Hannibal (In Our Time)

this is the BBC this podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK thank you for downloading this episode of in our time for more details about in our time and for our Terms of Use please go to BBC co dot UK ready or for I hope you enjoy the program hello anybody walking the riverbank near the northern Italian town a perch answer on a freezing cold morning in December 218 BC would have seen an extraordinary spectacle about 60,000 troops accompanied by scores of war elephants battled through driving snow to attack and route to the Roman army encamped on the other side of the river but the head was all of the greatest generals the world has ever seen his name was Hannibal he came from Carthage in northern Africa and he led his forces elephants and all across Spain across France excuse me across the Alps his victory at the Battle of the tremor struck fear into the hearts of the Roman Republic and it was the first skirmish and all the most celebrated a 15 years of conflicts in Roman history the Second Punic War Hannibal was an inspirational leader whose technical genius earned the respect not just of his enemies but a modern generals from Napoleon to Wellington to Stormin Norman Schwarzkopf with me to discuss Hannibal and the second Punic War our Anna no gorman senior lecture in classics at the University of Bristol Mark Walmer senior tutor in the department of classics and ancient history at the University of Durham and Louie Rollins senior lecturer in ancient history at Cardiff University and undergone Hannibal came from Carthage in northern Africa can you tell us a bit about the Carthaginian Empire he came from well the Carthaginians where a Phoenician people so they'd originally settled from Tyre in Lebanon and Phoenicians were traders so initially their empire took over existing Phoenician settlements along the coast of North Africa going as far as Morocco and and also in southern Spain going as far as Cadiz so they were controlling the Straits of Gibraltar the Carthaginians themselves also established a considerable control of western Sicily and since Carthage was on Kabam or just south of bomb in North Africa this gave them control of the narrowest part of the middle of the Mediterranean and if you were heading west going between Sicily and North Africa they also controlled Sardinia Corsica Ibiza and they were starting to establish at quite a strong empire in Spain which gave them control of silver mines and and in North Africa them itself they also had rich agricultural lands south of Carthage in Libya so their empire was a wealthy both because of trade and because of agricultural wealth because they were exploiting the natural resources of Sardinia and southern Spain and incredibly fertile Sicily they also got a lot of manpower from these different places but it's also clear from the locations that they chosen that they were aiming at control of the western Mediterranean and that control was clearly Imperial not just a sort of trade control so we have a very long-standing great the greatest Mediterranean empire at about that time which has been built up over quite a number of years yes I mean the Phoenicians had been settling and North Africa and southern Spain from about the 11th 10th century in Carthage was established around about the 9th century so yes they were they were very long established the first serious conflict between Carthage and Rome was the first Punic War which ended in 241 BC what effect did that have on Carthage which was defeated in the first Punic War the effect on Carthage was I mean that was a 23-year war so that was an extraordinarily long war which was fought tenaciously mostly in Sicily by the end of that war the Carthaginians had been driven out of Western Sicily where they had previously held control and the Romans had now established control of that island and in the immediate aftermath of that war the Carthaginians returning back to Carthage found themselves embroiled in a mercenary war unlike Rome the Carthaginians tended to employ mercenaries in their army this did give them some military advantages because they had a very diverse fighting force from different parts of their empire and the problem was when they lost this war and didn't have money to pay the mercenaries the mercenaries revolted and while they were engaged in attempting to sort out that war and the Romans annexed Sardinia so they were slowly losing grip on certain parts of their empire so Rome quite recently city-states the new young ball in the Mediterranean taking on the old ball of carthage to put it in quite simplistic terms at that time but but more or less my like oh honey balls father was a famous general hamilkar tell us something about him he it was he who lost the First Punic War was a general in charge of the cárdenas refers to his fury he thought the Senate should let him keep fighting today well that's certainly the way that the Roman sources portray it and it very much sets up the second Punic War by having him aggrieved by the Carthaginian Senate so by suggesting that he'd been betrayed by his own people they could then portray the second Punic War as a barque adventure but this isn't necessarily accurate and we have to view this through the lens of Roman propaganda what about animals farting what about how I said it off on slightly a red herring there um well not much is known about it early life we can make some assumptions based up from evidence in the source material that we have so we know he was an aristocrat and this must have been the case because he was given control of a large army for six years in Sicily at the end of the First Punic War and to take command of an army at such an early age suggested that he was around thirty when he took control of the army he must have had aristocratic backgrounds he must have had support from a wide cross-section of Carthaginian politicians in order to gain the support necessary to be elected to the generalship so this would suggest that he had aristocratic background and we pause for a second hi you had the Carthaginian Senate had to elect you to a generalship there was the Carthaginian Senate would would meet and would then discuss who they would put forward as general and this sometimes gets overruled so the army can elect a general as we'll see later with Hass durable and Hannibal himself and they'll make their representative there their chosen candidate known and then the Senate will ratify but essentially the the Carthaginian Senate would make the decision of who was a military commander so he was in systole he was leading the army he was only 31 hours to craft and he was a good general and he got defeated in Sicily he why was he so aggrieved about that I mean he wasn't a anyway well he was actually tasked with not necessarily winning the First Punic War but not losing the First Punic War so he was giving limited resources and limited manpower to obtain that objective so it was never the case that anyone had any illusions that he was going to win this it was basically to maintain the status quo and ensure that there was an equitable settlement at the end of the conflict so he wasn't really charged with winning so he undertakes a series of basically guerrilla raids on the Italian coastline which gained a lot of propaganda and credit for him he gains a lot of kudos from this but actually the the venture itself is relatively minor skirmishes so the idea that he's he's perhaps feels betrayed is I think an illusion because he was never given the support all the resources to win the war so this idea that he felt aggrieved at the end of the First Punic War I think is a misnomer but he certainly didn't feel happy about it I'm not going going about you know a lot more an idea from everything I've read being defeated because you have starved of resources wasn't something a general would live with sleep quite happily at night words would it no it would certainly have been something that was a challenge to his his social standing in his rank and his ranking amongst the Senate having having lost her having lost the war but he's never prosecuted for her and the Carthaginians are more than willing to execute generals at the drop of a heart they come with numerous innovative methods of execution crucifixion perhaps been most popular and so if there was any hint that the general had performed badly he would have faced punishment at home he doesn't face any of these charges and he doesn't seem to have that don't seem to been any political repercussions what about his son Hannibal's childhood very little is known about Hannibal's early childhood that the the first mention of Hannibal really really have is at the age of nine so prior to that we don't even know who his mother is we know that he was born probably at the end of the First Punic War when has triple hammock I was back at home and then we hear him again at the age of nine when he pleads with his father to take him to Spain and let him accompany him on the military adventure over to Spain and a lot of the sources make a big issue of this supposed earth that he swore which was that he would never be friends with the Romans during his lifetime and again this buys into the idea that the second Punic War was a real bark adventure that hamilkar was grooming how're your listeners when in the summit you're saying this is the family the families called the Barca that the bad guy becomes a sort of most important powerful family even though they're not the ruling family that mr. Paul Thomas oh he's one of that he's one of this family please please do the far to go to Spain his father says yes as I understand it says on is he's honor around the battlefield when he's nine he scarcely leaves it yeah absolutely and I think this is where he gets a lot of his military expertise from he lives with the men he goes off and we know that he's spoken with using military jog and he understood what motivates men because he spent a lot of time living with them and watching how his father managed his armies managed his troops and so he gains a lot of experience from an early age of military camps military ventures military operations and then slowly over time he rises up through the ranks and by two to four he's he's made his brother-in-law makes him chief of the cavalry Rowling's honey was found that hamilkar he launched as a mark city you goes to Spain to to reinforce them to develop the Empire in Spain and to get the money from the silver mines which was which this worked by slaves at the time and what did can you say what hamilkar achieved there and if we know anything about honey was part of this yes his primary achievement is essentially to put Carthage back on a financially stable footing at the end of the mercenary war at the end of this true soulless war which was Toby they can hamilkar actually is the general who wins that war so they come back after the losing the first war the mercenaries can't be paid because of the heavy tax the Romans have put on them serve got three as the mercenaries revolt massively taked out for three years and and and and Hamill cares problem they're used to put them down pay them short amount he does that new takes him to Spain absolutely if you've got an army and you you need to do something with it really and so he takes us now a veteran army of loyal mercenaries and loyal soldiers to Spain essentially to expand in Spain to generate income and revenue through booty through conquest gaining control even more control of the silver mines in order to allow Carthage to regain its financial status because it had been completely destroyed in financially after the First Punic War so much so that it couldn't actually have paid its mercenaries so one of the great achievements that hamilkar has is to actually bring in a vast amount of wealth into Carthage and into his own imperialistic venture in Spain so he spends the period from 237 BC down to 229 campaigning in Spain and expanding aggressively against various Spanish tribes but he's killed in battle in 229 and leaving a Carthaginian Carthaginian army which is well established in Spain is well organized and he has relatives and political allies who can take over the army so his son-in-law a chap called Hasdrubal and who is therefore Hannibal's brother-in-law takes over the command and Hustonville has his own power base in carthage he's a he's a demagogue he's got popular support so hamilkar with his military reputation and hospitable with his political support together form this very good Alliance and so how Cyril takes over and consolidates in Spain has rebels killed on the battlefield the Romans decapitate him and throw his body back I was told though and horrible it's a different yeah the coffin journeys didn't have variables either they're for fun yeah the cuffed jeans don't have very many names and Hannibal's and Hamill cars and pastures right well I want to read quickly to hazard ball got killed the hazard believing got killed I'll go outside or died in his bed whatever he moved over and Hannibal became the leader yeah I want to get to yeah absolutely so the hospital gets assassinated in 221 and the young Hannibal who is about 25 part of this family takes over the Army and the army because they're familiar with him they know he's a good commander of cavalry he's grown up with the army they support his bid for the generalship exploiting the connections that the Barker family have in Carthage the popular assembly in Carthage also ratified that and also support he's only 25 when he takes over the army that's right but he's been on the battlefield they're trying to work it out since you for 16 years then or more or less yeah yeah yeah so he's extremely experienced he knows all the officers he knows many of the men and so he's developed his cut his teeth in the fields of Spain so we've got Hannibal in Spain charge of the army the Carthaginian coffers filled up again faster than the Romans got their money back is it with my money together under Gorman and we're coming to the second Punic War now which is honey often called the Hannibal Corps in 218 BC the Romans and cut they resumed hostilities in 218 BC was that one particular cause or where they just gathered their strengths for another go in this battle for the control of the Mediterranean that's that's a very good way of putting the question and some historians insist on calling the Hannibal ik war the second bout of the Romano Carthaginian war and to suggest that there's a sort of continuity the explanations we have for the outbreak of hostilities and have to do they focus around the city of surgham in Spain which had put itself on the under the protection of Rome some years before it seems that what's the gun term was worried about was not so much the Carthaginians as other local tribes but they were engaged in hostility with and political factions within their own town but at by calling on the protection of Rome and the aide of Rome in organizing themselves politically they had established a link with Rome Rome doesn't seem to have paid much attention to them until Hannibal started aggressively moving the Carthaginian bases in Spain outwards he wasn't just moving West he was also moving northeast but this triggered the Romans who gave the rooms an opportunity to visit Hannibal and warn him away from Segen tongue and that this was a city under roman protection and and Hannibal obviously took this as a challenge and laid Saguntum under siege the Romans reacted remarkably slowly to this which is it's quite interesting to think about in terms of what their plans are by the time they had protested to the Carthaginian Senate and sent aid to Saginaw Michigan was in ruins Hannibal had taken us and moving north I mean the speed factor if we can establish this from one of the characteristics of Hannibal at the time was the speed compared with ever beer which he moved so by the time they decided to summon up a protest it raised the town and he was still moving north in Spain mark Wilmer this takes us to Hanuman's most famous achievement people we know that he crossed the Alps with war elephants and with a massive army but we didn't know that he went he took his army through Spain he took it across France and then across the Alps what what do we know now of that journey I'm sure it's been reassessed and revised and how many troops did it take o'clock across and how many of them survived he set out I think it was with around 80,000 troops with us including perhaps the baggage train as well so that's including hangers-on Logistics officers and things like that and all these elephant and and all his elephant yeah again we're not entirely clear on how many elephants he had he probably only had around 30 elephants at this point and he decides to set out in the middle of autumn to cross the Alps which is recognised as being the worst time to attempt the crossing even as an individual alone with an entire army in 80,000 men going up Spain across France crossing down as far as he knew except some mythical figure was it Heracles nobody had done this before not with 80,000 men and elephants do we know why he decided this was the way to go there was no way that he could reach Italy apart from a land March the Romans had improved their naval capacity were now dominant and replaced Carthage is the and superior naval power of the Mediterranean so they could quite easily prevent him from sailing and across to Italy he also needed to supply his army so he uses this as an opportunity to collect provisions on the way and so therefore collect plunder collect booty bloody his soldiers to make sure that they were full fighting efficiency when they really undertook he didn't march directly to Italy after the war was declared he actually spent time in the northeast of Spain taking out minor cities and minor tribes and this seems to have been an opportunity to again just make sure that he was full fighting efficiency he also knew that he was going to have to fight a number of the Gallic tribes prior to his crossing of the Alps so this wasn't going to be a just an easy March it was going to be a March where they were gonna have to fight their way through hostile tribes before they even crossed the mountain range itself so in the feeding of the land as they go absolutely yell it is well another Hannibal Handelman and Marcus actually says the only way that this will be feasible as if Hannibal feeds his army using the bodies of dead prisoners and he's he's sort of says this is the only way you're going to achieve this is by feeding off the dead this is a very sort of sensationalist story but it shows that even in Carthage itself was recognized that this was going to be a very risky venture and what's interesting is later Hannibal's brother has to walk another horrible actually marches across the Alps in following the same route as Hannibal during the spring and suffers no losses according to our sources yet Hannibal was to suffer crippling losses by the time he actually reached the other side well Luanne's can you take up the story you say crippling losses but he went on to win 15 years of battle so he kind of been that crippled but never mind let's let me be corrected on this new rose so he got it Craig gets across sales how many of his men are left and come to something else in a moment according to an inscription that he actually erected in southern Italy much later in the war he has 20,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry of his original 80,000 or so troops and well they lost across the absence he'd left some in northern Spain because he knew there was a Roman army coming in the opposite direction somewhat deserted enroute some have been left in Garrison's on boot as well but quite a lot of the casualties appear to have occurred in in the crossing of the Alps so he's lost 54,000 people somehow yes many of those through desertion and through attrition various sorts so that's why mark is saying that it's a crippling crippling result for him because if you imagine if he had arrived with 50,000 men his chances and his prospects must have been much greater so to be only 26,000 men he was up against it why did you take the elephants he took the elephants because the elephants are very important in terms of propaganda value they demonstrate the power and the prowess of the Carthaginian army if cough unions have been using elephants for a good fifty or so years and it's a kind of a Hellenistic what's the word I'm thinking it's a Hellenistic motif till you have elephants in your army your your great army if you have elephants and Alexander the Great and his successors have all kind of been enamored with the elephant as a an engine of war an animal of war are these trained we had called the more elephant they're trying to are the armored and so on they are trained there's some debate about the extent to which they're armored and also the Carthaginian elephants and more than likely to have been quite small forest elephants African forest elephants which were a different breed from the big African elephants so smaller than the Indian elephants they did have one or two Indian elephants which they'd imported and one famously is named and he's called the Saurus or the Syrian and he actually had a prosthetic task in a metal tusks so they're they're spectacular and they're also terrifying on the battlefield they're very difficult to deal with and you know if they get grumpy they're that they're quite terrifying and they and they can disrupt an enemy formation so they're quite important for for the Barkers and the bar kids in Spain have campaigned with large forces of elephants so we have Hannibal in Italy with a much smaller force than you said off with and you so your use of I'm just questioning our use of the word crippled Marc because then he goes about destroying Roman our battle one battle after another he destroys the Roman army just doesn't mean he seems to destroy them so an undergarment can you tell us about the first skirmish and how with the Romans welcome issues at Ribeira and Lake Trasimene what's how does he set about as he chasing the Romans there well and this issue of numbers I think demonstrates Hannibal's military skill at the Battle of the River Trebbia he is outnumbered by the Romans but um he I think he takes advantage of a number of a of issues with the terrain so he checks out the terrain beforehand he finds a flat area of land which has water course running through it which is not visible when you're looking across the land and and by charging towards the Roman camp he enrages the Consul Sempronius longus so but longus orders his men to come out and fight the Carthaginians at the Carthaginians therefore provoke the battle the Carthaginians already fed exercised and warmed and they know more about the terrain the Romans race out of the camp there are more of them they haven't been fed it's cold and snowy as you said in your introduction and they have to Ford the river to get to the Carthaginians so they go across an ice cold river into lamps they haven't been fed and they're facing a well-fed army as they move forward with their superior infantry and they seem initially to prevail against the slightly smaller infantry numbers of of Hannibal's army hannibal then deploys two of his killer skills first as the maneuverability of his army so he gets the cavalry to charge the Romans on one flank and the skirmishers to charge on the other and then his famous trickery and he's actually hidden some of his soldiers in the watercourse and they rise up behind the Romans so the Romans are suddenly attacked from all sides and they don't have the maneuverability to turn around the Romans of this time tend to wheel in formation if they want to move around so if they're moving forward and suddenly they're pressed from all sides they can't wheel they're not accustomed to turning around individually and thus a smaller force beats a larger force you mentioned the searching out this land he one of the things he's famous for is taking a great interest in not more than interests in paying particular attention to the terrain and which he fought getting reported upon what was it like was it flat was Italy where there was though that it was what was going on not seeing that a lot of future generals right up to the president said she praised him for that Kari took yes absolutely and it probably relates to his skills later on in his life in in city planning and we see the same sort of use of terrain in the Battle of Lake Trasimene II at the following year at the next consult Flaminius and pursues what he thinks to be at the fleeing army of Hannibal Hannibal leads his army into the valley close to the lake and to the shore of the lake and but Hannibal's army is actually silently waiting in the slopes above it's early morning mist is rising from the lake and you worked out which where the Sun was gonna be directed any um when he must have noticed from the east obviously but I mean he's shortened that way he's going to be yes I mean I think he took all of those sorts of factors he has iteration so in the case of the Battle of Lake Trasimene II the rooms were simply trapped by the terrain some of the army was driven into the lake and drowned and some of them simply had to stand and fight where they stood and apparently it took three hours they just stood and fought until they were cut down we're talking about we were talking you know to know some sort of slaughter in a good description Rowland's animals most famous victory came it can I thought how pronounces in 216 BC now why is that so famous again he's quite considerably outnumbered so I understand it so why is it so famous it's famous because it becomes a blueprint for generals to emulated so one of the perfect battles of all time really it's a double envelopment development which is where a weaker force is able to surround by capturing the wings of the enemy force and then driving in from the sides and from behind and surrounding much larger force so Hannibal's great trick in that battle is actually to ambush the roman army without any use of terrain at all it's of completeness of Lanna we're on Yankee right can I'd completely flat yeah and they're lined up against each other like we've seen in boys books in the 1940s and 50s yes the Romans are they've put twice as many troops into the field as they have done in previous battles so they now number about 70,000 in this battle and what animal don't know Hannibal Hannibal with his original twenty six thousand he's been augmented by ghouls from the north of Italy and so I roughly 50% of his army is Gallic by this time and so he's got roughly 20,000 or so he's got a bit between 45 and maybe 50,000 men himself he stretches his own battle lines which mainly Spanish and ghoulish infantry in the center into a crescent shape in front of the Romans so that they that they come they look as if they're coming towards the Romans but there more or less stationary and the Romans charge that force and the line is very thin because they have to stretch to match the huge Roman numbers Gauls are very good in initial attacks but they tire quickly and the Romans understand that they've been fighting goals in the north of Italy for many many centuries and they give in give up after a bit and the Romans expect of Gauls to fight hard for a bit and then start to retreat and give in and that's exactly what happens however Hannibal has positioned on the flanks his African infantry and then beyond those infantry he has his cavalry on the far flanks which are completely destroying the Roman cavalry opposite them so the Romans advanced into this crescent formation start pushing it back and pushing it back and pushing it back but the Gauls and the Spaniards together are able not to run away they managed to hold but they give ground and eventually the Romans create the reverse crescent shape they go in they get sucked into a bag essentially the Africans on the flanks turn in and attack the Romans and pin them and that stops the Romans from advancing it means they have to turn to the sides which as Helen said is very difficult and then finally the Carthaginian cavalry comes in from the rear and closes up the the back and so the Romans can't escape and whenever people are caught together whenever crowds are pushed together they don't react very well and so even though they outnumber the Carthaginians almost two to one they just can't fight enough and there's a terrifying statistic which is that a hundred people a minute were killed at that battle and by the end of the battle they were over fifty thousand Romans dead on the battlefield the Carthaginians lose roughly 12,000 which sounds like a great victory but actually it's quite decimating to the Carthaginian army in itself it's ten percent casualties my warmer what did Hannibal do after karna he'd won what what in ancient times want anything I mean called a great victory you would have expected hit the the Romans would say okay you win it's all over what do you want what didn't happen well this is that's what you've described as something what Hannibal expected and certainly a number of Hannibal's generals expected this you beat an army on a few occasions and then they come to terms and that's certainly the way that warfare worked prior to this but the Romans are showing when they were fighting against Paris for example of a previous invader that this wasn't the case they didn't know when to when to stop they saw it as a war of attrition and they weren't going to come to terms so the expectation would be that Hannibal would march on the city of Rome and bring the city to its knees why didn't do now this is a question that much ink has been spilt over there are a number of reasons I think partly going back to what I was saying with the the losses that he suffered across the Alps he didn't have enough troops to have tactical flexibility so he would have to besiege the city which means keeping your army in one place static for a long period of time you needed to have enough troops built to blockade the city and also provision your own troops which means sending out a smaller army perhaps to forage to collect provisions he didn't have enough troops to do this so he couldn't prestige the city and have an army that would be of sufficient numbers to be able to collect provisions they did now thought in scholarship people like you three that that he was it was sensible not to attempt to capture Rome it was that a missed opportunity it's still divides opinion some people would say that it's a missed opportunity others say it's probably the most sensible move he made unfortunately after not having chosen not to march on the city which confounds this general as his cavalry command marshal bull says Hannibal you know how to win a victory but sadly you don't know how to use one so clearly the expectation was that he should march on the city because that was the done thing I know lots of loopty and there would be a lot of loot in terms of wealth but not a lot of provisions so even having taken the city he wouldn't necessarily be able to reap revision his army all of the grain supplies are in sort of middle it is southern Italy and these were in fortified towns and so this is where Hannibal heads he heads to southwards to try and isolate Rome from its allies and try to to separates Rome from its Italian allies in its Etruscan allies and also it comes up against Fabius the Delayer one of the names and I particularly like it in this particularly maybe it's the de lair decides when you tell every what famous the de lair does it fairly obvious from his name but still yes he delayed and well since Hannibal had already shown and in in several battles that when you tried to play some face to face it was his maneuverability his skill was such that he tended to destroy the Roman army destroy the manpower and destroy their morale and Fabius an elder statesman who became dictator and after Trasimene II though you can correct me if I've forgotten that if I misremembered that besides actually the way to do this is simply not to engage Hannibal but to attempt to starve him out so to hairy him to attempt to keep him away from guerrilla warfare scorched earth it was a scorched earth policy and it wasn't popular in Rome and so Fabius had to not only deal with trying to manage Hannibal but trying to manage a party in Rome who are saying no we should just have at him again it was really the experience of cannae that showed the Romans that Fabius tactic was correct and and people then started to pursue that more more fully as a policy which is I think why he was he was known in in poetry as the man who by delaying saved the state so howhow did I'm sorry to push this on a bit but how did how did Hannibal react to not being offered the opportunity of peach battles and because we talked about years is 15 years here and how did how was he eventually as he were almost ripped while driven from Italy yeah well I'd like to just pick up on what Alan says I think Fabian tactics work in the short term they not they are not popular in Rome and even after a year after can I the Romans are back with armies dogging Hannibal's steps and trying to seek advantage says it's not the case that the Romans are avoiding Hannibal and in fact Hannibal's army in Italy fights 22 battles in those fourteen years major battles these are so it's not new in the world he wins most of them or he doesn't lose any of them that's the key thing and even the ones that are claimed that he loses he's clearly doesn't because he still carries on he fights in southern Italy and he tries to his victory at Cameron gives him a problem because allies do go over to him Capua goes over to him to mentor him goes over to him many states insomnia and brute brute brute iam in particular go over to him but now he has a problem because he has to protect those eyes from of the Romans and the Romans now cannot they don't have to worry so much about Hannibal they can worry about these pricasso Trent communities and attack them but the Romans decide pushing on warmer and they've got skip-bo Africa becomes skippy africanus as their general now a very fine general who we are told copied the Animus studied Hannibal's tactics and copied them their army decided that they wanted to get him out of Italy and know the clever way to do it was to go to Carthage and attack Carthage and he would have to come back and defend the cartilage so that's what they did and that's what he did and there was the Battle of Zama which was a crucial battle can you tell us about that in in not on in North on North African soil yeah this is something that the hannibal feared he didn't want the Romans gain to North Africa in fact he tried to stop them into 11 by marching on Rome making it a fake march on Rome to try and distract them from attacking North Africa but the Romans had started to realize the value of hitting North African target so they send a large army across and Hannibal is finally recalled to North Africa to meet the threat of skippy oh so essentially you've got the two probably greatest commanders of the time with two of the largest armies at the time meeting head-on on the battlefield but skip EO has learned what Hannibal strategies are and he's worked out how to nullify the threat of the elephants and also the elephants that he used as armor are untrained Carthage doesn't have time to to train up a new core of elephants so they're using young untrained elephants which are as much of a menace to his own troops as they are to the Romans because they're easily panicked they flee and they flew through the Punic and this causes more cows to Hannibal's army than they did to the Romans so that the battle is closely fought it's not it's not a clear-cut battle and both sides fight doggedly in fact Hannibal is Italian allies actually fight the hardest and he says that they're the last to leave the battlefield but he loses his coverage doesn't new midian cavalry decide to go across as supposed to be 20,000 of them you'll tell me that's wrong there but it's in your some of these notes and when they go away and they're the good camera so he loses a bit and he's a cavalry man so he loses his maybe is strongest and this this is where skip EO has learned he's seen the the impact that the Numidian cavalry can have they're an elite unit they're a powerful unit they can use hit-and-run tactics they can they can fight on horseback or on foot so they can be used as foot skirmishes as well they're a very tactically fertile unit that can be deployed quickly and efficiently why did they quit why did they leave Hannibal well they'd never been comfortable with punic rule they'd been subjugated by carthage and they try enjoying the mercenary wars for example they'd also tried to leave Carthaginian influence so they were they were uncomfortable bedfellows with the Carthaginians they were they were treated as subjects rather than allies and and so they were quite happy to try and throw off the yoke of Punic and control and they saw the Romans as offering an opportunity to do so so he lost that battle he went back to Carthage and had a political career which was seems to being characterized by his taking the tactics of the battlefield into the Senate and then he went he was pushed into exile I really I'm sorry to rush but we haven't got much time left at 1:00 and that's more or less yeah exile seems to be rather sad he drifted no you didn't he went round the mediterranean offering his advise to one person after and those who ignore lead got defeated say flitted to the next door can you do better than I do with that well you've already done pretty well yes um he seeks out the Kings who are attempting to oppose Roman annexation or Roman rule and he offers his expertise and his service his capacity to attract more manpower the Kings Antiochus of Syria first then the king of Armenia and finally the king of athenian he's a mixed blessing as an advisor he's got the experience he's got the clout but and he's also he doesn't have immediate loyalty to that King so they always treat him with a certain degree of suspicion he ends up in Bithynia and Antiochus of Syria has already been defeated and the Romans are closing in on Betania and forcing athenian we've got to get this man they're also attempting to establish control of the east slowly so it's not just a hannibal hunt but the fact that hannibal is is involved in these things as is obviously part of of their negotiations so and they get the king of athena to accept peace peace terms and one of the terms is handover hannibal the king of Bithynia surrounds his villa with all its secret exits and so he can't escape and Hannibal says it's time to release Rome of its fear of this old man and he takes poison what what what imprint is Hannibal left in in not only military culture but generally he's a romantic figure he's one of the great losers a man who drives the Romans to the war well he won't when you do but exactly anyway yeah but people think they only leave all - exactly but you don't get anything if you don't win the premiership so it's it is the case that he went he loses the last battle it means he's regardless one of the great generals so so he has a romance to him that other characters may not have had we benefit from very very detailed narratives from many commentators like to talk to him he's a bogeyman for the Romans and they terrifies Roman children in the classroom and at bedtime for many many decades and centuries to come so he has this legacy of being the the man who might have been if he beaten the Romans would it have been a Carthaginian royal in a Roman world and then you want to get in well it's not so much romance I think as myth he becomes more than just the extraordinary content he becomes associated as you've said with fear and destruction finally Marc I think he's he's attractive as the underdog figure as well whether or not this is actually a true depiction as we team Carthaginian forces were equal to the Romans but he's seen as a sort of underdog and he's that she becomes champion of the underdogs so for example in Island they adopt him as their as their sort of ancestral as an ancestral figure and so he in their fight against the British Empire they pose as then the Irish has been the Carthaginians and the British as the Romans very much Helena Goldman Rowland's next week William Caxton in the first printing press on we go thank you for listening there are many more radio for arts and discussion programs to download for free find these on the website at BBC kuat UK radio for

Channel: BBC Podcasts

Views: 3,377

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: hannibal, hannibal lecter, tv, anthony hopkins, best, clip, 1080p, season 1, one, 1., series, season, video, film, blu-ray, bluray, ray, blu, cool, epic, 720, full, wa, wausjackbauer, bauer, jack, waus, jackbauer137, 1080, 720p, def, bloopers, hq, hd, definition, quality, good, highest, high, hannigram

Id: lgVJawuzvDo

Length: 42min 9sec (2529 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 05 2018