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second century were entertained with plays on a variety of historical events concerning
Rome and her armies, delivered via the fabula praetexta. 22 Ennius‟ Annales also
contained an account of the Second Punic War, and the title Scipio 23 for one of his texts
suggests that it was culturally possible to glorify a living (or recently dead) person who
gained significant achievements (Ennius, fr. 30, 32, 33). 24 Similarly, the earliest known
Latin epic, 25 Naevius‟ Bellum Punicum, possibly about the First Punic War, 26 indicates
that it was culturally acceptable to give relatively recent historical events epic treatment.
As an illustration of the importance of the Carthaginians to Roman culture, of all the
enemy peoples fought by Rome, only the Carthaginians are known to feature in a series
of epic texts that happen to mark cultural turning points in Roman history: Naevius‟
Bellum Punicum, Ennius‟ Annales, Virgil‟s Aeneid and Silius Italicus‟ Punica. Naevius
possibly marks the start of cultural flowering, while Ennius marks the arrival of Rome
as a significant Mediterranean power; Virgil is located at the start of the Augustan
period and Silius Italicus lived through the change from the fall of Nero to the era of
imperial Rome. Thus comparing the various treatments of their great Carthaginian
enemy goes to the heart of Rome‟s construction of a national identity.
Extant texts
The extant texts present Hannibal in a variety of ways to suit each author‟s genre,
response to tradition, purpose in writing and contemporary circumstances. They are
filtered again through later copyists whose work may affect the book lengths and
divisions into chapters but the comparisons made in this study are based on the premise
that the main themes of the original text are largely unchanged.
Cornelius Nepos‟ biography of Hannibal outlines salient features from Hannibal‟s
life and is presented primarily, but positively, in terms of Hannibal‟s emnity with the
22 Wiseman, 1979, 1993, 1998. Contra, Flower, 1996.
23 Rossi and Breed, 2006, 402 note that the genre is uncertain from the title Scipio.
24 It is uncertain when Ennius wrote Scipio. Hardie, 2007, 129 notes that Petrarch, writing 1374, places
Ennius on Scipio‟s righthandside as a laurelled poet during Scipio‟s triumph at Rome (Petrarch, Africa,
9.398-402).
25 See Goldberg, 1995, for epic in the Republican period; Boyle, 1991, and 1993, for Roman epic
generally; Sciarrino, 2006, 449-469 for the arrival of epic genre at Rome. Also Spencer, 2002, 12 for the
genesis of Roman epic.
26 Gellius, 17.21.45, refers to Naevius taking part in, and writing about, the First Punic War.
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