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differences between his depiction of Hannibal and those of other authors for a number
of events prior to 211.
For another example, in the fourth chapter, which compares presentations of Cannae,
it is argued that Silius Italicus and Livy include certain omens and portents in order to
make connections to other events. The difference between them is that where Livy‟s
connections are internal to his text, linking Cannae to a naval defeat of Rome by the
Carthaginians in 249, Livy, Per. 19.2, Silius Italicus creates external links to other texts
in order to connect Cannae to the civil war battle of Pharsalus (to the historical event,
not only to the poem by Lucan).
Once Hannibal was dead, his exploits provided comfortable entertainment for
reading or recitation and for representation on stage in historical plays. In Roman times,
the figure of Hannibal featured in plays, 6 narrative and annalistic histories, biography,
poetry, epic poetry, satire, speeches and private letters. Hannibal‟s successes and
failures were topics for study in military manuals, such as Frontinus‟ text, and,
according to Juvenal, they were enduringly popular subjects in schools of rhetoric, still
wearing down both teachers and students in his own day (Sat. 7.150-64; 10.165). Thus
Hannibal is one of a small handful of figures from the Roman Republican period for
whom ancient representations can be traced in extant texts from within a generation of
his lifetime through the third century AD and beyond. People were fascinated by this
extraordinary man with his remarkable feats and victories in battle against the Romans,
his ability to care for both his own safety and that of his men, as well as by his
shortcomings and ill-luck in planning, logistics and strategic decision-making which led,
eventually, to the inability to achieve overall victory either in the Second Punic War or
later in his life in support of eastern kings against Rome.
Of the surviving accounts some of the most detailed treatments of Hannibal over the
course of his life are found within four texts which are prioritised for this study.
Conveniently they span a timeline of about three hundred years and cover a range of
genres and socio-political backgrounds: Polybius‟ Histories is the earliest, written
within a generation of the war during the period of Roman expansion in the early second
century. Next is Cornelius Nepos‟ biography of Hannibal written in the tumultuous days
of the Late Republic; then comes Livy‟s annalistic history, ab urbe condita, written
during the Augustan period; and fourthly an epic poem, Silius Italicus‟ Punica
6 See discussions on Roman historical plays in Wiseman, 1979, esp. 1998, 2004; Braund and Gill (eds),
2003 and Fantham, 2000, 212 (review of Wiseman, 1998). For a later period, see Thomas Nabbes, 1635.
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