The greater heroes turned out to be Roman: the noble Fabius Maximus, who turned defeat gradually into victory by a campaign of painful delay and devastation, and the brilliant young Scipio who ended by invading Africa and winning a last great battle near Zama in 202 BC.Īn 18th-century print of Hannibal's forces in 210 BC. The rate of killing during the battle has been estimated at 500 lives a minute. His supreme victory at Cannae killed 48,000 enemy troops and is still studied in Western military academies. Yet Hannibal was also remembered for destroying 400 towns and costing 300,000 Italian lives. No wonder his name was evoked later by Napoleon during a similar transalpine campaign to “liberate” Italy. To us, the hero is the Carthaginian general Hannibal, 29 years old at the outset, who astonished the Romans by crossing the Alps with his elephants and offering freedom to Italians throughout the peninsula. It strained Rome to the very limit, wracked Italy and ended by transforming Rome’s resources, range and ambitions. The Second Punic War pitted Rome against Carthage from 218 to 202 BC.
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