Hannibal Background Essay

L1: The background and early life of Hannibal (3)

Hannibal Barca was born into a large family in Carthage in 247B.C.E. Most Carthaginian families were traders and merchants, while Hannibal was born into a military family. Hannibal’s father, Hamilcar Barca, had the biggest impact on Hannibal’s life. His father was a Carthaginian general and devoted himself to improving Carthage after their defeat in the first Punic War. When Hannibal was still a young boy, Hamilcar took him and created a new colony called ‘New Carthage’ located in Spain. There, he trained Hannibal to hate the Romans and made him promise to always despise them. Sadly, when Hannibal was 19, his father was killed in a skirmish with the Spaniards. This fed Hannibal’s hatred for the Romans and led him to start his war

He is most famous for crossing the high summits of the Alps with a large army and war elephants, which made the journey even more unpredictable. When Hannibal’s army reached the bottom of the Alps they were forced to fight many battles with the Romans and conquered many territories. One famous story was the battle of Cannae. In that battle, Hannibal, with an army of around 25,000 soldiers with a little help from villages he had conquered, had to face 85,000 Roman soldiers. Hannibal tricked the Roman army and surrounded them, in the end killing 50,000 enemy soldiers. This was the greatest loss Rome had ever suffered. As a result of victories like this, Hannibal was described as ‘a military genius’. He used strategies and tactics that most ancient civilizations had never heard of, and even though he had a small army, he was able to defeat opponents almost three times his size. Historians described him as ‘a jet plane, a nuclear bomb, and a radical new technology’. Hannibal was one of history’s greatest generals because he came closer than anyone had to conquering Rome for many