibal was raised to reverse Carthage’s loss in that initial conflict. This he did by taking the fight to Rome, where his outnumbered armies triumphed over the Romans in three successive battles. Yet, as Hunt explains, Rome soon learned from Hannibal’s example, and the Carthaginians’ inability to translate battlefield victories into a Roman surrender left him mired in a war of attrition he could not win. By the time he faced a Roman army at Zama in 202 BCE, the situation was now reversed, as Scipio Africanus used many of Hannibal’s own tactics against him. In this Hunt exposes the irony of Hannibal’s life, as his effort to destroy Rome’s nascent empire only made it stronger, setting the stage for the next seven centuries of its domination of the Mediterranean.