Hannibal

Pero quizá el uso más famoso de los elefantes de guerra procedió de un lugar completamente diferente, Cartago.

Aníbal, the Carthaginian general who was close to defeating Rome, understood the power of elephants not only in the battlefield, but also as a symbol of military capacity and determination.

Cuando decidió invadir Italia cruzando los Alpes, no se limitó a hacer marchar a su infantería a través de aquellas montañas.

Llevó elefantes.

Elefantes, criaturas que necesitan enormes cantidades de comida y agua, que se cansan y enferman, y que necesitan cuidados constantes.

transportarlos a través de un paso montañoso en invierno, donde los suministros eran escasos y el terreno hostil.

Muchos de los elefantes murieron durante la travesía, pero los que sobrevivieron llegaron a Italia, y cuando los comandantes romanos supieron que Aníbal había conseguido llevar elefantes a través de los Alpes, el mensaje quedó claro.

Este hombre iba en serio.

But perhaps the most famous use of war elephants came from a completely different place: Carthage.

Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who came close to defeating Rome, understood the power of elephants not only on the battlefield, but also as a symbol of military capability and determination.

When he decided to invade Italy by crossing the Alps, he did not simply march his infantry through those mountains.

He brought elephants.

Transporting them across a mountain pass in winter, where supplies were scarce and the terrain hostile.

Many of the elephants died during the crossing.

But those that survived reached Italy, and when Roman commanders learned that Hannibal had managed to bring elephants across the Alps, the message was clear.

This man was serious.

And just three months later, they'd build another 250 ships.

You know, Hannibal comes into Italy, destroys various legions, and they mobilize the way they've never been mobilized before, and they have 10 new legions.

And they're just a society-wide commitment.

We are never losing, right? And that's the way we would be if this were an existential conflict, or any of these post-World War II wars had been existential conflicts, but they weren't.

And during the Battle of Cannae in 216 BCE, the Roman Republic was fighting Carthage.

and the Carthaginian general Hannibal wiped out a massive Roman army.

And afterwards, he had his men go and strip the signet gold rings from the dead.

When the news reached Carthage, Hannibal's brother Mago poured the rings out before the Carthaginian senate, and the rings kind of become this grim proxy for the Roman elite Hannibal had killed.

So for each ring, there was a man, and these rings are their proxy within their bodies, and it's showing... every person that he killed.

And not just any people, these are the upper echelons.

then during the same war, we get another demonstration.

So this was in 208 BC, the Roman general Marcus Claudius Marcellus was killed.

The Carthaginians violated treaties.

Hannibal was cruel.

The others were more merciful.

From Pyrrhus we have this famous speech on the exchange of prisoners.

He came, and in the first place it was he that made the motion in the Senate that the prisoners should not be restored.

And in the second place, when his relatives and friends would have kept him back, he chose to return to a death by torture rather than prove false to his promise, though given to an enemy.

And again, in the Second Punic War, after the battle of Cannae, Hannibal sent to Rome ten Roman captives bound by an oath to return to him if they did not succeed in ransoming his prisoners.

And as long as any one of them lived, the censors kept them all degraded and disfranchised because they were guilty of perjury in not returning.

His fame rests on his triumphant success in building up for himself so vast an empire, and the admiration which his career has always excited among mankind is heightened by the consideration of his youth and of the noble and generous impulses which strongly marked his character.

The Carthaginian hero was Hannibal.

We class the Carthaginians among the European nations of antiquity, for in respect to their origin, their civilization, and all their commercial and political relations, they belong to the European race, though it is true that their capital was on the African side of the Mediterranean Sea.

Hannibal was the great Carthaginian hero.

He earned his fame by the energy and implacableness of his hate.

The work of his life was to keep a vast empire in a state of continual anxiety and terror for fifty years, so that his claim to greatness and glory rests on the determination, the perseverance, and the success with which he fulfilled his function of being, while he lived, the terror of the world.

The Roman hero was Caesar.

He was born just one hundred years before the Christian era.