Hannibal and Scipio left no autobiographies, except that Hannibal in 205, before leaving Italy for Africa, inscribed a bilingual account of his military resources. Scipio’s contemporary funeral elogium (list of his offices and achievements, a kind of succinct obituary) does not survive (a much later one does). This chapter offers, by way of introduction, semi-fictional replacements for these missing documents and explains what Hannibal’s full inscription is likely to have contained. Other first-person evidence by the two men is quoted and discussed, such as letters reported in the literary sources. The chapter closes by asking what Hannibal and Scipio looked like. Appendix 1.1 lists and evaluates the sources for the book, and there is a sub-section on reliability of speeches. Appendix 1.2 addresses the problem of whether Plutarch’s lost Life of Scipio was about Hannibal’s opponent or Scipio Aemilianus, his younger relative by adoption. Appendix 1.3 is about ‘roving anecdotes’.

The Apamea peace conference after Magnesia included Roman demands for Hannibal’s extradition; he forestalled this by going on his travels again. These are poorly documented. A Cretan visit is probably historical but hard to explain. It was unconnected with attested contemporary Roman official visits. A Polybius fragment may allude to a financial ploy by which he kept his savings intact. He moved to Armenia, where inscriptions attest familiarity with Greek poetry; his stay is attested mainly by Plutarch’s Lucullus. He helped King Artaxias to found Artaxata, but moved on again, for reasons unknown. His next choice, King Prusias’ Bithynia, is puzzling (closer to Italy), but Prusias was at war with Rome’s friend Eumenes of Pergamum. Hannibal won a sea battle for Prusias, but weird details are suspect. Here too he helped a king found a city: Prusa. But Prusias succumbed to Roman vindictiveness and Hannibal took poison. His tomb site is unknown.

Defeat by Rome in the first Punic war (264−241) had nevertheless left a Carthaginian political and military presence in Iberia. Hannibal’s father Hamilcar and brother-in-law Hasdrubal commanded there in turn, and were succeeded after their premature deaths by Hannibal. He attacked the Rome-friendly city of Saguntum, and the outbreak of the second Punic war followed. Its much-disputed causes are addressed. Hannibal wrong-footed the Romans by crossing the Pyrenees and Alps with elephants and descending into Italy. By brilliant tactics, he won four battles in rapid succession (218−216) and increasing order of scale and gravity: at the Ticinus and Trebia in north Italy, then an ambush at Lake Trasimene in Etruria, and finally the massive victory at Cannae. But he rejected his lieutenant Maharbal’s advice to march on Rome. Appendix 3.1 argues that Hannibal became increasingly isolated after these successes, and Appendix 3.2 that there was only one Maharbal.

Ancient communications were slow and precarious, so overseas commanders enjoyed/suffered from partial absence of control by home authorities. Isolation should not be overdone. Literary sources mention official letters home only when remarkable for some reason. Requests to the senate for supplies from Rome were made routinely. Equally, some messages and orders arrived from Carthage. ‘Peripheral imperialism’, far-reaching decisions by men on the spot, are a feature of Roman operations in Iberia. Publius Scipio (father)’s decision to fight the war there is a good example. Other examples are reviewed. Hannibal’s treaty with Philip was co-signed by Carthaginian advisers. Appointment of good subordinates is an important indicator of the quality of a commander’s personal initiatives. Italian Locri is taken as a case study because Hannibal and Scipio both made decisions affecting it. Hannibal’s appointee Hamilcar was guilty of long-term arrogance but was perhaps not as bad as Scipio’s scandalous lieutenant Quintus Pleminius.

The Hannibal of this book is Hannibal surnamed Barca. Scipio is Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus. The final extra name (‘the African’) was given to him in recognition of his victory over Hannibal in north Africa. The Prologue explains that the model for this joint biograohy of Hannibal and Scipio is not so much Plutarch’s series of parallel Greek and Roman lives, as Alan Bullock’s Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. Ancient, Renaissance, and modern explorations of the parallels between the two men are discussed, and a separate section sketches the career and approach of Bullock as a classically trained modern historian and biographer. Another section sets out programmatically the view of Roman and Carthaginian imperialism to be adopted in the book. The limitations of the evidence available to biographers of individuals from the ancient world are candidly acknowledged, and the use of the ‘past presumptive’ tense (so-and so- ‘will have’ done, known, or thought this or that) is renounced.

Throughout the first century bc, Rome was scourged by a succession of internal conflicts that interrupted the usual exercise of imperium over the allies and subjects of the empire across the Mediterranean. The agreements and treaties signed with the Roman state still pertained, but it was unclear who was in a position to exercise the representation of that state, in as much as various mutually incompatible claims for legitimacy coexisted. From the perspective of the various political entities that argued the right to rule over the empire, the challenge was to secure as many loyalties as possible, whether that was through diplomacy or force. The political actors situated on the periphery of Rome, meanwhile, faced a choice that would shape their future in the short and medium term. At these crossroads, the offering and receiving of gifts came to satisfy various discursive and diplomatic needs. Broadly speaking, Roman leaders offered gifts to secure loyalties through the creation of obligation relationships, while the political subjects they addressed used the receiving or giving of gifts to reveal their recognition of one of the parties.

In 1584, King Philip II of Spain received the first Japanese embassy to visit Europe at the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo del Escorial. As a gift, the representatives of this embassy presented two suits of armour and various weapons, which were sent to the Royal Alcázar of Madrid to be kept, given their value and exoticism, in the palace’s Guardajoyas (treasury). Ten years later these gifts were transferred to the Royal Armoury, which at the end of the sixteenth century was one of the finest examples of the splendour of the Habsburg dynasty and which housed, preserved and exhibited, as treasures, the weaponry of the monarchs and their ancestors, diplomatic gifts and military trophies.

Throughout history, arms have played a prominent role as diplomatic gifts, not only for their extrinsic value (their beauty, sumptuousness, exoticism) but also for the intrinsic dimension, as emblematic and prestigious objects, as well as symbols of authority. This exchange of weapons (and other items of military equipment) was a custom rooted in Antiquity.