What did Hannibal think of the Romans? Hannibal was indoctrinated by his father, Hamilcar Barca, to hate the Romans. There is a story that, before taking Hannibal with him to Spain, Hamilcar took him to the Temple of Elissa at Carthage and made him swear an oath: “When I come to age, I shall pursue […]
Did Roman Soldier Ever Surrender to Hannibal?
There are no known instances of Roman legionaries surrendering to Hannibal before or during a battle. Roman survivors of the battle sometimes surrendered to Hannibal when the battle was over. In the case of the Battle of Trasimene, some 6000 Roman and allied cavalrymen broke out of Hannibal’s ambush and took refuge in an Etruscan […]
What Happened to Hannibal After the Second Punic War?
The decision allow Hannibal to return to Carthage was made by Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus. After the Battle of Zama, Hannibal escaped to Hadrumetum. Scipio then had the decision whether to besiege and destroy Carthage, or to allow the city to negotiate a treaty on Roman terms. Besieging the city would have taken months. The […]
The Relationship Between Rome and Greece.
The Romans had a relationship with Greece long before they conquered them. The southern part of the Italian Peninsula was colonized by Greeks. The cities of Tarentum, Naples, Metapontum, Locri and others were all Greek speaking. Early in the third century B.C. Italy was invaded by Pyrrhus of Epirus. He won two battles but at […]
Quora Question: Why Did The Romans Not Destroy Greece the Way Destroyed Carthage?
The Romans had a lot more respect for the Greeks than they had for the Carthaginians. They had fought two long and bitter wars with Carthage and regarded them as enemies. There was no such animus in the Roman attitude toward the Greeks. The Greek language was prestigious and a Roman was not considered educated […]
How Did the Romans Overtake the Greeks
A good book to read on this subject is Taken at the Flood by Robin Waterfield. At the end of the third century B.C. most of the Greek cities were under the rule of two successor kingdoms to Alexander the Great; the Macedonian Empire, and the Seleucid Empire. Macedonia, under king Philip V, had sided […]
What Ancient Rome owed to Greece.
This was a Quora question that I responded to. How does the phrase “the conqueror became the conquered one” relate to Rome’s imperial expansion into the Hellenistic world? Robin Levin, works at Writers and Authors (2012-present) This was the sentiment of Quintus Horatius Flaccus, commonly known as Horace, who lived from 65 B.C. to […]
Book Review: Taken At the Flood; The Roman Conquest of Greece, by Robin Waterfield
Ph In my research about the third Punic war, the one in which Rome destroyed Carthage, I ran across an intriguing quote by the Greek historian Polybius. “The ruin of Carthage is indeed considered to have been the greatest of calamities, but when we come to think of it the fate of Greece was no […]
Follow Us!