The Real Story of Hannibal and His War Against Rome

[Music] he was one of the greatest enemies the Romans ever faced an excellent General a larger than life figure who led an army across the Alps and dealt a series of crushing defeats upon the Romans on Italian soil his achievements have become a thing of Legend he was this man who did the unpredictable who could find a way out who could solve these seemingly insoluble problems his name immortalized Hannibal the Romans of course become so powerful in the Romans conquered the whole of the Mediterranean world and Hannibal was the one who challenged the Romans the most Hannibal Barker rests among Antiquities greatest generals but how did he rise to become such an accomplished Commander leading his men to incredible victories against the then dominant power in the Western Mediterranean how did he rise to become the bane of Rome he takes his army from Spain and says okay Italy is your Heartland Rome's your Capital that's where I'm going why is it that he marches across these mountain ranges rather than sailing it's the thing that everybody remembers the most about him he said he crossed the Alps with elephants you know it is very hard to resist the lure of this this Epic this is the rise of Hannibal [Applause] [Music] this government feels obliged to report this new crisis to you in false detail yeah whether Russia has been provoked what matters is that Russia has been wrong in its response [Music] we will be able to transform the dangling discords of our nation [Music] [Applause] all right foreign exclusive documentaries and ad-free podcasts with top historians watch on your smart TV or mobile device by downloading the history hit app Hannibal was born in 247 BC at a time when turmoil had seized the Western Mediterranean Hannibal was born into a World War essentially the Western Mediterranean was a flame the Romans and the Carthage unions were in the middle of a very long War the first Punic War which started in 264 BC Hannibal is born towards the end of that war and his father is the prominent commander in the carthaginian overseas theater against fighting against the Romans so Hannibal was born into a world where the Romans of the carthaginians have been going at it for more than a decade and a half and they still have quite a bit of time to run as well the Romans ultimately won the first Punic War kicking the carthaginians out of Sicily and securing the island for themselves the defeat proved devastating to Carthage and what remained of its much reduced Empire an empire in which Hannibal's family played a prominent role we know a lot less about Hannibal's family that the barkid dynasty than we'd like now really it emerges with Hannibal's father Hamilton he's important he's a leading general in the first Punic War and goes on to be a leading Commander subsequently that suggests the family is one of these aristocratic wealthy houses within the carthaginian Republic that has a dominant role in politics in public life whether it's particularly military or not who knows there are some really interesting theories about Hannibal's family but we don't necessarily have any proof so we know that he is either from a very very old family that came with the original colonists from Tire or we think that perhaps the name barkid is actually connected to a place that's in Libya today that was part of the area of cyreneicus and that the name that the barkid family comes from that it's a geographical top and anything and that it is connected to Hannibal's family as mercenary soldiers three generations before in the end of the fourth Century BC and that they are encompassed into the carthaginian world also the fact that they might be part of a sort of military hierarchy so your father's a general your great grandfather's a general and you inherit that position Hannibal spent his early years in North Africa right at the heart of the carthaginian empire so Hannibal's got older sisters he's actually the oldest brother so he as he as he begins to grow up he has two other brothers who come into the world he was brought up he probably had a relatively typical carthaginian Elite upbringing so he would have been educated in various languages obviously Punic but probably Greek as well which was the sort of lingua Franca of the Mediterranean it's possible that he was raised in Carthage but his family also had Estates that hadrumentum to the south of the city that's a considerable distance and so it's possible that Hannibal spent at least some time right in the city but on the Estates where he probably experienced Country Life as well one figure who Hannibal did not have much contact with during his early years was his father Hamill car the hero of Carthage we do know that the early years of his life although Hamilton would have been a famous name he wouldn't have been a physical presence until Hannibal was arrested into his teens he's growing up in one of these families they're very important within carthage's Carthage fighting during the the first Punic War and its immediate aftermath when the many of the carthaginian troops The Mercenaries the professionals they've hired don't get paid properly don't get treated well so Rebel and hamilkar makes his name defeating his former soldiers those are his greatest trams rather bizarrely so Hannibal is there seeing all this people are telling him about it it would only be as Hannibal approached his 10th birthday that this distant father Dynamic started to change there is this very famous story of the nine-year-old Hannibal being taken into a temple at Carthage and his father hamilkar Barker asks him would you like to come with me on campaign to Spain obviously you know boy has barely seen his father flattered by the attention wow battles excitement armies yeah please and then the father makes him take this oath so the oath is the first thing we know about Hannibal and it's also one of the few things we know that may actually have come from the mouth of Hannibal himself he may actually have told this story and that's what makes it so interesting because he tells the story when he's much older and he's living in Exile in Ephesus and he is working for the Hellenistic King Antiochus the third Antiochus the great and Hannibal tells him the story he says like look Antiochus when I was nine years old my father made me swear an oath that I would never be a friend of the Romans so it gives us this idea just before this big departure to Spain Hamill Carr is sacrificing to the gods and he brings his young nine-year-old son up to the altar and where the sacrificial remains are and he makes Hannibal put his hand on the The Altar and swear this oath never ever to become a friend of the Romans Hannibal headed to Spain with his fathers and his brothers where he received a military education Hamilton was very concerned with educating his boys for war this is part of the Mythos of the barkid animosity to the Romans that what they really want to do is to get revenge on the Romans and of course hamilkar thinks that his sons may be the tools for that the education that Hannibal would have had would have been both theoretical and practical theoretical in the sense that he learned military tactics probably from books he also studied directly with his father he accompanied him on campaign in various places so he's trained as a soldier as a commander but he's also given training and philosophy in all the things that a good Greek education would have been given and he's trained in Greek because that was the way young Elite men of the Mediterranean were the language and the culture they were trained in and we know that in 229 when hamalkar is finally killed by a Spanish tribe that his sons were with him on that campaign but hamilkar has died very heroically in the rear guard covering the retreat of the column when they've been got into a sticky situation in Northern Spain and Hannibal and his brothers are some of those who escaped so the father dies you know in the best possible heroic fashion Hannibal remained in Spain following his father's death initially seeing service under his brother-in-law has trouble hazda ball was married to one of their older sisters and he takes over as the carthaginian Commander in Spain and Hannibal is a young Dynamic Commander he's labeled hypostrategos which is a term which basically means kind of sub-general and probably right-hand man of hustleville in Spain so he sent on most of the dangerous missions he learns the craft of command and strategy in the field by Leading the Cavalry by Leading various contingents on various campaigns but in 221 BC has trouble was assassinated in his place the officers of the carthaginian army elected the 26 year old Hannibal Hannibal now had command of a mighty carthaginian Force the army that hasbroul and Hamilton had crafted the Hannibal inherits is one that is formed really of two major elements first as an African contingent which was the core that was brought over in the initial conquests and then in Spain proper Hannibal draws on a whole range of warrior groups that lived and have to Spain itself so various Spanish tribes handed over troops to Hannibal and he recruited heavily amongst these iberians Hamilton has been campaigning in Spain for quite a long time and then there are more campaigns on the hustible and then more under Hannibal so you have within this Army a hardcore of soldiers that have served with the family or under the family for quite a long time they are not serving like Roman legionaries under obligation as part of their citizenship so they're professionals but he also has elephants for his campaign 37 elephants which he will take and March to Italy [Music] backed by this formidable Force Hannibal continued to campaign in Spain following in the footsteps of both his father and brother-in-law his attention soon turned to the city of segundum segundum achieves importance at the start of the Second Punic War in part by accident it's Monday seguntu it's beyond the area that Carthage already dominates but it has allies amongst the tribes that are nearer to Carthage and the carthaginians have allies amongst the tribes facing it and the the dispute arises because some of Hannibal's allies complain about the saguntines fighting on behalf and supporting some of their rivals dispute and the saguntines but what made this seemingly small squabble so potentially volatile was who the seguntines were Allied to Hannibal backs his allies against the second times the saguntines at some point have formed an alliance with Rome it is not at all clear when and if you can think about the way that Hannibal is rampaging all over the Iberian Peninsula especially he's done a great deal since hazardable so he's conquered way up into the caltiberian regions some think maybe as far as Salamanca and some of the towns in the area are getting a little bit nervous obviously this carthaginian expansion they're like yeah okay so who are you going to call when you have the carthaginians on one side well you're going to call to the Romans really they're the other big Power in the state the second signs appeal to Rome when Hannibal turns up threaten them the Romans send an embassy they don't send an army partly because they're busy elsewhere and they they don't have troops and resources and also it's a long way away Hannibal receives the Roman Embassy says look I'm not interested and sends them on to Carthage they didn't get any any more from that and he attacks it's a gun to him takes about eight months so it's prolonged Siege eventually breaks in sacks the town enslaves the survivors segundum had fallen with the city now firmly in carthaginian hands Hannibal had crossed his Rubicon Carthage was set for another massive conflict with Roe [Music] the Romans take this very much as a slight because again they've demanded something and someone else who is a former enemy is not behaving as a former defeated enemy ought to so they sent another Embassy to Carthage and this is the famous one where the Ambassador says you know I've got peace or War inside my toga which one do you want in the Carthage University tell him we want war it's not clear whether Hannibal improvises a plan when the war breaks out or whether there have been a long strategy developed by his family to always take this kind of approach that he adopts what he does know is that the Romans prefer to fight abroad the likely strategy will be that the Romans will launch an invasion of Africa and an invasion of Spain to take him on but also to try and apply pressure to bring costumes to their knees directly Hannibal would not wait for the expected Roman attacks on Spain and Africa he would take the fight to them and so his plan is essentially to march to Italy and fight the war in Italy which the carthagin has never really managed in the first Punic War I fall mostly in Sicily and sometimes in Africa so this is a new bold move he is going to fight the Romans in their Heartland he's going to do what the Romans will do he's going to bludgeon them over the head repeatedly where they think they're safe where they think they're strong and make them come to the negotiating table make them give in because that's how Wars end fortunately for Hannibal he had a precedent the actions of another leader who had recently fought the armies of Rome on Italian soil so Paris was the king of Emperors and he was the first of the sort of Hellenistic generals to come to the Western Mediterranean and to bring a Hellenistic Army to the Western Mediterranean to the central Mediterranean Zone and he invades Italy he invadedly because the Romans are encroaching on the Greek cities of the southern part of Italy of the arch of the foot and it's the people of tarantam who asked peers to come over and help out against the Romans and Pierce comes over with a big Hellenistic Army he brings elephants the whole deal and when he came to Southern Italy he demonstrated several things about the Reynolds a they could be beaten in battle by proper Hellenistic army with elephants and secondly that having won battles it is likely that recently subdued and resentful allies will join Hannibal is inspired by the fact that purus detaches quite a number of some night tribes and other tribes in the south from the Roman Alliance and that sustains paris's campaign and indeed paris's allies when Paris moves to Sicily so Pierce is really important because he's the first Contact and in a military way with Rome and with Carthage but also he's very important because he studied how to fight the Romans and he seems to have written this down and Hannibal seems to have studied his works or what Pierce said so we're told of course by our sources that Pierce's advice to anyone who wanted to fight the Romans was that you had to fight them in Italy you couldn't fight them anywhere else and you had to take their allies away from them following in the footsteps of Paris Hannibal planned to fight the Romans on Italian soil the next issue was getting there Hannibal's route to Italy is not easy it involves Crossing two major mountain ranges the Pyrenees and the Alps why is it he marches across these mountain ranges rather than sailing there and the simple answer is that the carthaginian Navy after the first Punic War is not the Navy that it had been the balance of power has changed significantly after the first Punic War that restricts the options Hannibal has opened to him up until the first Punic War the carthagens had maintained a presence in Sicily for centuries Carthage has lost the ports that give it the reach to get to Italy so the naval option of forming a big army in bondage Tunisia and Crossing that apparently short distance the direct route to the toe of Italy just isn't practical the other thing is he's got elephants and he's got many many horses his proportion of Cavalry to infantry is much higher than most armies and horses are just difficult to transport on ships the other thing of course is that Hannibal's power is based around Spain and that's where his Army's been formed that's where he can draw resources that's where he clearly has a lot more freedom than you suspect he would have in his homeland so it's much more sensible for Hannibal to march from Spain to Italy even though the journey will be difficult so Hannibal is almost thinking and acting like a Roman when he takes his army from Spain and says okay Italy is your heart and Rome's your Capital that's where I'm going I can't get there by sea so I gotta walk there by the late spring of 218 BC Hannibal's Army was ready to control Spain in his absence he left his brother hazrable with a sizable Army but with just over a hundred thousand troops Hannibal started heading north in record time he covered over 300 miles and crossed the river Ebro it was then that his army came up against its first major test so Halloween's new Carthage with an army of 90 000 were told ten thousand Cavalry and 37 elephants we know that he marches to the edge of carthaginian territory which is the Abra River and he crosses the river and he gets into the Zone that's between the Ebro and the Pyrenees now this is unconquered territories there's Greek Colonial foundations on the coast there's celtiberian towns Inland and we aren't given a great deal of detail in the sources but we are told there's fairly Fierce fighting here and so Hannibal has to make sure that firstly he's able to cross this securely but secondly also he's not going to leave anything in his rear that could be a problem and obviously he's expecting a Roman army to turn up in Spain so he doesn't want to allow the Romans at base either for operations so he spent some time subduing four big tribes to the north and also he exposes some early desertions so when some of the Spanish tribesmen realized that he's not just campaigning in Spain but he's actually going to cross the Pyrenees and then some other mountains somewhere often into far distance and then go to Italy wherever the heck that is they get a little bit discouraged and start to Desert so Hannibal lets them go so he says go no no you go and I'll call on you at some later point so he converts these potential disaffected groups into potentially winning groups in the future but he won't take them with him Hannibal's next obstacle was the Pyrenees we don't know very much we know that he did it in three columns we're not sure why we don't know very much about the actual Pyrenees themselves and we know that he he went Inland to do it so he would have had to deal with some fairly significant Mountain terrain there maybe he did it as training if you think about it that way because I mean realistically he would have been well aware of what he he was facing with this idea of crossing the Alps but he had to move in then because of Roman Allied cities on the coast having crossed the Pyrenees Hannibal's journey through southern goal proved relatively easy going having already established friendly relations with many of the Region's local tribes that was however until he reached the river Rhone so I always think the crossing of the Rhone is one of the most spectacular things Hannibal did if you see the Rhone River today it's a hugely managed River it's much narrower than it was in in Antiquity so it's a massive River to cross with an army of sea now we're at 50 000 all in maybe and elephants as well and so he gets to the road now he's north of the coast because of the Roman Allied city of Marseille on the coast he needs to avoid and I'm not sure if he was aware of how big a river their own was or not but he takes some time when he gets there and he buys up every bit of Craft on the river boats and Dugout canoes anything he can find to move his army across crossing the road would be a huge logistical challenge for Hannibal a challenge made more difficult by what his army saw lying in wait for them on the opposite Bank now the goals are groups of independent tribes they have nothing whatsoever to do with the struggle between Carthage and Rome they are simply in the way but as with most ancient people you know when this dirty great Army turns up on your doorstep you're faced with the truth what do you do and this is what happens the local tribes gather on the far Bank of the river row and it's it's a Broad River it's a big obstacle it's going to be quite hard getting things like the elephants across anyway you don't particularly want to do this as an opposed Crossing because again Hannibal has to think well I need to get to Italy I'd like to have as many of my best men still with me as I possibly can because the real war is going to start then this is just a Prelude this is a sideshow Sideshow or not Hannibal hat to eliminate this gallic threat and the young carthaginian Commander quickly devised a plan and so he sends one of his commanders North the river and they cross over secretly and then come back along and they sneak up on the uh enemy troops across the way they then which is is quite unusual they spend more than a day they rest up and then they only then do they move around to get to be in position behind the gallic Army and the ghouls haven't noticed because they're not a professional Army and they don't there is also a tendency if you're the local people you tend to think of a mountain range or a river it's a big obstacle that's going to stop anybody isn't it no one but a fool is going to attack across that and people don't as a rule attack directly across Rivers until Hannibal does and so Hannibal's kind of prepared to cross the river he crosses we're told that he crosses at the very front of all the boats and with lots of noise and you have the other side of the river you have the Celtic tribes yelling and everybody's going for it and then there's an ambush from behind and his surprise attack completely throws the enemy troops into confusion and they take the East Bank of their own and and then it's all done the goals collapse because it's not what they expected it's not what they wanted you know their attitude throughout has been quite reasonable these people want to walk through our our lands our Farms what are they going to do what are they going to steal what damage are they going are they going to take over are they going to stay it's perfectly reasonable for them to defend their homelands but they're not really prepared for Warfare in this big league and they are simply outwitted but it's it's a mark of Hannibal doing what his opponents don't expect but doing it with great skill so it's a four taste really and it shows just how practiced this Army already is before it gets anywhere near a Roman the battle was a stunning success for Hannibal quickly he proceeded to Ferry the rest of his army across the road including the elephants I don't think actually we should underestimate how well the carthaginians understood their elephants how they use their elephants and also of course the fact that it was Autumn by this point the river is at its lowest point and elephants can swim so although our ancient sources construct some amazing stories about pontoons being built out onto the river and then covered in dirt so the elephants don't know they're getting onto a raft and then being detached and Chaos breaking out and all everybody falling into the river it could be that they did it that way but we they the carthaginians must have known that the elephants could swim so they may have also done it that way as well having crossed the river road Hannibal Now set his sights on his next great Geographic challenge the Alps there was probably no way Hannibal was ever going to go into Italy rather than over the Alps but there is certainly an easier way into Italy than he took and in order to take the easier way into Italy he would have had to follow the jurons river and that in history that was known traditionally as the way of of Heracles or Hercules and it was this sort of mythical Road through the Alps that supposedly in myth Hercules took so Hannibal probably was intending to go that way but if following in the footsteps of Hercules had been Hannibal's original plan it was quickly thrown into disarray in the interim Hannibal's numidian Scouts about 500 of them have been sent south to see what's going on and have encountered Romans Roman Cavalry under Scipio obvious Scipio the Elder have been progressing from Italy to Spain and have stopped at Marseille and so the army of of Scipio a consular Army two Legions plus allies considerable military force has got to Marseille they've heard the Hannibal's in the vicinity from their local Greek allies and so they've reconnoited up the river the two forces clash and the numidians come off the worse and the Romans pursue them more or less to their camp so Hannibal realizes that there's a Roman army right there now Hannibal obviously in one sense was given an opportunity once the Romans arrive hey look there's an army I can defeat it here he's probably got a big numerical Advantage but it's a battle thought in southern goal that's not going to impress the Romans if they're defeated as much as one in Italy if he delays and spends weeks maneuvering maybe longer before he can secure that victory the UR is coming towards an end the weather for going across the Alps is going to be that much worse Hannibal's response to this new Roman threat was striking and decisive Hannibal has no interest in doing battle in Gaul he has learned from his experiences and he also knows from what Pierce told everybody you need to fight the Romans in Italy in order to defeat them and so he doesn't want to waste his energy fighting the Romans in terraini doesn't know in Gaul when he needs to get to Italy to really start to work out his strategy and his strategy is very very clear that he wants to detach the Romans from their allies and defeat them in Italy so although he doesn't get to take the way that he would have liked to which is the easiest crossing of the Alps he has to go north and and he has to go into the more difficult and more treacherous terrain of the crossing of the Alps so again he does the unexpected no sane person is going to think oh yeah we've bumped into these people they're our enemy they're actually going to March away from us and take what seems to be the hardest route possible away so it does mean the Romans really don't have a clue what's happening [Music] things start quite well for hannibals he comes toward the Alps and again you see one of these very familiar situations in the ancient world and it's you can look at it when you're looking at expansion by the macedonians or the Romans later on there's a tribe where two brothers are fighting for power so one of them sees Hannibal and this great Army coming along says whoopee right I'm going to be your friend I'll do nice things for you can you get rid of my brother for me which Hannibal promptly does intervenes puts this man in power who then responds by giving him winter clothing supplies things that are very useful and information we forget how comparatively recent a well-mapped world is so finding your way you know broadly the route and knowing that the route well that's the route the Traders take might not necessarily be the best route for an army to take so getting information from locals is always very useful which route that was however remains a subject of scholarly debate the roots that Hamill might have taken across the Alps I mean that's been debated since Antiquity since Livy who said oh they must have used this this parcel they must have used that pass and he he comes up with his own solution the the truth is we don't really know which path Hannibal used I would say generally speaking the experts have distilled it down into two different passes one is the called de la Traverse and one is the called the clappier those are the two main contenders we don't know which he took for certain but there is certainly some interesting evidence in the ground that he took the call de la Traverse set and that is excavations that have been done by a professor of geology actually who's fascinated by Hannibal and he got some very interesting evidence that certainly is dated to the right times and certainly a layer of the excavation that was evidence of a lot of people passing through could very well be an army and he found horse dung and DNA and so there's some good evidence from this that there was an Army going through there at around the same time so it's tempting to say that we have conclusive evidence but that's not yet available we'd have to do a little bit more work I think on some of the other passes but both passes are over 2 000 meters and both passes would be a significant challenge for an army that he's carrying with him and for the elephants and the pack animals and everything it would have been quite extraordinary and so in late 218 BC Hannibal and his army commenced one of the most famous ventures in human history and Hannibal will begin the ascent of the Alps and he's still got you know a an army of as part of 50 000 um at this point between 40 and 50 000. it's a big big Force however again you're coming to the same situation the locals people live there and suddenly this carthaginian Army has turned up and wants to March through their lands and you have groups like The Allah brogas the tribes there who traditionally to pass through the passes of their land you either pay them some money or expect to be robbed and they want the same from the Army but this is not something Hannibal is willing to do or probably able to do in so he's soon attacked and Hannibal again does the same sort of thing he's done before he tries to use fast-moving columns moving at night getting behind the enemy the locals tend to think they're the only ones who know the roots and that if they block this path this the past they're safe and then they discover that actually no you can get around and it's a shock you know they often underestimate Hannibal makes the mistakes there are some quite serious losses and there are problems that in some positions in the Alps you can get above the enemy but you're too far away actually to harm them so at one point he gets to the crest but then has to charge down to drive off men that have ignored him and are ambushing the main column and an army this size with the baggage with the elephants that are you know 37 of these things that are cumbersome need lots of food aren't really designed for this sort of thing and that you're bringing because you think this is a real Prestige weapon that will give you a great Advantage so you want to cause it them but they're awkward they're difficult so there are lots of places in an army straggling along through valleys and overpasses that it's vulnerable so they have hard fighting for most of the ascent of the Alps so the main problem has been these these tribes after that the tribes kind of give up he's getting very high up into the past now the second problem is of course is whether that the weather is getting colder and colder the snow is starting to form and because of these difficulties it's getting harder to keep pack animals together the the recent attacks which involved rolling Boulders down on the cartoon army had scattered some of the horses scattered some of the pack animals as well and caused all kinds of casualties and we're sitting there so he's lost a lot of troops through this constant attrition that the Gaelic tribes have placed on them and the passes are becoming more precipitous it's difficult to keep your footing and some people are falling falling off to their deaths despite the difficulties Hannibal and his army face from hostile tribes the elements and the terrain itself nine days after starting the crossing they reached the summit of the pass ahead of Hannibal lay the Lombard plane and the poe River Valley his army could see the fertile lands of Northern Italy but reaching it would be far from Easy if going up was hard coming down is actually harder because by the time he gets to the summit the weather has changed for the worse the snow has fallen and not only is it snow but it's snow on snow it's on last year's snow so there's fresh snow which the pack animals kind of put their legs into and then they break into the ice that's beneath the other soldiers and many thousands of other soldiers and horses and indeed the elephants who are Marching through the fresh snow are also churning up the snow underneath and this is becoming very slushy and very slippery and people start slipping off slipping off left to right and center and indeed even on your hands and knees it's even worse apparently according to the sources and you slide even faster so this is incredibly difficult for Hannibal there is also a Common Thread in ancient literature about Warfare and Conquest where it's about the great conquerors like Caesar like Alexander they conquered nature as well as the enemy and Hannibal is very much within this he this this idea that you know nothing can stop him and also as he begins his Descent Part of the past has been washed away or knocked Away by a rock form there's a story in fact that the Army had to heat up the rock fall in front of them and the large Boulders that were in the way and then pour vinegar onto the heated rocks in order to crack them ice is a tall story but actually when you think about ancient armies they often march with old wine with vinegar vinegary wine because it was good for the coats of the horses it kept hunger mange which is a kind of animal scurvy at Bay and so also a video can be drunk by uh by men as well to kind of uh lessen first so it's possible this is something that he did in order to break through three days after clearing the landslide Hannibal and his army emerged onto the plains of Northern Italy it had taken 15 days to cross the Alps the climax to an epic Venture that has become immortalized there is a such a drama about Hannibal's march to Italy most of all in the Alps but even you know crossing the road and getting elephants onto barges and all of these things it is a terrific story and when you write about it or when people make documentaries or dramas about it you are drawn you know it is very hard to resist the lure of this this epic because it does seem to be up there with Troy and all these units just a great great story part of the story of Hannibal's greatness is is Hannibal's ability to do almost Supernatural things and in the third Century BC people didn't cross those high high mountains with armies and with elephants you didn't do that the only people in Legend who Did the only person who did was Hercules and Hercules was a Divinity and so there's this idea that these high mountains are places of great remote and sort of supernatural beings and so in order to survive the crossing for the people on either side in order to get down with this amazing army that he has he had to have had the backing of of the Gods he had to have been favored from the gods and this is really important of course for Hannibal and for his own Army to believe in him that that they were on a cause maybe that they were going to survive and so in that way it's just one of the most important things about Hannibal and of course it's the things that everybody remembers the most about him he said he crossed the Alps with elephants and of course the elephants being the other idea that the he brought these amazing creatures of war with him to Italy it took Hannibal roughly two weeks to cross the Alps with his army the Feats Legacy has endured for more than two millennia within six months Hannibal had marched his army out from southern Spain he had quashed unrest north of the river Ebro overcome the Pyrenees crossed the mighty Road River and traversed the Alps in one of Antiquities greatest Adventures it was only the beginning the danger is that we obsess with this and we forget why Hannibal was doing it he is doing this great epic not for the sake of it not to show off not to do wonderful things not to overcome nature but to begin his main war against Rome and the whole point is to get to Italy to fight the Romans on their home soil so he's done great things and it is incredible it is dramatic but it's this isn't actually the big story the big story is what happens next and what will happen in the years to come and whether all of what's gone on is actually worthwhile because it was only about getting him to the point where he can go to Rome and humiliate them on their home turf cattle was close at hand the real war was about to begin [Music] thanks for watching this video on the history Hit YouTube channel you can subscribe right here to make sure you don't miss any of our great films that are coming out or if you are a true history fan check out our special dedicated History Channel 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Channel: History Hit

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Keywords: history hit, history hit youtube, hannibal barca, hannibal carthage, hannibal roman empire, hannibal roman history, hannibal roman war, hannibal roman battle, hannibal alps elephants, hannibal barca alps, hannibal alps path, second punic war hannibal, hannibal punic wars elephants, hannibal battle elephants, carthage empire, carthage documentary, hannibal documentary, carthaginian empire, carthaginian wars, carthaginian war elephants, carthaginian history, carthage vs rome

Id: XWtbMD2i_78

Length: 42min 11sec (2531 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 08 2023