PUNIC WATCH:
The Lion of Carthage. What Hannibal could not overcome was the Roman willingness to sustain mass casualties and raise new legions (Michael Kulikowski,
WSJ). This essay surveys the story of Hannibal using these two books as his launching point:
Mastering the West
By Dexter Hoyos
Oxford, 337 pages, $29.95
Hannibal
By Eve MacDonald
Yale, 332 pages, $38
Conclusion:
Every decade brings us a dozen or more books on the Punic Wars, and few can say anything that is both new and true. Carthaginian silence—“Roman ownership of Hannibal’s story,” as Ms. MacDonald aptly terms it—leaves us free to shuffle the same pieces into faintly new patterns time and time again. Perhaps unsurprisingly, people’s favorite book on the Punic Wars tends to be the first one they read. Mr. Hoyos’s venture is clear and competent, good on disputed analyses and contradictory evidence. Ms. MacDonald, for her part—relying on a lot of plausible speculation, argument by analogy and the occasional leap of analytical faith—succeeds in placing Hannibal firmly in the world of Hellenistic warlords from which he sprang: Her Hannibal is no alien semitic creature atavistically hostile to the Mediterranean civilization of Greece and its satellites but instead a stunningly successful product of that civilization, using its political repertory and military technology at a level that no contemporary could match, at least at first. The books offer different things, one unexceptionable and a bit dull, the other enthralling but sometimes beyond historical proof. Tastes vary, and neither will steer the newcomer wrong, but I suspect most will prefer the speculative provocations of Ms. MacDonald to the bloodless certainties of Mr. Hoyos.
More on Hannibal and the Punic Wars
here and links.
