Hannibal Barca

This article is for quotes of or about the Carthaginian leader; for the 2001 movie see: Hannibal (film)

Hannibal (from Punic, literally "Baal is merciful to me", 247 BC – 182 BC) was a politician, statesman and military commander of ancient Carthage.

Sourced

• Liberemus diuturna cura populum Romanum, quando mortem senis exspectare longum censent. (Latin, not original language)
  • Let us ease the Roman people of their continual care, who think it long to await the death of an old man.
  • Last words according to Livy "ab urbe condita", Book XXXIX, 51

• Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.
  • I will either find a way, or make one.
    • Latin proverb, most commonly attributed to Hannibal in response to his generals who had declared it impossible to cross the Alps with elephants; English translation as quoted in Salesmanship and Business Efficiency (1922) by James Samuel Knox, p. 27

Unsourced

• God has given no greater spur to victory than contempt of death.

• I am not carrying on a war of extermination against the Romans. I am contending for honor and empire.

• I have come not to make war on the Italians, but to aid the Italians against Rome.
  • Spoken to Italian soldiers of Rome captured at the Battle of Trasimeno (Lake Trasimene).

• You forget one thing Gisgo, among all their numerous forces, there was not one man called Gisgo
  • Spoken to one of his soldiers named Gisgo, who was intimidated before the Battle of Cannae by the larger number of Roman forces.

Quotes about Hannibal

• Hannibal excelled as a tactician. No battle in history is a finer sample of tactics than Cannae. But he was yet greater in logistics and strategy. No captain ever marched to and fro among so many armies of troops superior to his own numbers and material as fearlessly and skillfully as he. No man ever held his own so long or so ably against such odds. Constantly overmatched by better soldiers, led by generals always respectable, often of great ability, he yet defied all their efforts to drive him from Italy, for half a generation.
  • Theodore Ayrault Dodge
• As to the transcendent military genius of Hannibal there cannot be two opinions. The man who for fifteen years could hold his ground in a hostile country against several powerful armies and a succession of able generals must have been a commander and a tactician of supreme capacity. In the use of strategies and ambuscades he certainly surpassed all other generals of antiquity. Wonderful as his achievements were, we must marvel the more when we take into account the grudging support he received from Carthage. As his veterans melted away, he had to organize fresh levies on the spot. We never hear of a mutiny in his army, composed though it was of North Africans, Iberians and Gauls. Again, all we know of him comes for the most part from hostile sources. The Romans feared and hated him so much that they could not do him justice. Livy speaks of his great qualities, but he adds that his vices were equally great, among which he singles out his more than Punic perfidy and an inhuman cruelty. For the first there would seem to be no further justification than that he was consummately skillful in the use of ambuscades. For the latter there is, we believe, no more ground than that at certain crises he acted in the general spirit of ancient warfare. Sometimes he contrasts most favorably with his enemy. No such brutality stains his name as that perpetrated by Claudius Nero on the vanquished Hasdrubal. Polybius merely says that he was accused of cruelty by the Romans and of avarice by the Carthaginians. He had indeed bitter enemies, and his life was one continuous struggle against destiny. For steadfastness of purpose, for organizing capacity and a mastery of military science he has perhaps never had an equal.
  • Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1911)

• You, Hannibal, know how to gain a victory; you do not know how to use it.
  • Maharbal, commander of Hannibals' Numidian cavalry