Dan Snow's History Hit - The Rise of Hannibal

Episode Date: September 24, 2021

He was one of the greatest enemies the Romans ever faced. An excellent general and a larger-than-life figure, he 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 and his name has become immortalised. He was Hannibal Barca. Hannibal rests amongst antiquity's greatest generals, but how did he rise to become such a stellar commander, leading his men to incredible victories against the then dominant powerhouse in the Mediterranean? In this episode from our sibling podcast The Ancients, Dr Louis Rawlings, Dr Adrian Goldsworthy and Dr Eve MacDonald explore the impressive ascent of the Carthaginian general to the status of one of the most famous military leaders in antiquity.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Every week we bring you the best of our network of podcasts, or among the best of our network of podcasts. This is an episode of The Ancients, the Tristorian, the legend it is with its hundreds of thousands of streams every week. The Ancients is now a global phenomenon. We've got an episode on this feed for this week. It's the rise of Hannibal, one of the most remarkable generals in the history of the world. I think, you know, Hannibal for me, top three general, I think. Genghis Khan, Hannibal, Khalid ibn al-Walid, known by his nickname, the Drawn Sword of Allah, one of my favourites.

Maybe, okay, Hannibal's top five. Safe top five, well, safe top ten. Anyway, it doesn't matter that much. He's a brilliant general, all right? This isn't a listicle. It's not an article on BuzzFeed. Hannibal is that much. He's a brilliant general. All right, this isn't a listicle. It's not an article on BuzzFeed. Hannibal is up there. He's one of the best generals in history.

And you can hear why, because it's about the rise of Hannibal. The Tristorian managed to get some pretty heavy hitters on the podcast. Dr. Eve MacDonald, Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy, Dr. Louis Rawlings, all the big hitters,

telling him how Hannibal took his army to the gates of Rome, almost shattered the dominion of Rome over the central and western Mediterranean. He came close. He came very close. And you're going to hear how in this episode. It's good at all.

We've also got a series on History Hit TV called The Rise Of, which this podcast accompanies. We looked at the rise of great dictators, powerful political leaders through the centuries. Hannibal's one looking at stalin got a few others coming up so if you want to watch that you could just go to history hit tv history hit dot tv if you sign up today you get 30 days free so you can watch the rise of hannibal then sneak off you don't want to pay fair enough but i hope you stick around

because for less than the price of a pint of beer every month you get the world's best history channel literally don't take it from me. Broadcast Magazine nominated best specialist channel. So everyone's loving it. 10,000 subscribers. Please go and check out historyhit.tv. Thank you very much for subscribing. But in the meantime, here's the excellent ancients talking about the rise of Hannibal.

Enjoy. talking about the rise of Hannibal. Enjoy. Hannibal was born in the mid-third century BC, roughly 70 years after the death of Alexander the Great. It's still the early stages of the Hellenistic period, but it's a time when turmoil had seized the Western Mediterranean. Dr. Louis Rawlings, a walking encyclopedia on all things Hannibal and the ancient Carthaginian military, explains the unstable world that Hannibal was born into. Hannibal was born into a world war, essentially. The western Mediterranean was aflame. The Romans and the Carthaginians 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, probably around 247

BC, and his father is the prominent commander in the Carthaginian overseas theatre, fighting against the Romans in Sicily. So Hannibal was born into a world where the Romans and 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. Carthaginians are also having to deal with other imperial concerns. So, in Numidia there are restive natives. In 255, the Romans had invaded Africa and the Numidians had joined them or attacked separately. And so the Carthaginians were still mopping up there and campaigning in Africa. So Hannibal's life for his first few years is one that's surrounded by war. Even at the end of the First Punic War, which ends in 242 BC,

this is followed immediately by a revolt of Hamilcar's army, Hannibal's father's army, in Africa, and a revolt against the Carthaginians, who can't afford to pay them. And there's also an uprising of the Libyan population. And so there's a three-plus-year war, three years and four months-year war, which, for the most part, Hannibal's father conducts wages against the mercenaries and the veterans who had fought in the First Punic War. So for his first eight or nine years, all he knows really is this background of war. And it's quite brutal fighting and Carthaginians are pushed very close in the mercenary revolts. They also had lost the First Punic War as well. So

Hannibal was born into this world where many, many states are competing. The Romans are not only expanding in Italy and moved on to Sicily, but they also are beginning to flex their muscles elsewhere as well. So we know quite a lot about the First Punic War, But frustratingly, annoyingly, as Adrian Goldsworthy, ancient's veteran, points out, the same can't be said about Hannibal's family and indeed about Carthaginian elite society in general.

We know a lot less about Hannibal's family, the Barca dynasty, than we'd like. That's the big problem with Carthaginian history. We don't know much about it and we never get their side of the story. Now, really, it emerges with Hannibal's father,

Hamilcar. 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 in his case. Yes, but other than that, we don't know very much. And on the one hand, we look at the Carthaginians and we see them as remarkably stingy with their citizenship. You know, they don't, not just like the Romans, but like anybody else, they don't really spread Carthaginian citizenship much beyond the descendants of the initial settlers.

So you have the whole status of the Libby Phoenicians, these people who are sort of part Carthaginian, part Libyan, but not quite as good as the proper Carthaginians, that survived centuries. This is there a long time. However, we also look, and Hamilcar will marry Hannibal's sister to a Numidian prince, and there are sources that Hannibal will later marry an Iberian princess.

So there might actually be a lot more cultural interaction and intermarriage in these aristocratic houses than we know about. So although in legal and cultural terms these might be sort of ultra-Carthaginian, ultra-traditional in their view, legal and cultural terms, these might be sort of ultra-Carthaginian, ultra-traditional in their view. Ethnically, they might be quite different. But as with everything else, we don't know. And we don't know. We can look and say, if you're a Greek aristocrat, this is probably what you're going to do at various stages of your life. If you're a Roman aristocrat, certainly later on, we know about your education. We know about how you'd learn to read, how you'd learn to ride, how you do all of these things. When it comes to the Carthaginians, that's not there, that sort of general idea of how things were done. Mystery still abounds surrounding Hannibal and his family's background, but this

has not stopped people putting forward various theories about how the family, the Barkids, ended up at Carthage. Dr Eve MacDonald is a lecturer in ancient history at Cardiff University alongside Louis. She is also one of Hannibal's 21st century biographers. 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 Tyre, so that's something that a later Roman author tells us or sort of constructs for us,

or we know that, or we think that perhaps the surname of the Barkids can tell us a little bit about where they were from and that they may have been a relatively new family to Carthage. So perhaps only three generations in the Carthaginian political and military system. And that's really something quite interesting for us because it gives us all sorts of insight into things like social mobility. And the theory is that the name Barkid is actually connected to a place that's in Libya today

that was part of the area of Cyrenaica, so eastern Libya, not far from Benghazi, and it's called Barke or Barse. And that the name that the Barkid family comes from that, it's a geographical toponym, 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 fight against Carthage, they're abandoned by their general Agathocles, who goes back to Syracuse. And this army is encompassed into the Carthaginian world. And it shows us that the Carthaginians, first of all, are bringing soldiers into their community,

into their society, and that we think they are given land, and they are sort of brought through into Carthaginian citizenship that way. So that's a really interesting theory. It's a new theory. But what's not that new, it's sort of come from the 19th century and then been picked up again. Some people have thought this through. But to me, it seems like a fairly sensible idea. And it has a lot to do with where we think the family's landed estates are, and also the fact that they might be part of a sort of military hierarchy. So almost you're born into a military family, and that's what happens. So your father's a general, your great-grandfather's a general, and you inherit

that position. And so what do we know about Hannibal's earliest years? Well, the short answer is not much. So Hannibal's got older sisters. He's actually the oldest brother. So as he begins to grow up, he has two other brothers who come into the world. 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. And he may well have also learned other languages, Numidian languages, Libyan dialects as well, so that as a member of the Carthaginian elite, he was able to communicate with a broad range of groups and nationalities as an expected member of the Carthaginian ruling class.

It's possible that he was raised in Carthage, but his family also had estates at Hadramentum to the south of the city at a considerable distance. And so it's possible that Hannibal spent at least some time not in the city, but on the estates where he probably experienced country life as well. His father is a general and Carthage's prominent general. So it's probable that Hannibal sees his father very rarely if he stays with his mother and his family. But it's likely that he would have seen his father and talked to him and been educated in some way by Hamilcar. Hamilcar would have only spent a limited amount of time with Hannibal during the latter's earliest

years and it therefore begs the question what motivated the young Hannibal to decide to follow in his father's footsteps and become a general? We can think about the motivations for Hannibal becoming a general from two perspectives. One is a family perspective and one is the general Carthaginian perspective. So the Carthaginians were people that ruled a wide empire. They had lots of military concerns. And in fact, in the period of Hannibal's life, Carthage is at war more or less continuously from 264 to 202 BC. Carthaginians are always fighting wars somewhere. 264 to 202 BC. Carthaginians are always fighting wars somewhere. So there's this sort of 60-year period of Carthaginian expansion and aggression and violence. And it's highly likely that many,

many Carthaginians served in the army or served as the officer classes or in the navy as ship captains and that sort of thing. The motivations for these individuals were the same sorts of motivations that you might find in any Greek city or indeed among the Romans, which is that you would get glory. You would earn prestige from any kind of military success, that your capacity to earn money through booty was enhanced by being a successful general. You proved your manliness. You proved in a way that you were a good and loyal citizen by being a successful general. You proved your manliness, you proved in a way that you were a good and loyal citizen by being a member of the elite and taking the role of commander on. There were many, many named officers and commanders in the accounts of the Second Punic War, of

Hannibal's War. So we know that this isn't really a closed military elite, so not monopolized by a few families, but it's likely that many, many Carthaginians were involved. And so consequently, Hannibal would have had his mindset framed by that background of military service amongst the Carthaginian aristocracy. From his own personal point of view and his family's point of view, Hannibal also was the son of a famous general, the famous general, the greatest general that the Carthaginians have of the era. And so, in a way, it would be natural for him to follow that path. And he's very keen, he shows his keenness quite early on when asked by his father when he's aged nine whether he would like to accompany him to Spain on campaign.

Hannibal says, yes, very much so. Hannibal was keen to travel with his him to Spain on campaign, Hannibal says yes, very much so. Hannibal was keen to travel with his father to Spain and the story goes that Hamilcar was only too happy to oblige but on condition that Hannibal take a famous oath that has since come to epitomize Hannibal and his family's animosity towards all things Roman. 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 really working for the Hellenistic king Antiochus

III, Antiochus the Great. And Antiochus sort of suspects Hannibal of being maybe not completely faithful to his cause. And Hannibal tells him this story. He's 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. And that word friend is really important here, amicitia. It really means I would never ally myself with the Romans, that I have taken a sworn oath never to become an ally of the Romans. I will never betray you for Rome is basically what he tells this story of. So it gives us this idea just before this big departure to Spain, Hamilcar is sacrificing to the gods and he brings his young nine-year-old son up to the altar

where the sacrificial remains are. And he makes Hannibal put his hand on the altar and swear this oath, never ever to become a friend of the Romans. Now, the Romans spin this to say that Hannibal hated the Romans and the Barcaids hated the Romans. But I think it's really important to understand that that's really very much a different concept

than what we get in the ancient sources. It's much more about, I'll always be with whoever's fighting the Romans. I'll never ally with them. And so Hannibal headed to Spain with his father and his brothers, where he continued to learn more from his father and received a military education. There's not much that's told about Hannibal's relationship with Hamilcar in Spain. However, we get a couple of clues. So we know that from a very late source that Hamilcar was very concerned with educating his boys for war. This is part of the mythos of the barked animosity to the Romans, that what they really want to do is to get revenge on the Romans. And of course, Hamilcar thinks that his sons may be the tools for that. And so there's a story that he raises his sons as lion cubs, as it were,

he calls them lion cubs, to be scourge of the Romans. And so 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 in 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, the language and the culture they were trained in. So he's brought up to be a sort of Carthaginian of the Mediterranean world, so pretty sophisticated, but with a strong emphasis on military, military strategy. And we know that in 229, when Hamilcar is finally killed by a Spanish tribe, that his sons were with him on that campaign. And Hamilcar actually led the Spanish pursuers away from his own sons. And he perished, according to one account, trying to elude them in a river. trying to elude them in a river. Hamilcar has died very heroically in the rearguard, covering the retreat of the column when they've got into a sticky situation in northern Spain,

and Hannibal and his brothers are some of those who escape, so the father dies, you know, in the best possible heroic fashion. Hamilcar's death is this huge seismic moment in the young Hannibal's life. But following this family tragedy, Hannibal and his brothers opted to remain in Spain, initially seeing service, military service, under their brother-in-law, Hasdrubal. Hasdrubal 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 labelled Hypostrategos, which is a term which basically means kind of sub-general,

and probably right-hand man of Hasdrubal in Spain. So he's 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. So Hasdrubal has quite a close connection with Hannibal and when Hasdrubal is assassinated, Hannibal is the natural choice for the army to succeed as commander. He resembles his father Hamilcar, he inspires the men in the same sort of way, he exhibits all the martial qualities which he's developed which make him a great soldier as well as a great general to be. As Louis highlighted, Hastreble was assassinated in 221 BC and this paved the way for Hannibal then in his mid-20s to take command of the

Carthaginian army in Spain. What this army consisted of, filled with veterans who had already seen many years of service fighting in Spain, is quite extraordinary. The army that Hasdrubal and Hamilcar had crafted, that Hannibal inherits, is one that is formed really of two major elements. First there's an African contingent which was the core that was brought over in the initial conquests. This would have been mainly Libyan subjects of Carthage who would have been paid a wage, so whether they're professionals or whether their subjects is debatable, but nevertheless they would have served in Carthage's armies, partly as an obligation,

but partly also for money. Then we have Numidians who formed cavalry predominantly and skirmishers, and they are very high quality skirmishers and very high quality scouts. They tend to be a little bit overhyped in modern books now, who tend to call them the greatest cavalry arm of the Carthaginians. Well, they're very, very flexible. They're very, very useful. But obviously, they don't win battles by themselves. And in fact, Hannibal's heavy cavalry also has a major role to play in many of the victories as well. But they're extremely good for reconnoitering, for harassing the enemy. So in terms of the African contingents, those are the most important. There are also some Libby Phoenicians, which are essentially towns in Africa that had been established by Phoenicians,

but were probably of mixed blood by then. And they also provided contingents of cavalry and infantry as well. And then in Spain, proper Hannibal draws on a whole range of warrior groups that lived and inhabited Spain itself. So various Spanish tribes handed over troops to Hannibal, and he recruited heavily amongst these Iberians. In terms of when these men first become soldiers of Carthage, or soldiers of Hamilcar Barca, or then soldiers of Hannibal, who leads the units, how they're organized, almost none of that is known. What we can definitely say is that Hamilcar

has been campaigning in Spain for quite a long time. And then there are more campaigns under Hasdrubal and then more under Hannibal. So you have within this army a hard core of soldiers that have served with the family or under the family for quite a long time and do seem to be full-time soldiers, warriors. These are people who, this is what they do. They are not serving like Roman legionaries under obligation as part of their citizenship. So they're professionals. Hannibal's army also includes heavy cavalry from the Iberians, probably a number of Celt-Iberians who are Gallic, half Gallic, half Iberian, all Gauls that have settled in Iberia as well. But he also has

elephants. And he has, for his campaign, 37 elephants, which he will take and march to Italy with. One thing we tend to forget, because again it's a little bit less glamorous, is that as important as all of this is the command structure. And again the sources don't really tell us about this, they certainly don't point it out specifically, but there are very clearly a group of officers around Hannibal that have served under his father, under his brother-in-law for a considerable time, and that allow him to do things with this army that you wouldn't be able to unless you can trust that command when you tell him to go and do things to make the right decisions. And Hannibal isn't an Alexander.

He doesn't fight spear or sword in hand at the head of the cavalry in most battles, but he will have to be somewhere. These are big armies, but he can trust the command structure to work. He can trust detachments to do what they should do if he sends them off. And he can also trust the organization of supply to be pretty good. So there's lots, this is a very well-practiced team at all levels. And we tend to look at ancient warfare very much in terms of hardware, or if we're a bit more sophisticated in culture, of the warriors, the soldiers involved.

And that's important. But when you get to battles on this scale and campaigns on this scale, the organisation higher up also matters an awful lot. Filled with veteran soldiers and proven commanders, Hannibal inherited an awesome force. And it was not long before it found itself engaged in the clash that would ultimately spark the Second Punic War against Rome. This clash was at the city of Saguntum, modern-day Sagunto.

So the story of Saguntum is fundamental to how and why the Second Punic War starts. And one of the frustrating things is we know absolutely nothing about how and why this all blew up around this one city. Saguntum is south of the Ebro River, which was, through treaty, agreed to be the Carthaginian sphere of influence in the Iberian Peninsula. But it, at some point in the period between 226 and 220, became allied to the Romans or became friendly with the Romans or called out to the Romans to help them. 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 Hasdrubal. So he's conquered way up into the Celtiberian regions.

Some think maybe as far as Salamanca. And some of the towns in the area are getting a little bit nervous, obviously, about 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. You might actually go first to somewhere like Marseilles. And so Saguntum somehow is connected to the Romans. And Hannibal involves himself in an internal dispute in the city. So there seems to be

two stories going on. One is that the pro-Carthaginians in the city of Saguntum are put to death. And Hannibal then tries to defend his interests there. But there's something else about the Saguntines and an external city as well. And these are all mixed up in our sources. Our sources are terrible for this. The only answer for our sources being so bad about this

is that either they don't know or they're fudging something. So Livy is trying to construct a story in which Hannibal is to blame for everything to do with the war. And either way, we know that in 219 BC, he lays siege to the city of Saguntum. Now, Saguntum's incredibly well fortified. It's an amazing place. It's only ever fallen once, and that was in the Peninsular War when Napoleon was in Spain, and so one other time. So it's an amazing thing that it fell to Hannibal. And it is difficult to take. Some people think that Hannibal's experiences at Saguntum were so traumatic, and that led to why he would never lay siege to big cities again as he went on his way into Italy, but we don't know. And so Saguntum, after a long siege, falls, and the story of that siege and the fall of Saguntum

and what went on there becomes really epic in the Roman imagination. Now, these are the Roman allies. They did nothing to help the Saguntines while Hannibal was laying siege to them, but they use this sack of the city of Saguntum as an excuse to declare war on Rome. Now, there's a number of different political and diplomatic endeavors going on in this moment. So you have Romans supposedly going to see Hannibal before this happens and telling him not to have Romans supposedly going to see Hannibal before this happens and telling him not to do it, going to Carthage, but we don't know exactly how that plays out. I always like to think of this idea as young, you know, 24-year-old Hannibal meeting all these old Roman senators who've come to tell him not to do what is essentially in his territory to

do, and he just dismisses them, and they're offended, and, you know, it never ends well. Hannibal sacks the city. 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 send 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? And the Carthaginians are supposed to tell him, we want war. Hannibal had his war with Rome, but what would he do next? How would he counter the Roman juggernaut? It's not clear whether Hannibal improvises a plan when the war breaks out, or whether there had 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. They prefer to fight in enemy territory, very sensibly. And 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 and to bring

Carthaginians to their knees directly. And he needs a plan that will forestall this, to try and stop this. And so his plan is essentially to march to Italy and fight the war in Italy, which the Carthaginians never really managed in the First Punic War, where they fought mostly in Sicily and sometimes in Africa. So this is a new bold move. It is also predicated on an expectation that the Carthaginians will be able to gather allies and supplies and support in Italy itself, because the Romans have spent the past century subduing the Italian peninsula. They've crushed the Samnites, they've crushed the Lucanians, the Apulians, the Buteans, the Etruscans, the Umbrians, all these tribes. And very recently they've been campaigning in the north to subdue the Gauls. The Gauls inhabited the Po plain, and from about 225 onwards, the Romans had really been fighting a very bitter and deadly war against the Gauls,

and had managed to subdue most of the Gallic tribes by 218. In 218, the Romans had planted two colonies in the north, which had angered the Gallic tribes. These were the colony of Cremona and Placentia, or modern day Piacenza. And these colonies were already under attack by the Gauls. So Hannibal is aware of the fact that the Gauls are likely to join him if he's able to march and get to northern Italy. So his plan is to get to northern Italy, assemble some allies from the Gallic tribes, and then use these resources as a springboard for his campaigns in the rest of the peninsula. He is going to fight the Romans in their heartland.

He's going to do what the Romans would 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. This was a new bold move indeed but fortunately Hannibal had a precedent the actions of another figure who had recently fought the armies of Rome on Italian soil a Hellenistic general a dashing figure who our sources describe as being the general who most closely resembled Alexander the Great in his military ability. A general called Pyrrhus. So Pyrrhus was the king of Epirus 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 central

Mediterranean zone. And he invades Italy. He invades Italy 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 Tarentum who ask Pyrrhus to come over and help out against the Romans. And you can see the story keeps going all around the Mediterranean, and this is how we get involved in these big wars. And Pyrrhus comes over with a big army, big Hellenistic army. He brings elephants, the whole deal. Pyrrhus was cut from the same cloth as Alexander the Great.

He was actually a relative of Alexander the Great. And when he came to Italy, southern Italy, he demonstrated several things about the Great. And when he came to Italy, southern Italy, he demonstrated several things about the Romans. A, they could be beaten in battle by a 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 Pyrrhus detaches quite a number of Samnite tribes and other tribes in the south from the Roman alliance, and that sustains Pyrrhus' campaign

and indeed Pyrrhus' allies when Pyrrhus moves to Sicily. Now, of course, that engages him in Carthaginian territory, and the Syracusans invite him over to defend their interests against the Carthaginians. And he pushes the Carthaginians way back to the very western point of Sicily. And then he has to leave, and the Carthaginians spring back, and the Romans surge south into Italy, and then they face each other. Up until Pyrrhus, Rome and Carthage have been allies. They've been allied with each other against Pyrrhus up until that point. And as soon as Pyrrhus leaves, having brought all this Hellenistic military engagement

to Italy, then Rome and Carthage go to war. So Pyrrhus is really important because he's the first contact in a kind of military way with Rome and with Carthage, but also he's very important because he studied how to fight the Romans and he studied how to defeat the Romans in some ways and he seems to have written this down and Hannibal seems to have studied his works or what Pyrrhus said. So we're told, of course, by our sources that Pyrrhus' 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. And the only way to defeat the Romans in Italy was to remove them from their allies. And that's why Pyrrhus is so important in this story and to Hannibal's strategy, perhaps, in what his plans are when he realises that he needs to invade Italy.

If you listen to Dan Snow's history, we've got an episode of the ancients on the feed talking about Hannibal. More after this. More after this. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows,

where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Following in the footsteps of Pyrrhus, Hannibal planned to fight the Romans on Italian soil. Pyrrhus, Hannibal planned to fight the Romans on Italian soil. The next issue was getting there, something much easier said than done for Hannibal and his army. 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 Carthaginians had maintained a presence in Sicily for centuries, and they controlled particularly the western part of the island. That meant they had ports. Ancient fleets have a very short range because your warships are jam-packed with rowers, don't have a lot of space for supplies of food and water that rowing in the hot Mediterranean summer you really, really need, especially the water. So they've got a range of a couple of days out before they need to land somewhere safe, ideally at a port.

Carthage has lost the ports that give it the reach to get to Italy. So the naval option of forming a big army in modern-day 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, OK, Italy is your heartland, Rome's your capital, that's where I'm going. I can't get there by sea, so I'm going to walk there. His preparations complete, his plan established. In the late spring of 218 BC, Hannibal and his army set off from southern Spain. To guard Spain in his absence, Hannibal left his brother,

confusingly also called Hastrebel, with a sizeable force. And with that, Hannibal headed north, towards the River Ebro and the edge of Carthaginian territory. So Hannibal leaves New Carthage with an army of 90,000, we're told, 10,000 cavalry, and 37 elephants. We know that he marches to the edge of Carthaginian territory, which is the Ebro River, and he crosses the river and he gets into this 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, that it takes some time to conquer the

region, and that once he does conquer the region, he actually leaves one of his commanders and a big chunk of his army there, 10,000 of his soldiers there, in order to hold the region. So he's obviously faced some serious difficulty and he does not want to have to deal with that in the rear. And so he really takes some time to be very careful. We're also told then that he sends 10,000 soldiers home. And we don't know if that's because they've rebelled and he's trying to make a good story of it, or if he does that in order to help reinforce

his brother, who he's left in command in New Carthage in Spain, and perhaps he realizes that his brother's going to need more troops in order to hold Spain than he's left. So we don't really know exactly, but we know that there was fierce fighting going on there and that it was a big step to cross that river. In his own story of the conquest that we can get echoes of and the myths that are told, we're told about a famous dream that Hannibal had as he crossed the river Ebro and that a

figure who he believed was a deity was guiding him across to, you know, greater conquests and things like that. So there's something in that story, the echoes of it, that are left for us that's really important time. And also he experiences some early desertions. So when some of the Spanish tribesmen realize that he's not just campaigning in Spain, but he's actually going to cross the Pyrenees and then some other mountains somewhere off in the 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. He doesn't want

these kind of people in his army. He also sends away anybody else that he thinks is going to be, lack that kind of commitment or a bit uncertain. And he does that voluntarily in order to foster goodwill amongst the tribes. So he says, go, no, you go and I'll call on you at some later point, or my brother will. And this is another example of his man management, his ability to kind of sense the mood amongst his troops and to react and to cut what could be a disadvantageous situation into an advantage. So he converts these potential disaffected groups into potentially willing recruits in the future, but he won't take them with him. Hannibal had successfully crossed the River Ebro.

He had dealt with these troubles north of the river. His next challenge 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. We know that 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 was facing with this idea of crossing the Alps with an army, and it may very well be that he spent some time, you know, crossing the Pyrenees, but he had to move inland because of the Allied troops, the Allied cities, the Greek Allied and Roman Allied cities on the coast. So he didn't have any choice. He couldn't stick to the coastal road. So that's what we do

know. Hannibal proceeded to march through southern Gaul, meeting relatively little resistance. 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, and it often takes second place after the Alps. But in some ways, it's amazing. If you see the Rhone River today, it's a hugely managed river. It's much narrower than it was in antiquity. So it's a massive river to cross with an army of, say, now we're at 50,000 all in, maybe 60 elephants as well. And so he gets to the Rhone. 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 the Roman allied city of Marseilles on the coast he needs to avoid.

And I'm not sure if he was aware of how big a river the Rhône was or not, but he takes some time when he gets there and he buys up every bit of craft on the river. And the Rhône is a lively river today and really was in antiquity, so boats and anything, dug-out canoes, anything he can find to move his army across. But what made crossing this river that much harder was what was lying in wait for Hannibal on the opposite bank. Now, the Gauls 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 peoples, when this dirty great army turns up on your doorstep, you're faced with a choice. What do you do? Because you don't know their intentions. And again, there are quite interesting parallels with Alexander's campaigns, but also those of Philip of Macedon. They often take their army far beyond anywhere that anyone from Hellenistic culture has been before and confront peoples with whom they have no prior disagreement or dispute. And it's simply a question of how do you react. If you submit, then fine, you can become an ally. But more often than not, even though we with hindsight know this is an elite army led by Hannibal or an Alexander, and it's really not

a good idea to argue with them. The local tribes will muster their forces, often behind an obstacle like the River Rhone. It's a good demarcation point. It's defensive. And you sort of think, well, okay, we'll stand there. We'll show them we're brave. We'll frighten them. And either they'll talk and negotiate, or better still, they'll just go away. They'll find another route because we're too scary. And this is what happens. The local tribes gather on the far bank of the River Rhone. And 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 had to get his army across the river, and he quickly devised a plan. So Hannibal does, again, the similarities with a lot of Alexander's manoeuvres of striking. He sends out scouts, they go and look, they find a place to cross much higher up the river, and he sneaks several thousand men across.

They then, which is quite unusual, they spend more than a day, they rest up, and only then do they move around to get to be in a position behind the Gallic army. And the Gauls haven't noticed, because they're not a professional army. And 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. 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 the

Rhone, and then it's all done. The Gauls 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 lands, our farms. What are they going to do? What are they going to steal? What damage are they going to do? 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 a mark of Hannibal doing what his opponents don't expect, but doing it with great skill.

This is good intelligence gathering, good and hard and fast marching, and keeping concealed. And then, just surprising the enemy, shocking them, and taking full advantage of that. So it's a foretaste really and it shows just how practiced this army already is before it gets anywhere near a Roman. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt

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With the Gallic army destroyed and in flight, Hannibal secured the crossing and turned his attention to getting the rest of his army across the Rhône, including the elephants. I don't think actually we should underestimate how well the Carthaginians understood their elephants, how they used their elephants, and also of, 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 everybody falling into the river. It could be that they did it that way, but the Carthaginians must have known that the

elephants can swim, so they may have also done it that way as well. Hannibal turned his attention to the next natural obstacle in his army's path, the second great mountain range, the Alps. second great mountain range, the Alps. There was probably no way Hannibal was ever going to go any way 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 Giron's River. And that in history was known traditionally as the way of Heracles or Hercules. And it was this sort of mythical road through the Alps that supposedly in myth, Hercules took when he was driving the cattle of Geryon back from the far reaches of the western Mediterranean. So Hannibal probably was intending to go that way.

But if this was Hannibal's plan to take this path and to follow in the footsteps of Hercules, then his plan 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 Publius Scipio the Elder have been progressing from Italy to Spain and have stopped at Marseilles.

And so the army of Scipio, a consular army, two legions plus allies, considerable military force, has got to Marseilles. They've heard that Hannibal's in the vicinity from their local Greek allies, and so they've reconnoitered 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.

But if he defeats it here, well, first of all, he's got to be confident that he can manoeuvre it into a position where he chooses to fight and then destroy it. He's probably got a big numerical advantage, but it's a battle fought in southern Gaul. That's not going to impress the Romans if they're defeated as much as one in Italy. If he delays and spends weeks manoeuvring, maybe longer, before he can secure that victory, the year is coming towards an end, the weather for going

across the Alps is going to be that much worse. The Romans had thrown down the gauntlet to Hannibal and his army, but Hannibal was having none of it. Hannibal has no interest in doing battle in Gaul. He has learned from his experiences, and he also knows from what Pyrrhus 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 terrain he 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 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. I mean, Scipio, the Roman commander, will go back to Italy, but send his army on because he's not really sure. Legally, there's big question marks over whether or not he should do this, but he's going back to northern Italy in case that's where Hannibal turns up, so he can

be the man to stop him. And partly it's responsibility and patriotism. Yes, you know, the state needs the best general there, but it's also the very Roman, and I'm the best general, and I want the credit for it. So it's one of those things. Hannibal probably isn't in a position to stay anywhere very long at this stage. You know, his supplies will have been running out. You're coming to the end of the summer, the harvest there, but you can only eat it once. And the more time you spent gathering, the more problems it causes, the more likely you... His army has already suffered an appalling rate of attrition, even getting this far. It's about half the size it was when he set out. And some of those are deliberate detachments sent home. The others we just don't know about. And we're not sure whether people have simply deserted,

whether a lot of raw recruits can't take the pace and can't march that far and have just broken down, or whether he's deliberately decided there are some of these Allied communities that either I don't want anymore, there are too many, you know, they're not effective enough to be worth my while feeding them, or the deal was they go this far and not any further. We don't know the details, but the drop in numbers is very significant. far and not any further. We don't know the details, but the drop in numbers is very significant. Hannibal and what remained of his much-withered army headed north, up the eastern bank of the River Rhone and edging ever closer towards the Alps. Things start quite well for Hannibal as he comes toward the Alps. And again, you see one of these very familiar situations in the ancient

world, and 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 and 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. Because again, you know, this is a world without, you can't go and pluck the most recent ordnance survey map. You know, 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. But which route did Hannibal take? The routes that Hannibal might have taken across the Alps, that's been debated since antiquity, since Livy. He said, oh, they must have used this pass, or they must have used that pass. And he comes up with his own solution.

The truth is, we don't really know which pass Hannibal used. I would say, generally speaking, the experts have distilled it down into two different passes. One is the Col de la Traversette and one is the Col de Clapier. Those are the two main contenders. The other big passes are a little bit too far away given the timings that we have for the crossings. So we know that those are the two passes. We don't know which he took for certain but some recent evidence of course has told us that there is certainly some interesting evidence in the ground that he took the Col de la Traversette and that is excavations

that have been done by a professor of geology actually who's fascinated by Hannibal and he went up into the Alps and up to the pass of the Col de la Traversette with his polybius in hand and he tried to see what the descriptions of the Alps crossing are and what paths fit it best. And in his mind, it was the Caldele Traversa. And so he then tested his theory and did a bit of excavation on both the French and the Italian sides of the Alps, 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 great deal of churned up, a lot of people passing through, could very well be an army. And he found horse dung and DNA in the bacteria of horses. 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 all the material that they're carrying, everything would have been quite extraordinary. And so it was in 218 BC that Hannibal commenced his immortalized crossing of the Alps. His first aim was to reach the summit of the pass. Hannibal will begin the ascent of the Alps and he's still got an army of as part of 50,000 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, you know, and they know nothing about this struggle between Carthage and Rome and can't

see any reason why they should care about it, even if they do. And suddenly, this Carthaginian army has turned up and wants to march through their lands. And you have groups like the Allobroges, the tribes there, who traditionally, to pass through the passes of their land, you either pay them some money or expect to be robbed, or possibly both. They're like the batons of the Northwest Frontier. You live in this tough environment, but you make the most of it because anyone coming through is going to make sure that they show suitable respect and pay you. And they want the same from the army, but this is not something Hannibal is willing to do or probably able to do in terms of the sheer scale. If they start charging per head of person or cattle or whatever he wants to go through, they begin to think as well, oh, look at this, nice baggage train. Look at all the shiny and interesting objects.

Many things that would be comparatively mundane are very valuable as loot because they have prestige. You've taken it from the enemy. But also, this is the sort of economy where you can't manufacture lots of things and where quite basic weapons have a great value. Comparison, if you look at some of the 3rd century AD archaeological finds of wagon loads of spoil dropped into the Rhine accidentally by Germanic raiders,

it's full of junk, basically. It's metal things, it's shiny things, it's a Jackdaw's collection. But we forget again, it's useful to have an extra pot when these things have to be handmade at home or traded with for valuable things. And of course, it's more prestigious. You've taken it from someone. You've shown you're strong. 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. Again, a lot of similarities with the mountain warfare of Philip and Alexander.

The locals tend to think they're the only ones who know the routes and that if they block this pass, they're safe. And then they discover that actually, no, you can get around. And it's a shock. They often underestimate. Hannibal makes some 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 cosset them. But they're awkward, they're difficult. So there are lots of places in an army straggling along through valleys and over passes that it's vulnerable. So they have hard fighting for most of the ascent of the Alps. And, you know, there are quite a lot of casualties. That's the impression in the sources. So the main problem has been 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, his weather, that the weather is getting colder and colder, and the snow is starting to form. And because of these difficulties, it's getting harder to keep the pack animals together. The recent attacks, which involved rolling boulders down on the Carthage,

had scattered some of the horses, scattered some of the pack animals as well, and caused all kinds of casualties amongst his men. So he's lost a lot of troops through this constant attrition the Gallic tribes have placed on him. And the passes are becoming more precipitous, and it's difficult to keep your footing, and some people are falling off and falling to their deaths. The ascent of this pass proved extremely difficult for Hannibal and his army.

But finally, nine days after starting the crossing, they reached the summit of the pass. Ahead of Hannibal lay the Lombard plain. He and his men, they could see the fertile lands of northern Italy. But reaching them 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 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 left, right and centre. And indeed, even on your hands and knees, it's even worse, apparently, according to the sources. You slide even faster. So this is incredibly difficult for Hannibal. And also, as he begins his descent, part of the pass has been washed away or knocked away by a rock fall. And so it's about 250 to 500

yards or meters of path. It has to be cleared and rebuilt while the snow is falling and everybody's getting really hungry, particularly the pack animals. And so consequently, it's a very, very difficult, treacherous descent. There's a story, in fact, that the army had to heat up the rock 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. And this is a tall story. But actually, when you think about ancient armies,

they often marched with old wine, with 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. Also, vinegar can be drunk by men as well to kind of lessen thirst. So it's not implausible that Hannibal does actually have vinegar with him on the march. 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.

They had done it. Overall, it had taken Hannibal and his army 15 days to cross the Alps. But this march, the climax to an epic venture, came at a great cost. Hannibal had begun the march, the climax to an epic venture, came at a great cost. Hannibal had begun the march from the Rhone with about 38,000 infantry and about 9,000 cavalry. By the time he gets to Italy, and we know this because Hannibal set up an inscription right at the end of the war, in the south, in the Temple of Hero Licinia. He actually says how many men he brought into Italy. He had 20,000 infantry and only 6,000 cavalry. This is terrific attrition. In Spain, he'd actually started the expedition with 59,000 infantry and 12,000

cavalry. So he's lost an awful lot. Now, some of those were sent home and were deserted and left as garrisons. But the attrition rate on this grand army of his is tremendous. And what's left is an exhausted, hungry, scarcely human-looking ragtag group of men. Nevertheless, despite its heavy toll, the fete's legacy has endured for more than two millennia. There is such a drama about Hannibal's march to Italy, most of all in the Alps, but even, you know, crossing the Rhône 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 epic because it does seem to be up there with Troy and all these. It's just a great, great story. So it's part of Hannibal's myth management. Part of the story of Hannibal's greatness is Hannibal's ability to do almost supernatural things. And in the 3rd 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 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 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 thing that everybody remembers the most about him, is that he crossed the Alps with elephants. And of course, the elephants being the other idea that he brought these amazing creatures of war with him to Italy.

So it's really interesting because this is the thing that, of course, everybody remembers and everybody talks about. And for 250 years, people have been trying to recreate the crossing of the Alps with elephants. And Napoleon talks about it when he crossed the Alps with his army that he was following in the footsteps of Hannibal. So it's definitely the most iconic thing he does. thing he does. And that memory, that continual interest, I think, is something that we see in the sort of early modern period developing from our understanding and interest in ancient stories. But it also was really important in the ancient world as well. And you can imagine the way that people who lived in the mountains and on either side of the mountains would have told that story

over and over again to their kids, their grandkids, generations of the Hannibal crossing the Alps story. So it is really the greatest echo of this miraculous feat is the memory of it and the Alps themselves. Hannibal's crossing of the Alps is the thing that we remember the most about this ancient leader. But for Hannibal, we must remember that this venture 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 it's a little bit like obsessing about, say, the preparations to Pearl Harbor, or even the attack itself, and forgetting what's going on in the wide war, and why the Japanese are doing that. With Hannibal, the real war is about to begin. And before it's begun, he's lost a huge number of soldiers. And the ones he's got are worn out, tired. The animals in particular are in a poor state. So he could easily have lost the war before it had even begun if he hadn't been able to cross the Rhône,

if he'd done even worse in the Alps. So he's done great things, and it is incredible, and it is dramatic, but 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. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our

country, all were gone and finished. Well, thanks for listening to that episode of The Ancients on Dan Snow's History. I'm so proud of what Tristan has managed to achieve over at The Ancients. It's turning into an absolute juggernaut. Congratulations to him. The Ancients has its own feed of course you go wherever you get your podcasts search the ancients you can subscribe and you can share and you can like and you can get involved in the whole vibe over there please do that because it

makes a huge difference to us we're really really grateful thank you for listening you