Hannibal and Scipio

by Greg Fisher

In 218, Hannibal Barca, desperate to avenge the defeat of Carthage in the First Punic War, launched an ambitious ground invasion of Italy. With just a small force, he crossed the Alps and pitted his polyglot army against Rome’s elite citizen infantry. At Cannae, in 216, Hannibal destroyed an 80,000-strong Roman force in one afternoon, delivering a blow unequalled in Roman history for half a millennium to come. The Romans had no answer to Hannibal until the young Scipio volunteered to take over Rome’s armies in Spain. In the decade which followed, Scipio turned Rome’s desperate fortunes into a stunning victory over Carthage. The portrait of Hannibal and Scipio takes the reader through one of the greatest military campaigns in history, driven by two remarkable and fascinating men.

Genres: History

128 pages, Paperback

Published March 7, 2016

About the author

Dr. Greg Fisher is a Canadian scholar of classical antiquity. Although born in the U.K., he emigrated to Canada at the age of 16. Professor Fisher worked at McGill University (Montreal, Quebec) for several years before returning to school. He earned his D.Phil. from Keble College at the University of Oxford in 2008, and is Associate Professor in the Department of History and College of the Humanities at Carleton University (Ottawa, Ontario).

Reviews

[Mark Dunstan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good, concise little book that offers a fine introduction to this war- though some of the views on Hannibal's opponents are a little old-fashioned. I thought the author did very well packing in the general narrative of the war into so few pages.