We'll never be any closer to the actual truth of it than Livy and Polybius let us get, so the approach Patrick Hunt uses in his book – taking each working cog of the Hannibal story in its turn and a shining bright light of inquiry on it, bringing everything together so readers can have it all before them – is probably the wisest. And those readers can then go back to Livy on their own time.I noted the book recently here. Follow the links there (cf. here) for many past posts on Hannibal and the Punic Wars.
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