Review of Hornblower, Hannibal and Scipio: parallel lives

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Hannibal and Scipio: parallel lives

Simon Hornblower, Hannibal and Scipio: parallel lives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. Pp. 528. ISBN 9781009453356.

Review by
Jeff Tatum, Victoria University of Wellingon. jeff.tatum@vuw.ac.nz

Its subjects—Hannibal and Scipio, Rome and Carthage—are big. Its learning is deep. Its keen, focused curiosity is an inspiration. And its style, conversational and lucid, is a pleasure to read. This, in sum, is a delightful and instructive book. There can be only a very few readers who will not learn something, or even quite a lot, from it. By putting in parallel the lives of Hannibal and Scipio, Simon Hornblower endeavours to furnish a fuller picture both of their twinned yet distinctive careers and personalities but also of Carthaginian and Roman ambitions, local as well as geo-political, during the late third and early second centuries bce. And he succeeds admirably.

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For PaleoJudaica posts on Hannibal Barca and Scipio Africanus, start here, here, and here, and follow the links.

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