In the years following Hannibal’s birth, his father Hamilcar had fought doggedly and with great skill to preserve the remnants of the Carthaginian garrisons in western Sicily. That he was finally unsu...
There were about 12,000 inhabitants in Malta, most of them poor peasants speaking a kind of Arabic dialect.
Roman tactics in battle were comparatively simple and, since they had proved so successful in previous wars, were used against the Carthaginians until the latter demonstrated, by a flexibility designe...
He is the sphinx whose riddle still eludes us.
Some points of similarity can be found between the military systems of the British and Carthaginian empires.)
In that century, a man adventuring by sea in the Mediterranean was likely to find the wheel of fortune turn full circle in a matter of a few hours. Dragut, greatest of all the corsairs after Barbaross...
Livy gives conflicting figures as to the number of men who started out and the number lost in the crossing. Some of these are so exaggerated that they were clearly part of later Roman propaganda, desi...
According to Polybius, in the first major engagement between the Carthaginians and Romans in 218 B.C. at the river Trebia the two consuls with their combined forces had an army of 16,000 legionaries a...
The centurions were the backbone of the legions, professional long-service soldiers who took the name of Rome from India to Scotland—the finest N.C.O.s in history.
Hannibal seems to have set out from Cartagena about mid-June in 218 B.C. and to have been five months between Cartagena and the plains of the Po. It was, therefore, mid-October at the earliest when he...
It was they who had given the island the name Maleth, ‘A Haven’, which was later corrupted by the Greeks into Melita (‘Honey’) from which the modern name of Malta derives.
Qart Hadasht, New Town, Carthage to the Romans, was traditionally said to have been founded in 814 B.C. by Phoenician traders who had discovered an ideal site for a trading settlement on a small penin...
Fabius, as defender of the land, had time on his hands and he also had manpower. He took over the two legions of the consul Gnaeus Servilius and added a further two legions to the army that now lay at...
Carthage was a spider’s web of trade and communications that spread eastward to Egypt and the Levant, and westward as far as scarcely imaginable places beyond Spain. Where the Mediterranean issued bet...
But the greatest weakness of the Carthaginian lay in his lack of a political aim of any consequence. His immediate political aim was to seduce from Rome the allies within her confederacy, restoring to...
In the spring of 236 B.C. Hamilcar and his forces crossed from North Africa into Europe. This was a momentous occasion: the invasion of the European continent by a Semitic and African army. Foreshadow...
One good deed may sometimes lead to another, but it is certain that an evil one will almost inevitably breed its fellow.
Hannibal had no other sure source of reserves but the Gauls of Italy: he was dependent upon them, and the whole success of the expedition was dependent upon him staying alive. His hopes at this time m...