Pride of Carthage

by David Anthony Durham

This epic retelling of the legendary Carthaginian military leader's assault on the Roman empire begins in Ancient Spain, where Hannibal Barca sets out with tens of thousands of soldiers and 30 elephants. After conquering the Roman city of Saguntum, Hannibal wages his campaign through the outposts of the empire, shrewdly befriending peoples disillusioned by Rome and, with dazzling tactics, outwitting the opponents who believe the land route he has chosen is impossible. Yet Hannibal's armies must take brutal losses as they pass through the Pyrenees mountains, forge the Rhone river, and make a winter crossing of the Alps before descending to the great tests at Cannae and Rome itself. David Anthony Durham draws a brilliant and complex Hannibal out of the scant historical record?sharp, sure-footed, as nimble among rivals as on the battlefield, yet one who misses his family and longs to see his son grow to manhood. Whether portraying the deliberations of a general or the calculations of a common soldier, vast multilayered scenes of battle or moments of introspection when loss seems imminent, Durham brings history alive.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, War, Ancient History, Audiobook, Roman

593 pages, Paperback

First published January 18, 2005

About the author

David Anthony Durham was born in New York City to parents of Caribbean descent. He grew up mostly in Maryland, but has spent the last fifteen years on the move, jumping from East to West Coast to the Rocky Mountains, and back and forth to Scotland and France several times. He currently lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. Or... actually, no he doesn't. He's back in New England at the moment.

He is the author of a trilogy of fantasy novels set in Acacia: The Sacred Band, The Other Lands, and The War With The Mein, as well as the historical novels The Risen, Pride of Carthage, Walk Through Darkness, and Gabriel’s Story. He’s won the John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer, a Legacy Award, was a Finalist for the Prix Imaginales and has twice had his books named NY Times Notable Book of the year. His novels have been published in the UK and in French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. Three of his novels have been optioned for development as feature films.

David received an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Maryland. He has taught at the University of Maryland, the University of Massachusetts, The Colorado College, for the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation, Cal State University, and at Hampshire College. He's currently on the faculty of the Stonecoast MFA Program. He reviews for The Washington Post and The Raleigh News & Observer, and has served as a judge for the Pen/Faulkner Awards.

He also writes in George RR Martin's weird and wonderful Wild Cards universe. He feels like the process makes him exercise a whole new set of creative muscles, and he loves the feeling.

Reviews

[Luís · Rating 5 out of 5]

Durham’s prose is plain, simple, and unadorned, with no trace of ornamentation. The unkind might even call it pedestrian. Many of the scenes described in the book depict violent battles. But in between all this plainness and mayhem, Durham infuses the book with beautiful scenes.

[Nate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-Read-Review:

Ever get sick of hearing about how great Rome was? The roads, the aqueducts, the politics, the legislation, the big names, the military...ever just wanna see Roma herself get knocked flat on her ass and piss herself? Then Hannibal is your man! Most people agree that if someone was gonna dislodge Rome's greedy grip from the Mediterranean relatively early in her rise to power it was gonna be Hannibal. Whether or not he could have actually have pulled it off still seems to be a matter of debate--but there can be no debating that the Second Punic War was one of the most legendary things to go down in human history. Hannibal's inheritance of the war from his father Hamilcar, his crossing of the Alps and then the series of famous engagements at the Trasimene, Lake Trebia and Cannae, then his slow loss of grip on the situation of the war and his slide into defeat at Zama by the famous Scipio Africanus...it just screams out to be recreated and humans have taken up this challenge for centuries in paintings, music, etc. Was there a Hannibal movie? I can't remember. This tradition must have been a daunting arena for Durham to enter but he did a superb job.

As you can see I had some minor reservations the first time through. However, upon a re-read I have to push it to the five stars. I almost never read stuff twice, and to be compelled to is certainly odd and notable for me. I love the characters, the writing and the story and revisiting them was a treat. The end is still utterly heart-wrenching, and I kept randomly thinking about it for a couple days afterwards. I need to get ahold of Durham's fantasy stuff! I've always held that fantasy and historical fiction have always been sister genres and I think that this book is a good example of it--the big cast, the fantastically huge and scary war...I mean, fucking elephants crossing the Alps under horrible hails of snow and rain and the hostile attentions of the indigenous peoples? This is otherworldly stuff! It's also certainly one of the greatest underdog stories ever--Hannibal was basically going it alone against the strongest military power on the Mediterannean. Even the Carthaginians were at best unsupportive, at worst openly hostile to his cause. Even the nature of the armies underscores this, as the Carthaginian army was often a dangerously understrength pretty ragtag group of people from disparate nationalities and military styles, where as the Roman army was insanely well-manned and pretty homogenous at this point (if not at Marian levels).

So get this book if you haven't read it! I can't say enough good stuff about it. This is not episodic historical adventure Hannibal, this is a blunt & deadly serious look at what it might have been like for him and the people caught up around him in this maelstrom of slaughter and destruction. There's a convincing realistic amount of grit, gore & sexuality so if that kind of stuff is not your bag this is not for you. Excluding that, I can wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone with an interest in historical novels, especially if you have any kind of interest in this particular subject. It's a seminal novel for me, and as I probably mentioned in my first review totally sated my appetite for Hannibal fiction, saving me countless dollars on the multi-episodic series that seem to be going on. Thanks, David Anthony Durham!

Original Review:

This novel covers a period of the Barca family's epic war with the Roman Republic starting around Hannibal's attack on Saguntum and ending shortly after the decisive battle of Zama. Hannibal is the central character although the book has a sizable cast of people all caught up in the war in some way, from members of his family to soldiers and camp followers in his army. The Roman side is also represented in the form of the perspectives of several of the major players like Fabius Maximus and Scipio Africanus. While the novel is obviously from a Carthaginian perspective and will ultimately probably make the reader hoping for an ahistorical Carthaginian victory, the Romans pleasantly weren't rendered as fanged villains, although I was again often confronted with the same shocking prideful stupidity that I encountered from the Romans in The War with Hannibal.

I'm surprised at how much I enjoyed the author's style of writing. It certainly has a rough kind of poetry and unflinching realism in its attention to detail and description. There's plenty of bodily fluids and brutal imagery in this story. To state the obvious this was a really painful time to live through and that comes through powerfully. This is anything but a boring historical adventure, this has to be one of the best novels about war and what it does to all parties involved I've read. There's a scene near the end with Hannibal that just reflects all of that so strongly that I'm sure I'm not the only one who was moved by it. It really is through the large cast of well-drawn human beings that we learn all this. I mean, it's hard to look at something like Cannae really see the human aspect to it. It's just a faceless event, but with this novel you can glean a little more than that.

As for the man himself...what an interesting portrait Durham has drawn here. He's both a warm family man and a conquering force of will. He has a complex moral system; on one hand he feels it's his duty to war against the Romans to check their growing power, which is kind of admirable, but on the other he isn't against putting entire towns to the sword in the service of that duty and almost seems to relish maneuvering thousands of Romans to their deaths. Durham also does him a favor by painting such a creepy portrait of his general Monomachus...what a fucking psycho that guy was. Hannibal seems like a soft-spoken hippie compared to that dude. Imagine a giant army of people subsisting on human flesh they capture while rolling around decimating the country...oh wait, it happened in Memories of Ice and it was terrifying. That book, man.

There seems to be a good deal of Hannibal fiction out there but I'm not sure if I'll ever try any of it; Durham seems to have written what seems like a definitive fictional recreation of the man, as well as many of the people around him. Anyone who's interested in Hannibal or the Second Punic War should definitely try this; Durham covers the logistics and reality of war with the necessary detail but it never seems like a dull recitation of military engagements, focusing more on character-driven plot rather than that kind of dry stuff. I'm not even sure why I didn't give this five stars--I think I had some pacing issues with it or something. Definitely nothing major. Again, anyone interested in the time period or even just an epic underdog story should give this book a try.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heard many great things about this book from friends.... you dinny let me down!

Great storytelling from the get-go with Hannibal front & centre with his brothers, which after trying another series was exactly what I was after, having wanted to read about the period of the 2nd Punic war from Hannibal’s (Carthage) stance.

The Barca family are characterised as POV main players along with their Roman adversaries. The author also includes a few (low level) characters namely one from the infantry, a Numidian scout, a scribe, a merchant & a camp follower giving us their perspective on the campaign which is a welcome angle & never an intrusive interlude. The author gets this absolutely spot on as you find yourself wanting to know how Imco & Aradna are getting on? Are they still alive? Did they survive the battle? Where are they now?

The opening chapter is devoted to the evolvement of the characters & setting the scene for the clash with Rome which is painted as inevitable from a Carthaginian stance..... them Romans although fighting elsewhere cannot be trusted which is engrained in the young Hannibal from his father Hamilcar. Carthage, Iberia, Gaul, Macedon & Rome are all part of the story & politics which are revealed to the reader.

The journey through the Alps is perilous as the army is decimated & shrinks from a likely 100,000 to less than 30,000 but it works & as we know puts the Romans on the back foot with an invading army on their soil. Rome’s arrogance & dismissal of the Carthaginians as mere barbarian’s plays a part in his victories as well as the Romans seem to blunder forward into most battles, all of which Hannibal has prepared a trap / tactic to combat the Roman war machine.

The tactics of the generals are laid out & great to follow, the Romans, now wary, forever changing their tract as the defeats rack up. Their arrogance & supreme confidence shattered after so many comprehensive defeats.

Battle of Cannae was brutal, brilliant strategy by Hannibal against an overconfident foe, who he then proceeds to slaughter in a box..... some of these ancient battles are unimaginable, the claustrophobia, the desperation, the brutality, the fear, kill or be killed, the fatigue, men fighting to a standstill & then merely dispatched. The description of the battle, the aftermath & the injuries of the survivors is quite chilling as you try to imagine the emotion each combatant had gone though during the battle, Adreline will carry a man so far but the sheer exhaustion described in the text must have been something.....

After Cannae the Romans are there for the taking, with all their generals dead or defeated only one name steps forward to try & save them.... that of Consul Publius Cornelius Scipio, his actions & POV as a character now come to the fore, which is great as you see how he combats/counteracts Hannibal & his brothers.

All the major battles & events of the 2nd Punic War are covered.

The ending..... well you all know your history BUT it’s still a gripping finale as it’s all laid out.

The book could have been longer for me, I say that even as it weighs in at jus under 600 pages, or even written over 2 volumes as the wealth of detail at the start does fall away in the later stages of the book especially when we’re away from Hannibal’s POV & felt (wanted even) could have had more..... but it’s still very good & right up there with one of my best reads of the year.

Even knowing the final outcome through legend its been an enthralling read & I give it a full 5 stars

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Splendid, and straight onto my list of most-admired HFs – and since Hannibal is a real hero of mine, and his story nigh perfect for a novel, high on that list too. My only complaint is that I feel sure this book needed to be 800 pages, not 600. At times he moves too fast over the ground, so that there are pages almost indistinguishable from a historian’s.

He uses an old fashioned, classic language that, I’d say, maintains the dignity of the material; there’s a dignity and weight. He is not indulgent. Although his scenes are deeply emotional – and he conveys the full horror to you – it seems to me he can have more effect for a discipline he keeps (perhaps like Hannibal’s discipline). Along with that, he didn’t indulge me when my sentimental side asked for a happy sequel or more certain knowledge. I don’t mean at the end here, but for instance, among the love stories – each of which was very particular to the people involved: even the sex scenes might only have been acted by those actors – Hanno had the unlikeliest, but that got aborted and I did wish to see... It’s better that he doesn’t indulge me. And war can’t pause for them or for my wish to follow their lives, and there is much uncertainty, for these people, about what’s happening to those they care about.

A couple of the Barca brothers or sisters I only came to care about halfway or two-thirds through. This is a good thing. Circumstances bring out a side to them I hadn’t met before.

By the time you’re through this you won’t want to wage war. As glorious as Hannibal is. The wives’ side – his mother’s disclosures about his father, the sister who has been the staunchest of Barcas and insistent upon duty – weighs heavily by the end, when Hannibal goes home to face his wife and child. The soldiers admit they may have lived their lives quite wrongly – both Hannibal and his father have moments like that – but they know war is a way of life, the way of the world, and there was never an escape.

For me the story finishes at the right time, but you are left to imagine the remainder of Hannibal’s life, the sad remainder and what must have been the ignominy.

We follow the tales of two men in his army. Imco, accidental hero and reluctant soldier, who hallucinates the ghost of a girl he killed and falls in love with a camp follower who’s had the toughest life in the book. Tusselo, ex-slave of Rome, who finds he can never put an 'ex' there, although he grow out his African hair and know again his African pride. Carthage is very African, in this book. And Rome – Rome is a danger, a danger to the world, a new thing in the world, think the Barcas. It needs to be stopped. The Barcas’ commitment to this cause pulls you in –

Even though the city behind them, Carthage itself, proves almost more an enemy than Rome, to its great men, who nevertheless serve it. The vicious irony and the sadness of this story are from history, but he makes you feel them.

It was never once too slow for me, only, in fact, too fast. When Hasdrubal awaits a fleet and thinks uneasily about how water floats a boat... that’s because he’s standing there, and thinks, and doesn’t always think things relevant to the plot. The body language, too, helps make these people real; once or twice you won’t understand a gesture, and neither does the gesturer, but it’s what people do. For me there wasn’t a tedious page in this book and that includes the military detail that can be so dully written. He makes use of his several point-of-view figures to give us the famous battles from different perspectives: another antidote to boredom. In the Alps, at Cannae, familiar as events were, I was nothing but gripped, and laughed with very excitement.

Finished yesterday and so soon after I think the whole thing is horribly sad. I may be a sop but like I say, Hannibal is one of my heroes and I find the histories hard to stand, never mind when he’s put into fiction. I bawled.

[Ozymandias · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a lot of novels set during the era of the Roman Republic yet how many can you name that take place before the first century? There aren’t a lot. But those that exist can be guaranteed to focus on the Punic Wars. The wars of Hannibal (no, not that Hannibal) aren’t exactly an original subject for fiction. They’ve been the subject of plays and novels since Silius Italicus wrote his epic poem Punica back in the late first century. Just since this book came out there’s already been a new trilogy on Hannibal by Ben Kane and a whole series on Scipio. So what makes this one worth reading?

Basically, this book is different from the rest because Hannibal is the actual protagonist. Most books set in the Second Punic War (the first book of Ross Leckie’s Carthage trilogy being an exception) focus on the Romans or at best have characters representing both sides. Carthage plays very much a second fiddle to Rome. This is essentially the other side of the story. This book presents an account of the Second Punic War from an unabashedly pro-Hannibal viewpoint. And Hannibal’s a great character. Durham doesn’t downplay his brutality, but we never lose sight of the fact that this is how all wars were fought at this time. The main Roman complaint was that he had the nerve to do it to them!

Durham’s style of writing reminds me of Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series. While they differ in other ways, they both approach the broad span of history as a sprawling series of individual viewpoints. This means we get a somewhat fragmentary account of events with the viewpoint switching between character to character depending on the event. We are given the highlights of these people’s journeys. Anything happening between these viewpoint switches is described as recollection by that character. There is no omniscient narrative voice to explain the clear, unambiguous facts. It’s all subjective.

What saves both these works (and dooms many lesser ones) from becoming nothing but an isolated series of confusingly unconnected moments is that they are so bloody long. There are 900 pages of incidents here to cover a few short years of warfare (curiously, and frustratingly, the book compresses everything into five years although it’s supposed to take eighteen). With that level of detail you can build a pretty clear picture of the war without need of an omniscient narrator to put all the pieces together for you. Accurate observations that the book is too long are rather missing the point: it has to be this long to tell the story in this way. The only criticism I can make here is that the character scenes shift back and forth too rapidly and are often too short. It’s not always clear who the POV character is at any given time.

What also helps this work is the intelligent choice of POV characters. The Barca brothers are prominent of course, as is Hannibal’s wife back in Carthage, which allows us to witness all corners of the Carthaginian war. We also get a ground-level view of the human cost of the war from a common soldier (Imco Vaca), a Numidian eunuch and scout (Tusselo), and a camp-follower (Aradna). Sparing use is also made of Scipio (the future Africanus) who provides us with our few glimpses of the Roman experience of the war. But while the Romans seize control of events in the second half of the book they are never allowed to completely take over the narrative. The Carthaginian characters are at the forefront of this novel and it is their story being told.

The first half of the book is the semipanegyrical account you might expect. The Barcas generally come off pretty nobly and heroic. All four of Hamilcar’s brood have the seeds of greatness in them, though they lack his military genius, but they all (apart from Hannibal) have equally great weaknesses. Hasdrubal is a hedonist, Hanno is insecure, and Mago is inexperienced. Heck, you could even make a convincing case that Hannibal himself has the great failing of overwhelming hubris. By the end, his triumphs have ruined them more surely than their failings. The course of the invasion is covered in great detail with excellent descriptions of what it must have been like to cross the Alps. The battle scenes vary in effectiveness depending on whose viewpoint we’re in at the time. Some of the choices of viewpoint are odd indeed. We get one battle entirely narrated by one of the camp followers.

The second half is rather more unexpected. It’s inevitable that Hannibal gradually losing his control of the situation would result in a more melancholy story, but what amazed me was how thoroughly the rot set in. You don’t even notice it at first, but the seeds are there from the beginning. I was amazed at how empty a character Hannibal was. It’s not obvious when he’s successful, but that’s because all that’s keeping him going is his belief in his own destiny to destroy Rome. Once that possibility is removed he’s just a paper man. While he’s never the avatar of vengeance the Romans portrayed him as, without his quest he has nothing.

Even more amazing was how strongly we feel the cost of this disaster. Every atrocity and battle undertaken by Hannibal has been justified by its necessity to take down Rome. The book never sugarcoats this. But by the end all this sacrifice was for nothing. The loss of key parts of his body, the deaths of his brothers, the gradual destruction of his army... The atrocities start to take on a useless, perfunctory tone. Somehow the whole campaign turns to ashes. And we’re never really any more certain than Hannibal why that is. By the end it’s hard to remember or understand the feeling of glory you sense at the beginning. All he achieved was the slaughter of millions of people and the eradication of his own home and empire. And, even more perplexingly, the Romans come out of the war stronger than when they went in. War is a pointless waste and glory ruinous.

One issue I do have with the book is the sidelining of any non-Barcid Carthaginians. In Europe, the war was most definitely a Barcid-led affair and the focus makes sense, but the African (and to some degree Spanish) wars were a very different matter indeed. Carthage was not so unmartial as to have no rival generals, but all these men are turned into Barcids. Sophonisba, here Hannibal’s sister, was actually the daughter of Hasdrubal Gisco, whose role in defending Africa is taken over by Hannibal’s (imaginary) brother Hanno. I do get the difficulty in having too many characters with the same name, but there are ways around it, as can be seen with Scipio. Scipio Africanus is here called Publius (his praenomen) to distinguish him from his father (confusingly called Cornelius, the family name) and uncle. Why not call Hasdrubal by his other name as well?

This is connected to the lack of interest in Carthage in general. We learn more about the Roman government than we do the Carthaginian one! The two were actually very similar, with the suffetes serving in much the same role as consuls and the council being very similar to the Senate, but you wouldn’t really know that here. While the criticisms of Carthage’s ultimately suicidal lack of support for Hannibal’s war are justified, I feel like this was a real missed opportunity to portray an African empire as more than just a foil for some European conquerors. And with two of our POV characters permanently stationed there (and several of the others popping in and out) there’s no reason they couldn’t have shown this.

Both of these changes serve to twist Carthage into a contemptible nation, memorable only because of the greatness of a single family. I’ve seen the Carthaginians portrayed as more evil, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen them more worthless. Hannibal is a lone hero, the only great man to emerge from an empire ruled by greed, cowardice, and envy. We don’t even get a clear idea what the comparative strengths and weaknesses of the Roman and Carthaginian states were. Public spiritedness? I was hoping for better from a book by an African-American author seeking to expand the representation of African civilizations in ancient history.

What I was looking for in this book was an account of the Second Punic War from the Carthaginian perspective. An opportunity to seize a slice of African history from the hands of the European-dominated study of ancient history and bring Carthage to life as something more than an adversary (or occasionally victim) to the real heroes. And that’s not quite what this is. This is an account of the Second Punic War from Hannibal’s perspective. And to a much lesser degree the perspectives of his family and a few soldiers in his army. While the book does a superb job at this, I feel the absence of any Carthaginian viewpoints outside the Barcids and soldiers from their armies limits the breadth of this tale. I feel it could have been a masterpiece instead of just really really good. In any event it’s very much worth reading.

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

WOW! What a bloody terrific book. I know that probably isn't the most eloquent way to say that, but I don't think anyone here is going to ping me for that.
David Anthony Durham is an amazing author. Of course he can get caught up in his story and go off on tangents when he shouldn't, and in doing this he retracts from the better storyline. And he seems to only do it simply because he has had a thought and wants to run with it, but all in all, he is an amazing author and you can just scan read those parts if you have to.
The characters were terrific. For the entire middle of the book I actually enjoyed them more than Hannibal who sometimes bored me with his morose and melancholy personality. I enjoyed the brothers, especially Hasdrubal. I enjoyed Hasbdrubal and his wife. I enjoyed Masinissa and the beautiful youngest Barca sister. Their tale broke my heart. As did the journey and finale of the Imco and Aradna tale.
I think you would have to be a pretty tough person to not feel sad in the end. The ending was gut wrenching.
I would recommend this book to anyone except those that like light fiction. This is most definitely not light historical fiction. It requires patience aplenty. A less focused reader would give up on it's 600 pages pretty quick I think.

I don't just read to be entertained. I read to learn. Pride of Carthage fulfilled both of those desires.

[Jeni | StoryTimeReviews · Rating 2 out of 5]

📚⚔️ Historical Epic with Mixed Feelings ⚔️📚

*Pride of Carthage* by David Anthony Durham aims to bring the ancient world of Hannibal Barca to life with vivid historical detail and a grand narrative scope. While Hannibal's military tactics and his quest against the Romans are indeed fascinating and well-researched, several aspects of the book detract from its overall impact.

The explicit sexuality and frequent use of modern profanity, including the "F" bomb, felt out of place and undermined the historical authenticity of the novel. Given that such language wasn’t in use during Hannibal’s time, its inclusion seemed jarring and disrupted the immersion into the ancient setting. These elements, while perhaps intended to add realism or intensity, ultimately "un-authenticated" the historical experience for me.

Despite these issues, I did find enjoyment in Hannibal’s strategic journey and his relentless pursuit of victory over the Romans. The portrayal of his military prowess and the epic scale of his campaign provided a compelling glimpse into one of history's most legendary figures.

Content Warnings: The book contains graphic depictions of warfare and violence, as well as explicit sexuality.

[Shane Findlay · Rating 5 out of 5]

I slowly savoured this novel. And it was glorious. Fucking glorious! Could be the best HF novel I’ve ever read. 5+⭐️

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Ritmo y entretenimiento por encima del rigor.-

Género. Novela Histórica.

Lo que nos cuenta. Aníbal Barca, líder político y militar de las fuerzas cartaginesas que dominan la mayoría de la Península Ibérica, no está dispuesto a transigir con la política romana que, a su parecer, no respeta el acuerdo de no intervención mutua al otro lado de las dos orillas del Ebro por su tratado con Sagunto, por lo que la toma de esa ciudad no será más que el primer acto de algo mucho más grande, la Segunda Guerra Púnica.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I began reading a hard copy of David Anthony Durham's "Pride of Carthage" several years ago and never seemed to get around to finishing it until an audio version was recently released on Audible.com. I am one of the unfortunate individuals that becomes unbearably sleepy if I attempt to read a traditional book for more than about 45 minutes but I listen to books while I exercise each morning on my exercise bike, so if an audio version of a book becomes available, I'll usually finish it in due course as long as I don't have other activities interfering with my exercise routine. Thankfully, this was the case with Durham's novel of Hannibal after switching to the audio version.

I have studied Hannibal to some extent and was quite familiar with his military conquests during the Second Punic War. But most history texts say little about his personal life and that was what I was most interested in. I realize the ancient sources tell us little about the Barcas as a family so I knew much of Durham's characterizations would have to come from his own imagination. But still, I wanted to have some images to cling to as I learn more about Hannibal in the future and this is the reason I chose to read this book. So let's examine the cast of characters Durham has crafted for us.

Polybius tells us that a leader's true character is often obscured by actions he must take in response to circumstances created by his own undertaking.

"His [Hannibal's] circumstances were so extraordinary and shifting, his closest friends so widely different, that it is exceedingly difficult to estimate his character from his proceedings in Italy." - Polybius, The Histories, Book IX, Chapters 22-26

So, Durham takes the relatively safe route and introduces us to a quintessential warrior - finely muscled, an astute judge of character, a family man who welcomes his infant son with tenderness and a bit vain. In one of the opening scenes, Hannibal stands nude before his wife, Imilcea, demonstrating to her that he has maintained his flawless body despite the latest battle he has fought at Arbocala. (That image soon fades, though, as Hannibal suffers first a devastating spear wound then loses the sight in one eye slogging through mosquito-infested marshes in Italy.)

Family to Hannibal, however, is first and foremost a responsibility to maintain the ancestral "dignitas", if I may use a Roman term to define it, of the Barcids who were legendary even in Hannibal's own time. His father, the revered Hamilcar Barca, though now dead, is a shadowy presence that Hannibal, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconscieously, defers to in almost every decision Hannibal considers.

And, if friends are so influential, what forces do we see swirling about Hannibal in his council chambers that will propel him to the apex of victory or foreshadow his eventual defeat?

This is where Durham chooses to diverge a little from historical sources. We meet Hannibal's brother Hasdrubal, a luxury-loving but fiercely loyal lieutenant to his older brother. Since Durham has read Polybius, he is certainly aware that the Barcids were reputed to love wealth.

"Fond of money indeed he does seem to have been to a conspicuous degree, and to have had a friend of the same character---Mago, who commanded in Bruttium. That account I got from the Carthaginians themselves; for natives know best not only which way the wind lies, as the proverb has it, but the characters also of their fellow-countrymen. But I heard a still more detailed story from Massanissa, who maintained the charge of money-loving against all Carthaginians generally, but especially against Hannibal and Mago called the Samnite. Among other stories, he told me that these two men had arranged a most generous subdivision of operations between each other from their earliest youth; and though they had each taken a very large number of cities in Iberia and Italy by force or fraud, they had never taken part in the same operation together; but had always schemed against each other, more than against the enemy, in order to prevent the one being with the other at the taking of a city: that they might neither quarrel in consequence of a thing of this sort nor have to divide the profit on the ground of their equality of rank." -Polybius, The Histories, Book IX, Chapters 22-26

However, greed is not an endearing trait to modern readers so I can understand Durham redirecting a love of wealth to Hannibal's brother rather than the commander himself to maintain reader empathy with his protagonist. We must also consider the possibility that Massanissa, though initially loyal to the Barcas, was eventually forsaken by the Carthaginians in favor of Syphax, another Numidian chieftain. So, Massinissa's criticism must be viewed skeptically. I thought Durham's choice to introduce this aspect to the Barca family without sacrificing respect for Hannibal was reasonable.

Durham's decision to make Hasdrubal a composite figure of Hasdrubal Barca and Hasdrubal Son of Gisco is likewise understandable. Having two Hasdrubals running around could get really messy and an author could risk losing readers partway through the narrative.

The reason I am sure Hasdrubal is a composite figure is based on a plot development later in the novel. Hasdrubal (Barca) agrees to give his youngest sister, Sophonisba, in marriage to the dastardly Syphax of Numidia in return for Syphax' Carthaginian support. This famous tragedy (Sophonisba had been previously promised to Massinissa) was initiated historically by Hasdrubal Son of Gisco, not Hasdrubal Barca. Sophonisba was known to be a Carthaginian noblewoman but not a Barca, although Hamilcar is thought to have had three daughters. However, by making Sophonisba the youngest of Hannibal's sisters, Durham strengthens the reason for Scipio's insistence that after Massinissa's defeat of Syphax, his wife march in Scipio's victory triumph in Rome.

Then we meet Hannibal's brother Mago, who is portrayed as level headed and strategically skilled - a strong right arm who has a knack for thinking outside the box. This personality appears consistent with the historical Mago who courageously stood by his brother's side in the crucial center of the Carthaginian line at Cannae and who traveled back to Carthage with the gold rings of the defeated Roman aristocracy to plead for support for Hannibal's continued success.

The next choice Durham makes, however, is much more of a leap. He introduces us to a third brother, Hanno. In all of my research, I found only a casual reference to the possibility that there was a fourth Barcid lion in Hamilcar's brood. Hanno is portrayed as skilled but sourly envious of Hannibal's success and favored position as eldest in the family. Hanno's sexual appetites are directed at other men. These attentions were viewed as beneath his exalted position as a Barca and an element that promoted his anxiety toward Hannibal and his other brothers.

I could not find any specific references to the Phoenician view of homosexuality although the home country that spawned Carthage was under the influence of the Persians for centuries and Persia had a long history of antihomosexual tradition. Rome at this point in history, although condoning homosexual relations with participants of lesser social status (slaves, captives, freedmen, etc.) prosecuted homosexuals in the military sphere, considering it damaging to the soldier's image as the supreme example of masculinity. If the Roman viewpoint was shared by other military organizations around the Mediterranean, then Hanno's low self-esteem as portrayed by Durham would have been a probable outcome.

I must admit, though, I found it hard to accept the name of Hanno as a Barca. Although Hanno is one of the few noble Carthaginian names, it is associated in history with the Barca family's strident opposition in the Carthaginian senate so I would have hesitated to use it for a Barca sibling.

However, once again, Durham creates this character as a composite of an historical Hanno who was, in fact, an officer (not brother) under Hannibal. Durham probably chose to create this composite figure to reduce the confusion created by Livy in his history. Livy identifies a Hanno who was a cavalry commander at Capua, another in command at Metapontum in 207 BC who was sent to Bruttium to raise fresh troops by Hannibal, and yet another Hanno who was sent to Spain in 206 BC by the Carthaginian senate, where he was defeated and captured by the Romans under Marcus Silanus in 207 BCE. Durham's Hanno is defeated and captured in Spain then transported to Italy as a prisoner. There he is sereptitiously freed and reappears fighting in Africa as indicated later by Livy in 203 BCE.

Actually, I found Durham's composite device quite effective in keeping the story line relatively continuous. It also served as a counterbalance to the heroic aspects of the other Barcas.

Durham introduces another particularly dark character that kept cropping up throughout the book with a blood lust that Hannibal found difficult to check. Monomachus, (historically named Hannibal Monomachus - those Carthaginians used only a handful of names for their noble families that makes reading Punic history really confusing!) is a warrior who worships the blood-thirsty god, Moloch, and is constantly urging Hannibal to unleash absolute horror upon the Romans. Polybius gives us a specific example of this man's approach to total war:

"At the time that Hannibal was meditating the march from Iberia to Italy with his army, he was confronted with the extreme difficulty of providing food and securing provisions, both because the journey was thought to be of insuperable length, and because the barbarians that lived in the intervening country were numerous and savage. It appears that at that time the difficulty frequently came on for discussion at the council; and that one of his friends, called Hannibal Monomachus, gave it as his opinion that there was one and only one way by which it was possible to get as far as Italy. Upon Hannibal bidding him speak out, he said that they must teach the army to eat human flesh, and make them accustomed to it. Hannibal could say nothing against the boldness and effectiveness of the idea, but was unable to persuade himself or his friends to entertain it. It is this man's acts in Italy that they say were attributed to Hannibal, to maintain the accusation of cruelty, as well as such as were the result of circumstances."- Polybius, The Histories, Book IX, Chapters 22-26

Durham's Hannibal resists the level of cruelty Monomachus suggests most of the time but later in the Italian campaign, when Hannibal struggles to maintain the loyalty of cities that waiver in their support of the Carthaginian cause, Durham's Hannibal allows Monomachus to perpetrate a number of atrocities. This may or may not have occured in antiquity although Polybius points out some Roman cities suffered "treacherous violence" at this point in the campaign.

"...as soon as Capua fell into the hands of the Romans, the other cities naturally became restless, and began to look round for opportunities and pretexts for revolting back again to Rome. It was then that Hannibal seems to have been at his lowest point of distress and despair. For neither was he able to keep a watch upon all the cities so widely removed from each other---while he remained entrenched at one spot, and the enemy were maneuvering against him with several armies---nor could he divide his force into many parts; for he would have put an easy victory into the hands of the enemy by becoming inferior to them in numbers, and finding it impossible to be personally present at all points. Wherefore he was obliged to completely abandon some of the cities, and withdraw his garrisons from others: being afraid lest, in the course of the revolutions which might occur, he should lose his own soldiers as well. Some cities again he made up his mind to treat with treacherous violence, removing their inhabitants to other cities, and giving their property up to plunder; in consequence of which many were enraged with him, and accused him of impiety or cruelty. For the fact was that these movements were accompanied by robberies of money, murders, and violence, on various pretexts at the hands of the outgoing or incoming soldiers in the cities, because they always supposed that the inhabitants that were left behind were on the verge of turning over to the enemy." Polybius, The Histories, Book IX, Chapters 22-26

Whether children were singled out for sacrifice is not specified. Of course Roman propoganda is always a concern whenever you study Roman history. But, we do know that Roman parents used to frighten their children with stories of Hannibal at the gates. So, Durham makes the connection to these stories clear. In the novel, during Monomachus' raids of villages and towns in the southern Italian peninsula, Monomachus seeks out Roman children to sacrifice to his god Moloch providing the reason those stories have persisted through the centuries.

In the opening chapters of the book we also meet one of Hannibal's sisters, Sapanibal. Sapanibal is tall and athletic with a keen mind. We are told she often served as a sounding board for Hannibal on matters of diplomacy and tribal relations. She is the widow of Hasdrubal "The Handsome" or "The Fair", the man who took over command of Iberia after the death of Hannibal's father, Hamilcar, until his own assassination. Hasdrubal the Handsome is portrayed as an arrogant brute who apparently resented his high-born wife and used every excuse to humiliate and psychologically wound her. In the novel his womanizing is legendary much to her embarassment.

Of course ancient scholars seldom bothered themselves with the treatment of famous men's wives so we can assume Durham embellished this relationship for the purposes of drama. We do know, though, that Hasdrubal the Handsome personally negotiated a treaty with Rome that established the Ebro river as the northern-most border of Carthaginian influence.

"The treaty had been concluded between the Romans and Hasdrubal, not Carthage. This is remarkable, because other Roman-Carthaginian treaties were concluded between the two states. This suggests that Hasdrubal was considering his position as if he were some sort of king. Several ancient sources even suggest that he wanted to become independent. This is probably incorrect, but his acts may have caused some raised eyebrows in Carthage." - Jona Lendering, Livius.org, 2004

So, it is not much of a stretch to associate a man "who would be king" with the personality Durham has created for him. The resulting impact on Sapanibal was to make her unwilling to enter into close friendships and to make her skeptical of the motivations of those around her, both traits certainly understandable given the circumstances.

We also meet Hannibal's wife, Imilce, a beautiful Celtic princess who loves Hannibal passionately but seems somewhat mystified by the legacy of war and need for conquest and martial success that rules the Barca family. Hannibal's marriage to her was arranged by Hasdrubal the Handsome to strengthen Carthaginian ties to the local populace. But Hannibal seems to truly love and admire her for her intelligence and comprehension of tribal politics as well as her devoted care of their son, little Hamilcar nicknamed Hammer.

So the stage is set for the epic drama that is to come as Hannibal sets his sight on the conquest of Rome. With Durham's vibrantly drawn characters, his subsequent retelling of the victories and later defeats of Hannibal's army have a more human quality to them than most dry textbook accounts I have read in the past.

But I was most touched by the story of Sophanisba and Massinissa. Although Durham heightened the tale by making Sophanisba Hannibal's youngest sister (she was actually the daughter of Hasdrubal Gisco as previously stated), Durham's details of the tragedy were taken straight from the pages of Livy (and Polybius, Appian and Diodorus Siculus!). I have to confess, though, that I had never read anything about Sophanisba before and I found the story of her doomed love for Massinissa as compelling as the famous romance of Antony and Cleopatra.

So all in all, I think David Anthony Durham created an engaging narrative, solidly based on factual accounts but with creative choices that made sense from both a dramatic perspective and to preserve a reader's overall understanding of events without tripping over too many characters with the same name. My only regret is that Durham stopped with Hannibal's defeat at the battle of Zama and did not attempt to speculate on Hannibal's subsequent role in the resurrection of his nation, his political challenges and ultimate betrayal by the greedy Carthaginian opposition that lacked the vision to foresee the death of their own civilization.

[Michal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok, this book was not a good fit. There was one major thing that prevented me from enjoying it: the time line. The book starts with the introduction of POV characters, but their background is not described and neither is the Carthaginian culture. Author just throws them into the story and gradually reveals who they are. I am sorry, but such story telling completely missed me. The resulting effect was that for the most exciting part of the book I did not really care about the characters, and once I started to know them a bit, author introduced periodical melodramatic lapses. Two times I almost did not finish the book. In any case, I am sure it is a great book, and second reading would probably be great, but I do not have time for that. Originally wanted to give 2 stars, but the ending was quite good and it showed in my rating.

[Vishy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is interesting to sometimes ponder on how we choose a book to read. I had an interesting experience on this front recently. I was on the verge of finishing Neil Gaiman’s ‘Neverwhere’ sometime back. At that time, I thought on what book I would like to read next. The font using which ‘Neverwhere’ was printed made me think of another book I had with the same font. (In case you are interested in such things, this font was ‘Melior’. It is typically used in paperbacks published by Black Swan / Transworld. They publish books by Sophie Kinsella, Joanne Harris and Neil Gaiman among other writers.) The book that I picked out for further exploration which had ‘Melior’ font, was Joanne Harris’ ‘Gentlemen & Players’. I took out ‘Gentlemen & Players’ from the bookshelf and browsed through it and read the first chapter. Then I remembered another book which I had got at around the same time as ‘Gentlemen & Players’. I took that book out of the bookshelf. When I read the blurb on the back cover and the comments by different reviewers, I realized that I had to read this book now. That book was ‘Hannibal : Pride of Carthage’ by David Anthony Durham.

So the sequence of events was this.

Got inspired by the font of current book -> Remembered another book which had the same font -> Remembered yet another book bought at the same time which made you nostalgic -> Picked up the new book, browsed it and loved what I saw -> Selected the new book for reading.

This is the kind of random way I pick a book for reading. I don’t do this all the time, but I do it often enough and the results are always surprising.

I don’t know why I bought ‘Hannibal’ all those years back. There was a time I used to read lots of books on history, but I don’t read a lot of historical novels (Novels which are set in the 20th century don’t count as historical novels from my perspective.) I have read Alexandre Dumas, Walter Scott and Kalki and the occasional murder mystery set with a historical backdrop, but otherwise I haven’t really read much historical fiction. So, I don’t even know why I got this. The only reason I can think of is that I remember reading somewhere that Hannibal crossed the Alps on an elephant and went to fight with the Romans and maybe I wanted to explore this more through this novel. It was nice that all the stars got aligned and by some random sequence of events the time to read this book finally arrived. It was a medium sized chunkster – 600+ pages – and I read it for the past many days. It wasn’t moving as fast as I wanted – I am scared of chunksters – and so I shut myself inside my room like a medieval monk during the past few days and finished reading it. Here is what I think.

‘Hannibal’ is set during the time of the Second Punic War (218-202 BC), a war which was fought between Rome and Carthage. This novel is a fictional rendering of that war. It starts with the events leading up to the war and why it started, goes into detail into the different battles which were fought and takes us through to the end of the war and a little bit of the aftermath. Most of the story is told from a Carthaginian perspective and so most of the time we sympathize with the Carthaginian point of view. Most of the important characters in the story are Carthaginian or fight on the Carthaginian side, except for some of the Roman consuls and senators. Though a majority of the story is about the war, one thing I liked about the book is that there are stories of minor characters which are told in reasonable detail. There is Imco Vaca, a soldier in the Carthaginian army, with whose story the books starts, and there is Aradna the Greek ragpicker who follows the Carthaginian army during its campaign and with whom Imco falls in love with, and with whose story the books ends. There is Masinissa, the Massylii prince and expert horseman and the story of his love for Sophonisba, the Carthaginian beauty and the sister of Hannibal. There is the story of Tusselo, the Massilyii, who was formerly a slave of a Roman merchant and who now joins the Carthaginian army and wants to fight with Rome so that he can forget his past and free himself of his former life. Then there is Silenus, the Greek scribe, who accompanies Hannibal during his campaign and who knows a lot of history and has a wicked sense of humour. Then there are the women in Hannibal’s family – his wife Imilce, his sister Sapanibal, his brother’s wife Bayala, his youngest sister Sophonisba, his mother Didobal. Then there is Mago, Hannibal’s brother, the soldier who is a poet and philosopher at heart. Somewhere at the beginning of the story, we see Mago thinking this :

He had always been disappointed by that aspect of the great tales. All that heroic grandeur resulted in rape and pillage and the utter destruction of a people.

Towards the end of the war, we find him thinking this :

The last few weeks, however – with the mask removed – the unacknowledged images bombarded him unhindered. He could not help but recall the faces of orphaned children, the suffering in the eyes of captured women, the sight of burning houses, the cold glances of people being robbed of grain and homes and indirectly, of their lives. He heard their wailing in some place beyond sound, high to the right and back of his head. Everywhere were signs of the barbarous nature of conflict, ugly to behold. Nowhere was it possible to avoid these things. It suddenly seemed to him, that such scenes were the full and true face of war. What place had nobility in this? Where was the joy of heroes?

It was difficult to not like Mago.

Though Hannibal and his campaign and his battles with the Roman army (and his crossing the Alps on an elephant ) rightly take up a major part of the book, my favourite parts of the book were about the minor characters – how they react to the onset of war, how they try to get on with their lives, the trials and tribulations they face, the dreams and nightmares they have, the brief glimpses of ephemeral happiness that brings joy to their hearts, the helplessness with which they are swept away by events over which they have no control. One of my favourite parts of the story is about the way women struggle with their lives after the onset of war – on how they have to make tough, impossible decisions and how they are used as pawns in a war which they didn’t start. When I read these parts, it made me angry and sad.

David Antony Durham has clearly done his homework before writing this book. I wanted to read more about some of the things that the book talks about and so I picked a book on ancient history (in case you are curious it is called ‘The Classical World : An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian’ by Robin Lane Fox. It is awesome) and read the chapters related to Carthage and Hannibal. I discovered that Durham’s book was pretty accurate with respect to historical facts, though he himself says in his book that it is only a novel. The only inconsistency I found was that though the actual Second Punic War lasted 16 years, the war as depicted in the book doesn’t last as long.

Durham’s prose is plain, simple and unadorned with no trace of ornamentation. The unkind might even call it pedestrian. Many of the scenes described in the book are violent scenes of battle. But in between all this plainness and mayhem, Durham manages to infuse the book with beautiful scenes. One of my favourites was this scene which describes a journey that Tusselo undertakes.

Nor was nature disposed to aid him. The sun burned daylong in unclouded skies. Shade was thin and hard to come by and the landscape filled with hulking shapes in the distance. Once he traveled a barren stretch of land cut by dry rivers, some of enormous girth that might have funnelled torrents but now lay parched beneath the summer sun. Later, he traversed a wide, shallow sea, the liquid so potent that it crystallized on his feet and coated them with a crust. Round him little thrived save for thin, delicately pink birds, creatures that stood on one leg and then the other and gestured with their curved beaks as if engaged in some courtly dance. On occasion his passage disturbed them, and the birds rose in great waves, thousands upon thousands of them, like giant sheets whipped by the breeze and lifted into the air. He never forgot the sight of them. Nor of the opal sea in the morning. Nor of a stretch of white beach as smooth as polished marble. Nor the white-winged butterfly that awoke him with a kiss upon his forehead.

Another of my favourite scenes – and probably my most favourite one – was this one. It is violent, tragic and beautiful.

She was pretty. He could tell this despite her grimy face. Her chin was a little weak, one eye lower than the other, but she was pretty none the less. Her body was still boyish, but this was not a flaw. She was not too young to be taken, nor to be sold, nor to be rented out. He walked round her and stood behind her for some time. He had to think about this. He was aware as never before how much suffering this girl’s life now offered her. Her shoulders were so thin, but their frailty would please many. Her skin was a translucent covering over her frame. She must have been hungry these past months, but that too would make some men want her. Her hair fell over her shoulder and he could see the pulse of the artery in her neck. He reached out and touched it with his fingertips. The girl moved slightly, but he whispered her to stillness. Her pulse was strong, warm. It seemed irregular in its beating and at first he did not question why. Someone would profit from her suffering. Before the end of the month she would have been used by hundreds of men. She would be diseased and battered. She would rot from the inside out, both body and soul. But right now she was sound. In sorrow, yes. In mourning, surely. But her nightmare had not yet begun in full. He – by whatever divine hand – had been given her life to shape. Some men would have thought this a great gift, so why did it pain him so?
Just after the question formed in his mind he realized why her pulse seemed strange. He snapped his fingers away from her neck and struck the same spot with a slicing sweep of his sword. She dropped from the stool, and he darted outside a moment later, striding away, putting the tiny house behind him. He would forever remember the moment when he realized that the girl’s irregular heartbeat was actually a mixture of his pulse and hers, both of them captured there on his fingertips for the few moments they were connected. He might have become a soldier in the last few years, but he was still a brother, still a child who loved his sisters, still soft in some portion of his heart He prayed that the girl might understand his action as he had meant it : as a twisted merciful gift.

Another of my favourite passages was this one (this is the last one, I promise) :

Not yet ready to roll the papyrus away, he lifted it, absently, to his nose and inhaled. The scents were faint at first, reluctant and shy. The longer he breathed in, the more he found traces of fragrances beyond the papyrus’s dry flavour. Something of his mother’s fragrant oils came to him. Something of Carthaginian palms. A taste of sea air and of dust blown high and far-travelled on desert winds. And there was Imilce. Her scent was the last to come to him. When it finally revealed itself it was the most potent. It filled him with a longing so painful that he pulled himself forcibly from it. He threw the letter on the table and stared at it as if he expected it to rise and attack him. He had searched for her scent, but having found it he knew that such passions had no place in a commander’s chambers. They were more dangerous than Roman steel or cunning.

The story ends badly for most of the main characters. Only Publius Scipio, the Roman consul, comes out victorious at the end of the war. But he suffers personal losses – his father and uncle are killed in earlier battles. Some of my favourites survive though – Sapanibal gets together with the man she loves, Imago Messano, Imilce and her son survive and they get together with Hannibal in the end. The most interesting ending is to the story of Aradna and Imco. When an older companion asks Aradna what she wants out of life, she says

“Very little. I want to go home to Father’s island. I want to herd goats on the hills and watch boats pass at a distance. I want a quiet corner of the world away from all this. Every day I want a little less…Aunt, I just want peace.”

In the end this is what happens.

Aradna had many gifts to thank the goddesses for. She had escaped war. Scenes of death haunted her dreams, but they were no longer the fabric of every waking moment. She had found her way to the island she had known only by name, and on landing she discovered the remnants of her father’s family, an uncle who barely remembered his brother, several cousins, and a sister-in-law who – magically – welcomed her without question. Boys from the village laughed at the strange accent she spoke Greek with, but clearly they liked her company. They helped her build a hut of stone and clay, with a wood-framed roof of clay tiles. In a pen beside it she raised Persian fowl. She helped her reclaimed family harvest their olives and tend their pistachio trees and repair fishing nets for the village fleet. She helped an old man from the town raise edible dormice. This particularly gave her joy, for the squirrel-like creatures were shy and quiet, with trembling noses and bulbous black eyes and fur so soft she marvelled. True, they all eventually went into pots to fatten and were sold live at the weekly market, but still it was a gift to watch them born, to hold them in hairless infancy and see them grow. Nobody hungered to rob or rape her. Her small fortune was hardly even necessary, and yet was a comfort buried deep beneath the earth floor of her dwelling. She set her donkey loose to roam the nearby hills, though the creature never wandered from her. Was this not happiness?

That is not the end of it, though. She waits for Imco Vaca to come back, everyday, keeping an eye on the ships docking at the harbour. I don’t know how long she waited.

After reading the book, I wondered whether David Anthony Durham had a backlist. When I checked Wikipedia, I discovered that his first two novels are on African Americans in the 19th century, and his most recent three novels form a fantasy trilogy. ‘Hannibal : Pride of Carthage’ seems to be an oddball in his writing resume.

I liked ‘Hannibal : Pride of Carthage’. I am glad that through a complex series of random fortunate events, the book jumped at me from my bookshelf and made me read it. It also made me want to read more on ancient history. If you like novels which are based on ancient history, you will love this book.

Have you read ‘Hannibal : Pride of Carthage’? What do you think about it?

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book took me forever to finish

Partly, that was my fault since I was quite busy.

But this book didn’t do itself any favours, either. I never really felt compelled to pick it up.

The subject matter is fascinating. That’s for sure. The author’s choice to write a book spanning the Second Punic War was remarkable. And the decision to focus primarily on Hannibal and then introduce other characters such as Scipio was great too.

But the author clearly wanted to tell the story of Hannibal being amazing. And the history just doesn’t lend itself to that. For that reason, the book is really at its most interesting at the start of the war as Hannibal is beginning his crusade against Rome. It just starts to feel tired and mundane as the war begins to turn. The author is so committed to Hannibal that the book falls flat and doesn’t really know what to do with itself as the history begins to turn against Hannibal.

But truly: kudos to the author for writing a piece of historical fiction around such a great time period. I love the setting.

[Ciprian Bujor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incepe destul de ezitant, ori poate e traducerea cam slabă. Însă prinde avânt ulterior și devine o lectură plăcută și captivantă. Un roman istoric bine documentat și interesant.

[Edward Rickford · Rating 4 out of 5]

**This post is also available at edwardrickford.com and at https://amzn.to/2LqUibk**

As far as I know, there aren’t a lot of studies concerning the subject matter of historical novels published in English. If I had to guess, I would say the majority of historical novels deal with either the Roman Empire or WWII. Considering how many books are written on these subjects and how much I read historical fiction, some might assume that I have read a great many novels featuring characters with Latin names or events that took place somewhere between 1933 and 1945. Such an assumption, however, would be wrong. Partially because so much has already been written about these epochs and partially because we learn a great deal about both in school, I used to avoid historical novels dedicated to these topics. I decided to break that rule when I read David Anthony Durham’s Pride of Carthage and I am glad that I did.

While a great many novels have been written about the Second Punic War, Pride of Carthage is one of the few novels I know that is told almost entirely from the perspective of Carthaginian characters. This does offer some advantages in terms of brand differentiation but there is one big downside to telling the story from this point of view: the Carthaginians were the invaders. Generally speaking, the people who initiate wars of aggression are not very sympathetic characters. Whether the story takes place in Winterfell or pre-Columbian North America, creating sympathetic characters is key to capturing reader interest so telling the story from the Carthaginian perspective poses some obvious difficulties.

Durham confronts the challenge with impressive grace and portrays Hannibal Barca in a way that helps readers understand his intelligence and his motivations. Considering Hannibal’s reputation as a genius military strategist, a great many writers probably would have been tempted to use the first chapter to showcase his knowledge of battle tactics. Durham, however, chooses a different tack and uses the first chapter to showcase Hannibal’s genius as a military commander. The scene is not very long but does a great job of showing how Hannibal was able to win the loyalty of common soldiers and why so many soldiers were willing to follow him into such perilous straits.

When it comes to understanding the motivations of this long-dead general, no scene does this better than Imilce’s private conversation with Hannibal. Imilce, his first wife and his ardent supporter, pushes him to explain why he is so keen on war with Rome. His initial answers are rather milquetoast—glory, justice, freedom, and vengeance—and could have come from the likes of Hirohito or Bolivar. The scene gets truly interesting when Imilce presses Hannibal and he confesses he is motivated more by marital pride than martial pride. He promises his wife that “in two years you will be able to look from of this [room] or any other place you choose and know that all the Mediterranean world is yours to shape. How many men can say that to their wives and mean it?”

This explanations differs markedly from his more public proclamations—at one point in the book, he explains that Carthage needs to take the offense against Rome because Rome will become the undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean otherwise, a rather prescient observation undoubtedly informed by Durham’s knowledge of the Punic wars—but this private admission is the one that truly stands out. To think that something so simple and pure as striving to give a significant other something no one else has can lead to something so ugly as war is both fascinating and horrifying.

Considering the book is about Hannibal Barca, no reader should be surprised that large-scale battles play a large role in the story. Personally, I like the descriptions of the Fabian campaign, the Battle of Cannae, and the Battle of Zama best but the answer will probably differ from reader to reader. To be fair, there are probably some readers who won’t enjoy these scenes at all but the political intrigue and the narrative arcs are more than enough to carry the story along. I recommend this book to anyone interested in Mediterranean history, albeit mainly from the African perspective as opposed to the European perspective, or to anyone interested in military fiction.

[Mhamed Limam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great novel , very entertaining and i've read it with great passion , given that it recounts the history of my country , Tunisia . The book may be a work of fiction but everything was inspired by real events , real places, real dates and real historical figures .

In my opinion the author was successful in depicting with great narrative skills, the different complex sides of Hannibal's personality and emotions throughout his legendary campaign : From the siege of Saguntum , the crossing of the Alps ,the great battles of Cannae and Zama and finally to his returning to Carthage as an old defeated general .

We saw a ruthless warrior , a genius tactician , an excellent orator and a brave man with principles, who devoted himself to Carthage ! We also saw a loving husband , an affectionate father a caring brother and a faithful friend . He had his many glorious moments when people , even Romans , regarded him as undefeatable among gods . But he also had his human weak moments ,for exemple when he mourned the death of his brothers one after the other or when he fled to Carthage after his defeat at Zama .

The parallel stories of Imco Vaca , Aradna , Tusselo , Silenus , Masinissa ,Sophonisba ... all added depth to the novel and enriched it . Personally , the mention of places like Clupea which is modern-day Kelibia , my home town ,and other cities that i know like Hadrumetum (Sousse) or Leptis Minor (Monastir) , all made these events more relatable and added to my excitement !
I must also remark that some of the scenes in this book were really sexual . Some of them could be even considered as pornographic !

In conclusion , the novel presented Hannibal the way he should be presented : as the greatest General Africa has to offer .He has done to the Romans what no one else could do : conquer them in their own land and siege Rome Itself ! Though he hated them so much , his hate was not unfounded . He despised Rome the way his Father Hamilcar told him to : "I do not ask you to hate without reason. I do not condemn Rome simply because it is full of Romans. It is Rome's actions I hate. It is the way Rome seeks to make slaves of all the world."

[Pxan · Rating 5 out of 5]

TDLR; The book is good, go read it.

Trowed in a mass of very old and brown books there was this book.

It was one of those shops where people trowed old books and just pilled on top of each other, this one was one of the few in decent conditions/the cover was still attached to the book.

I didn't know what awaited me.

This book managed to grasp and hold the attention span of a very distracted teenager in school for a very long time, an achievement that should automatically give this book five stars.

I fell in love with the characters, the story, the plot, the style.

The only thing that I really regret is that when I read most of the book I knew next to nothing about writing or reading. After a long break and an (around) fifty pages sprint I realized how wonderfully written this book really was, I saw something like this only a few times.

By the end of this book, you will not want to wage a war. The author's brutal, realistic and clean when it comes to describing it. The author also goes unusually far to describe the effect that long-term war has on people personality and psyche.

Really good book, I will read it again in a few years.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

More on the lines of a 3 1/2 star rating.

A couple of things that I didn't like was a lack of maps (kind of important when covering a campaign; especially if that campaign took place 2300 years ago and many of the towns/cities/countries don't exist anymore or have different names), the ending was a bit abrupt and the story line didn't always flow as well as it could have (and did in certain parts). The latter could be attributed to the fact that I have recently read some outstanding historical fiction and this just wasn't in the same class and I also got sidetracked with another series when I was 60% through this book (I was reading this on my Nook when Hurricane Irene hit and thought it would be wise to save the battery for when I needed it).

That being said, this was still a good book and if you are at all interested in Hannibal and/or Ancient Rome this is a worthy read.

[Joaco MDC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelente novela histórica. Basándose en varios protagonistas con historias paralelas, relata con detalle vívido la Segunda Guerra Púnica.

[Samuel Berin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this author from a great interview he conducted with GRRM and was interested because I had heard a telling of the Second Punic War during early teenhood. David Anthony Durham delivered, and he delivered hard.

I appreciated the scope of the characters, and the way that the narration follows fate, giving more narrative space to Rome and Scipio as they start to take control of the war. The final conversation because Hannibal and Scipio is breathtaking, almost as strong as the real gutpunch ending. You can feel Hannibal tire, despite spending so much of the book refusing to stop being a genius.

Characters felt well drawn, with the minor exception of Aradna (more on her later). Hanno was a particular favorite of mine, partially, sure, because of his similarity to Stannis Baratheon. I was surprised when I found out that he was mostly an author creation, but the others of Barca's brothers also shine. I appreciated the perspective given to random soldiers and horsemen and camp followers, contrasting with the nobility. I wish we got a simliar perspective from a Roman commoner.

In fact, I wish for more! 600 pages ended up being too shorta draw for such a tale. You can feel it in the last 100 pages especially, when cities begin trading hands multiple times in a single sentence. I would have appreciated more of Mago's fall, more of Scipio on Sicily, a point of view on Archimedes and his war machines.

The only failure in the book for me is the culmination of the Aradna/Vaca romance. I believed Vaca's interest in her, but I saw very little reason she would be invested in him. Though I liked the ending beat for her.

I'd probably call it 4.5 but rounded up to 5 because of how hard it stuck the landing.

[EstebanMaturin5 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magnífico relato de la familia Bárcida con Anibal al frente, épico el paso de los Alpes.

[Alvaro Real · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una novela muy bien trabajada que transcurre durante la segunda guerra púnica mezclando personajes ficticios con reales en una exhibición de como pudieron evolucionar los sentimientos de cada uno de ellos en la sucesión de hechos históricos que ocurrieron.
Una fantástica novela, para entender este momento histórico de forma muy amena.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a long time reader (and translator for six years) of Roman history, I was drawn to this book because of the subject matter: The Second Punic (i.e. Hannibal Bacara's) War.

Having read about it a long time ago, I wanted to see what new this novel might add to my recollection of one of the severest spankings given to the nascent Roman Empire. (Yes, the literal empire was almost 150 years later, but Rome was conquering outside the Italian peninsula already at this point.)

Alas, while nicely written, it is just a novel that was written as a novel, not as a history lesson with some window-dressing of secondary characters. That's probably too harsh an assessment as the author himself makes no claims of being strictly a historian. He has clearly done his research on the conflict, the technology available and the military styles of the Carthaginians, their allies, the Gauls, and the Romans. True, he probably took a few liberties in "organizing" the events and their emphasis, but it was a decent read. While it's not an extremely long book, I did read it in short spurts and skipped a couple of days. That accounts for the longer than usual time between starting and finishing, not any difficulty in wading through the story.

If you like the romantic and political side plots for their contribution to a work of fiction, then I think that you might give this book more of a full "4.0". Certainly if you only vaguely know who the real Hannibal was (not the Anthony Hopkins one) this book is a reasonable introduction to his very spectacular accomplishments. The only thing that I can fault the author for is that he ends the story before Publius Scipio gets the accolade for which we long-suffering Latin students know him by: Scipio Africanus.

[Stefan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pride of Carthage is a glorious historical novel on the fascinating culture and times of the Second Punic War. I consider this to be one of the best historical fiction reads focused on ancient history, because it has a variety of full-fleshed personalities including Hannibal (who is one of the best developed characters in the whole) and a vast supporting cast who includes Hannibal's wife, brothers, sister, and his opponents in the Carthage government and within the Roman military. Yet, amazingly, the cast of characters extends to a Greek historian, a ghost, and a scavenger (who survives by taking items from the dead.) The events span a fast length of time and a wide geographic area (one of my main complainants about this book is how it crams vast amounts of information together, so that the reader loses themselves in piles of information.)The narrative of this novel is beautifully poetic in parts (making it seem like a work of the highest literature while also being historically focused) and philosophically thoughtful in others, making in rare read in the breadth and depth of it's narrative. What personifies the Pride of Carthage the most, to me anyway, is the development of Hannibal from a young, confident, undefeated general who passionately loves his wife into a disillusioned, angry, cynical, scarred, man who frightens his own son, and who failed himself by failing to capture Rome at the height of his career. Definitely worth re-reading.

[Darrell Woods · Rating 3 out of 5]

Epic books give a story room to breathe but also run the risk of losing momentum, a challenge exacerbated if the cast is particularly huge. This novel aims for the stars which I have to admire, even if my own opinion is that it might have been better a little slimmer. Wisely there is no attempt to develop the Roman cast beyond Scipio, there are quite enough Barcas to anchor the tale. The Carthaginians are clearly our heroes, raising the other main issue with the book, given how events transpired. You feel the villain to be the Council who repeatedly fail to support their General as much as the numberless Roman Legions. Thus, the first half of the book works best, the crossing of the Alps, the first battles, the sense of excitement as Italy is laid open. After Cannae, the inevitable descent towards Zama is crushingly sad, as supporting characters lose their lives or vanish from the tale. The women are strong and loyal and brave, the carnage appalling. By trying to cover everyone I felt perhaps there was less remaining to focus on Hannibal himself, when essentially this is his tale, his glory and his fall. Rome is revealed as an indomitable foe, resistance is futile etc. and it is hard to tell whether Hannibal ever got close to actually winning. That said, the sumptuous attention to detail has encouraged me to go read a few more history books. A flawed novel but a worthy attempt to keep this epic tale alive.

[ECH · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the premise of this one. Current day Western historical fiction has a bit of a fascination with Rome, but rarely writes from the point of view of their enemies. I would love to read more work in this vein. So, I'm somewhat confused that the book itself wasn't more engaging for me. I think the problem is one of pacing and scope. The military campaign described took place over several years, and this results in the book occasionally dropping into a tone that feels very much like a summary, reading more like nonfiction telling than dramatized showing. The result is a long book that still sometimes feels like it's rushing. A novel about Carthage doesn't have the topical popularity English-language books about Rome or medieval Europe have, and therefore can't assume that the reader will have a reliable sense of the timeline.

That said, the characters were interesting, vivid, and diverse. The narrative is very masculine, full of the siege and sacking of cities and the like. Note that this does include descriptions of sexual violence, torture, and violence against children, which is not unexpected given the subject matter, but proceed at best discretion.

[Bookmarks Magazine]

Durham (Walk Through Darkness, Gabriel's Story) offers a compelling study in contrasts. Pride of Carthage is at once a sweeping saga, an intimate portrait of an individual, a military history, and a tale about love, devotion, and loyalty. Critics hailed such plays in scale, praising Durham for pulling off the risks of writing a panoramic history of epic battles while capturing the dramas of individuals, from Roman generals to North African kings, foot soldiers, and former slaves. Only The New York Times Book Review faulted the subplots involving Imco Vaca and Aradna as "soap operatic." Overall, the novel is a compelling, well-executed work.

This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.

[Joe Slavinsky · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are people who will love this book. I'm not one of them. I didn't hate it, but it took me a while to get into it. Toward the end, it did get better, as the author wound up the story. It is a fictionalized account of Hannibal's attempt to defeat Rome, which is an interesting subject, in itself. Durham "fleshes it out" a little too much, by developing too many side characters, in great detail. This adds some human interest, but also makes the book longer than it might have been, slowing down the beginning, by introducing so many characters. Again, I "liked" the book, but thought it could've been better.

[Damona · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing book, overall. Some of the most careful and loving descriptions of ancient battles that I've ever read. A bit of an abrupt ending, but I didn't find it as jarring as many reviewers seem to have found it. I'll admit that it took me forever to wade through this one, though, partially because of those careful and loving descriptions of men hacking each other to pieces. I had to take a few mental breaks from the action.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hannibal has to be one of the great military leader's of all time and this is an very good retelling of his campaign in Iberia and Italy. The style of language used brings a classical feel to the tale, and the battle scenes are well presented and show the brilliance of the man. Overall, I found this book very enjoyable and would certainly recommend it.