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Friday, August 28, 2015

Review of MacDonald, Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life

PUNIC WATCH: Hannibal' holds readers' interest (Richard D. Weigel, Bowling Green Daily News).
“Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life,” by Eve MacDonald. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015. 352 pages, $38 (cloth).

Hannibal still has a reputation as one of the greatest military strategists in history. One of the problems in trying to get an accurate picture of his life and career is that virtually all of the sources about him were written by Romans, the people who persisted against his serious threat to their continuance as a Mediterranean power and eventually defeated him, or by others influenced by Rome. Eve MacDonald, an archeologist and lecturer at the University of Reading, produced an excellent biography that attempts to understand Hannibal both within and outside the Roman context.

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An earlier review of the book etc. is noted here and links.