Hannibal excited, frightened and – once safely dead – drew reluctant admiration from the Romans. They accused him of treachery, cruelty, greed and unreasoning hatred; at the same time they recognised his inspired leadership, military genius, and tireless resourcefulness. Uneasily, too, they remembered that they had hounded him to his death.

Hannibal is one of a trio of generals whom later ages acclaimed as the greatest in the ancient world, with Alexander before him and Caesar after. In many ways he was untypical. He was neither a Greek nor a Roman; he did not command a national army although he...

The first Carthaginians to settle the arrow-shaped promontory with its commanding Byrsa hill had been Phoenicians from Tyre, under their legendary queen Dido and traditionally in 813. The Romans’ dates for their own city varied between 753 and 747, which put the two foundations barely a couple of generations apart in age; and, as it happened, Roman legend alleged eastern ancestors too – refugees from Troy led by Aeneas, whose descendants Romulus and Remus, 400 years later, would found the city on seven hills. Grandly ignoring chronology, all the same, Virgil’sAeneidbrings together Aeneas himself and Dido in a...

The peace of 241 recognised both the Roman victory and Carthage’s endurance. Punic Sicily was given up and a war-indemnity imposed, but no other exactions were forced on the defeated. In recognising each other’s territorial integrity and allies, the treaty revealed a wary mutual respect. Even so, the evacuation of Sicily – with a fee imposed by the Romans for every man who came down from Eryx – was humiliating enough to stimulate murmurs and threats against the plenipotentiary general. Hamilcar promptly resigned his command and sailed home, where he found himself sidelined. There was even talk of prosecuting him,...

There was no question who would now take command. Like the murdered Hasdrubal, and like Hamilcar during the war in Africa, Hannibal was acclaimed by the army in Spain (no doubt guided by its Punic officers), then formally elected to the generalship by the citizens at home. His popularity with the troops was enormous and, though Carthage had not seen him since boyhood, he plainly had a high reputation there, too. The Barcid kinsmen and allies who dominated magistracies and senate surely made the succession process run smoothly, for this was in their interest as much as his.

Afterwards, everyone...

Cannae was a revelation that seemed to announce a revolution. Not since Alexander the Great’s time had an army in pitched battle so completely shattered another almost twice its size. Since Hannibal’s arrival in Italy, over 85,000 Romans and their allies had perished – eleven per cent of all available manpower, according to the Romans’ own figures. Few, if any, other generals could hope to match him in the field, and none could master him.

Hannibal expected the Romans to ask for negotiations. It was the obvious thing to do; if they fought on, he would defeat them again, and...

The year 209 was the turning point in the Second Punic War. Not only did the Romans retake Tarentum and force most of the Samnites to capitulate, but the new commander in Spain – young Publius Scipio – confounded the Carthaginians by leading his forces from north-eastern Spain to capture New Carthage itself. This extraordinary coup took advantage of the continuing dissensions between all three Punic generals in Spain, Hannibal’s two brothers and Hasdrubal son of Gisco, and their shared contempt for the remnant of Roman troops around Tarraco. They had located their troops in widely separated regions, none near...

Even now resistance could have gone on (another parallel with Napoleon in 1815). At Hadrumetum, where Hannibal probably had left a garrison, he managed to rally 6,500 horse and foot, according to Appian, and there must still have been some troops garrisoning Carthage, just as there were still warships and crews in its ports. Even though the authorities soon sent Scipio a new peace-delegation, many Carthaginians wanted to fight on. A revealing incident took place soon after Hannibal himself entered the city and Scipio’s new terms were brought back.

[A senator] Gisco came forward to speak against settlement, and he...

Hannibal was fifty-two when he left his homeland for the second and final time, a man still in his prime. The dozen years that remained were adventurous, varied and full of long-remembered stories. Yet equally they were a disappointing coda for the man who had conquered half of Spain, won over half of Italy, brought terror upon the Romans, established his name as Alexander the Great’s equal, and constructively reformed his country. Once the elected general and leader of a republic, he had to attend a succession of spoilt monarchs who treated him as a useful but disposable client –...

Cicero mentions a Roman proverb denoting the ultimate emergency: ‘Hannibal ad portas!’⁴⁵‘Hannibal at the gates’ of Rome stamped himself forever into Roman memory. Even Pyrrhus, the other great Hellenistic invader, had not come as close. No other foreign enemy remained longer on Italian soil or posed a more imminent threat to Rome’s survival – or caused more Roman deaths. In turn, the more irresistibly powerful the Romans became, the more they admired as well as resented the man who had almost prevented this from happening.

Could Hannibal have won? The modern consensus is that he could not. The Romans,...