Pod Insights You're Dead to Me Hannibal of Carthage (Radio Edit) About this episode Greg Jenner is joined in ancient North Africa by classicist Professor Josephine Quinn and comedian Darren Harriott to learn about Hannibal of Carthage and his war with Rome.
Located in modern-day Tunisia, Carthage was once a Mediterranean superpower that rivalled Rome. In 218 BCE, the Second Punic War began between the two powers, with the Carthaginian army led by a man named Hannibal Barca. Famously, Hannibal took his forces – including a contingent of war elephants – over the Alps and into Italy, finally marching on Rome itself. But eventually the Carthaginians were beaten back, and Hannibal ended his days in exile. In this episode we explore his epic life, from his childhood in Spain, to his tactical brilliance as a general, to his post-war career as a reformist politician.
This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.
Hosted by: Greg Jenner
Research by: Emma Bentley
Written by: Emma Bentley, Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner
Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner
Audio Producer: Steve Hankey
Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett
Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse
Executive Editor: Philip Sellars
Transcript 5,527 words · 10 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
0:06 Speaker 01 Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a berry chantilly cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.
0:33 Speaker 02 Sometimes we all need an extra helping hand, especially with the tricky business problem you've been putting off. Claude is an AI for just that. It's a collaborator that understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, not for you. And Claude isn't just for quick questions. Hand it a whole task like turning a folder or scattered notes into a report, and it does the work and hands back something finished that you can open and edit. Claude can now draft a doc or deck right in front of you, and Claude Design now lives right inside Claude. Describe the website or prototype you're picturing, attach your design system, and it comes back in your own design language, ready to edit right on the canvas. It works with your files and the tools you already use, like Gmail and
1:16 Speaker 02 Slack. And whether you're debugging code at midnight, building a financial model, or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at claude.ai/solve. That's claude.ai/solve. And check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all of the features mentioned in today's episode. claude.ai/solve.
1:46 Greg Jenner? Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. Today, we're mounting our war elephants and marching back to the ancient Mediterranean to learn all about Carthaginian general Hannibal Barker. And joining our campaign, we have two very special comrades in arms. In History Corner, she's Professor of Ancient History at the University of Cambridge and a specialist on Roman, North African and Phoenician history and archaeology. You might have read her award-winning book, In Search of the Phoenicians, or her bestselling, award-nominated new one, How the World Made the West: A 4,000-Year History. It's brilliant. It's Professor Josephine Quinn. Welcome, Joe.
2:26 Speaker 04 Thanks for having me.
2:27 Greg Jenner? Delighted to have you here. And in comedy corner, he's a comedian, writer and presenter. You'll have seen him on all the TV shows like Live at the Apollo, Love Island After Sun, Roast Battle Mock the Week, Dancing on Ice, or heard him on the radio, on News Jack Unplugged, Infinite Monkey Cage, Black Label, and of course, you'll remember him from our episode on Victorian bodybuilding. It's Darren Harriet. Welcome back, Darren.
2:46 Speaker 05 Thank you for having me.
2:48 Greg Jenner? Darren, last time, you demonstrated incredible knowledge in the subject. You were basically an expert on Eugene Sandow.
2:55 Speaker 05 I was so excited to come in and talk about Eugene. Yeah, I know so much about bodybuilding. And I think maybe like a year before, I'd watched a documentary about him, twice. So I came in here so cocky. I know it all, guys. Very different to today.
3:10 Greg Jenner? Right, I was gonna say, the history of ancient North Africa?
3:12 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah. Not really my specialist subject, that. But I'm excited. There's gonna be a lot of questions I'm gonna throw at, guys.
3:18 Greg Jenner? Okay. Does the name Hannibal ring a bell?
3:21 Speaker 05 It does, yeah. I know a couple of Hannibals. Hannibals from TV shows, a comedian, it stops there.
3:29 Greg Jenner? Okay, Hannibal Buress.
3:30 Speaker 05 Hannibal Buress, there we go. Yeah, that's it. That's my knowledge.
3:33 Greg Jenner? So, what do you know?
3:40 Greg Jenner? Well, that brings us to the first segment of the podcast. It's called the So What Do You Know?, where I have a go at guessing what our lovely listener might know about today's subject. And when I say Hannibal, you might, like Darren, be thinking of TV people. I think of the cigar-chomping leader of the A-Team.
3:54 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah. I know three, three Hannibal references.
3:58 Greg Jenner? More likely, you're thinking of the famous fictional serial killer. But today, it's less Hannibal the Cannibal and more Hannibal of Carthage. Hannibal has appeared in a ton of historical novels, including ones by Ross Leckie and Ben Kane, several films as well, the 1959 film Anibal, and the 2009 film Hannibal. And apparently, if Vin Diesel gets his way, maybe soon we'll be getting a high-octane Hannibal trilogy. I can't wait to watch an elephant power-drift around a hairpin corner. That is what we all wanna see. But what is the fact behind the fiction? Did Hannibal really have an elephant era? Did a hailstorm change history? Let's find out. Right, Professor Joe, before we meet Hannibal, I think we probably need a quick crash course on the Carthaginians. Actually, you know what? I'm going to turn to Darren and put you on the spot.
4:41 Speaker 05 Oh, there you go.
4:42 Greg Jenner? Where was Carthage in? I'll give you North Africa.
4:45 Speaker 05 Yeah, North Africa, okay, yeah. How north are we talking?
4:49 Greg Jenner? Pretty north.
4:50 Speaker 05 Okay.
4:51 Greg Jenner? On the sea.
4:52 Speaker 05 By the sea?
4:53 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
4:53 Speaker 05 That doesn't really help me. Like Egypt?
4:57 Greg Jenner? West of.
4:58 Speaker 05 West of?
4:58 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
4:59 Speaker 05 What's west of Egypt? I like Morocco.
5:01 Greg Jenner? Too west.
5:02 Speaker 05 Too west? Ah!
5:03 Greg Jenner? I'm going back to Joe. Joe.
5:05 Speaker 05 Oh, no, keep doing it for me for a little bit. We could be here for an hour.
5:09 Speaker 04 It's right in the middle. So, ancient Carthage is in modern Tunisia. It's actually now a seaside suburb of modern Tunis. Really lovely, in fact, lots of great cafes there. But it was originally founded as a colonial settlement in the 9th century BCE by people we now call Phoenicians. And these are sailors who were based in the ports of the Levant, so modern Lebanon, more or less.
5:35 Greg Jenner? Okay.
5:35 Speaker 04 So cities like Tyre and Sidon and so on. I mean, the archaeologist's estimate has about 30,000 people after about a century, which would make it an extremely, a massive city in the Western Mediterranean in that era. It expands by controlling access to other ports in the Western Mediterranean and to the coastline. It really forbids other cities from sailing along any of the coastlines that are interesting to it. And then later on in its history, it actually expands inland as well, becomes a farming state into North Africa. So, by the 4th century BCE, so 500 years after it's founded, the Carthaginians control
6:16 Speaker 04 territory and trade across a huge swathe of North Africa, but also the islands of Sardinia, most of Sicily, and a lot of southern Spain as well.
6:27 Greg Jenner? Let's meet Hannibal. He is the most famous of all the Carthaginians. You know, the Carthaginian Empire is vast, you said, 500 years already, but we're going to talk about Hannibal today. So... When was he born? What was his family background? Is he parsh? Is he, you know, is he kind of working class, works his way up?
6:41 Speaker 04 So Carthage is an oligarchic republic. So it's a bit like Rome. It's got a public assembly, but it's mostly, the people in charge are mostly from fairly ancient aristocratic families. And that's the background, that's Hannibal's background. So he's born in 247 BCE. He's the son of a general called Hamilcar Barca. And this general fought in the First Punic War against Rome. He has two brothers, we know that. They're called Hasdrubal and Mago. He has three sisters. Nobody bothers to tell us what they're called, unfortunately.
7:14 Greg Jenner? Well, you know.
7:17 Speaker 05 A different time.
7:18 Speaker 04 And, and what's, what's been going on when Hannibal is born is this, this first war between Carthage and Rome. And basically the relationship between the two cities gets increasingly strained due to various central Mediterranean politics. And war breaks out in 264. And Hamilcar, who's Hannibal's father, he's sent to Sicily to prosecute this war in 247. So the same year that Hannibal is born until 241, when Rome defeats Carthage at the Battle of the Egade Islands off western Sicily. And that's the end of the First Punic War. It's the first really big defeat ever.
7:55 Greg Jenner? So this is the first Punic War. The fact it's the first one tells us more are coming.
7:59 Speaker 04 Yeah, exactly, exactly.
8:01 Greg Jenner? Okay, so the dad, Hamilcar Barca, so he's been fighting in Sicily. Where do you think his son grows up?
8:08 Speaker 05 Did his son grow up in Sicily?
8:09 Greg Jenner? I mean, that's a sensible guess.
8:11 Speaker 05 Well, you wouldn't take your son with you, would you?
8:13 Greg Jenner? No, he grows up in Spain.
8:15 Speaker 05 What? Was that just to protect him? Did he, did he, was that just to protect his family? How did he grow up in Spain?
8:20 Speaker 04 No, because once Rome has taken Sicily and Sardinia, basically what Carthage wants to do is consolidate its holdings in southern Spain, which it's had some level of sort of interest in before that. But it's really the only place left that it can really expand now without kind of hitting the Romans again. So Hamilcar, who's really, I mean, his reputation is really enhanced by what happened in the First Punic War, even though they lost, he was the big Carthaginian star. So he takes a force to Spain in 237. And once he gets there, he basically acts a bit like an independent prince. But it's all with the permission of the Carthaginian Senate. And the reason that Hannibal goes with him, I mean, the story goes that he's, he's nine years old when his dad leaves to go to Spain. And he begs to join the expedition.
9:06 Speaker 04 And so his dad lets him and he doesn't get back to Carthage until he is 45 years old.
9:10 Speaker 05 Whoa.
9:12 Speaker 04 Yeah.
9:12 Greg Jenner? Nine.
9:13 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah. And then his dad dies in battle in 229, 2298. Hannibal's about 18 at this point. And obviously he's too young to take command. So the command of the Carthaginian armies in Spain goes to his brother-in-law, who's called Hasdrubal the Fair.
9:30 Speaker 05 Great name.
9:31 Greg Jenner? I mean, we've got Hammelcar, Hasdrubal, Hannibal and another Hasdrubal. I mean, Hasdrubal, yeah. Hammelcar, Hasdrubal, Hannibal and Hasdrubal. Darren, are you keeping up with the Carthaginians?
9:41 Speaker 05 I love that. Yes, I am. I'm on series three.
9:45 Greg Jenner? How do you think the brothers get on? How do you think? Because Hannibal's got brothers, he's got sisters, how do you reckon?
9:49 Speaker 05 They probably didn't like each other. There's probably a power struggle of some sorts. Older, taking over, he's old enough to fight. Did they all grow up in Spain?
9:56 Speaker 04 A lot of the family do seem to kind of grow up in Spain together. And they actually, they kind of get on okay. And Hasdrubal seems to be a pretty good replacement for Hammelcar. And we don't know very much about what Hannibal's doing in this period, but he's definitely leading some of the military campaigns against some of the local populations into their territory.
10:15 Greg Jenner? He eventually manages to replace his brother-in-law as the supreme commander in Iberia. How do you think he manages it?
10:22 Speaker 05 Did he kill him?
10:23 Speaker 04 He didn't kill him, no.
10:24 Speaker 05 Did he?
10:25 Speaker 04 No. Poor old Hasdrubal gets assassinated by one of their allies, apparently. About 222, 2221.
10:31 Speaker 05 Sounds like, sounds like a Roman to me.
10:36 Speaker 04 Who knows what may have been going on behind the scenes? But, but what happens is that the Carthaginian troops then choose Hannibal as their new leader. But now he's 26, such a kind of respectable age. And he's unanimously confirmed by the Carthaginian people and Senate back at home as well, even though he hasn't been home at this point for almost 20 years.
10:54 Greg Jenner? Oh, wow.
10:55 Speaker 04 And he starts campaigning straight away. So after a year, he's moved further into Iberia than either Hammelcar or Hasdrubal after him. You know, we hear he treats his troops very well. And he's also a natural risk taker and he's a great soldier.
11:09 Greg Jenner? Hannibal was now spending his twenties, like many lads do, annoying the Spanish locals, rampaging around with his buddies. And then he falls out with Rome. How has he fallen? I mean, look, come on, we know what's happening next, but like, what's, what's the sort of story here?
11:22 Speaker 04 Okay, so there's a town called Saguntum on the east coast of Spain. It's now a suburb of Valencia, and it's the last holdout against Hannibal and the Carthaginians, south of the Ebro River. And so the Saguntines appeal to Rome for support against Hannibal. And Rome officially warns Hannibal to leave Saguntum alone, even though it's south of the Ebro. And so it's really in Hannibal's sphere. So he calls their bluff and he besieges the city anyway. And, you know, we hear he kind of directly engages with the fighting. He only leaves the battlefield when he takes a wound to the sternum, and he has to go off and deal with another uprising at that point.
12:03 Greg Jenner? Wow. Okay, so he's sort of poked the bullet a little bit because you've kind of, the Romans are like, don't. And he's like, I'm gonna.
12:13 Greg Jenner? We now get the Second Punic War in 218 BCE. I mean, we get a proper famous Roman now, Scipio. Can you tell us about him?
12:22 Speaker 04 So Rome sends an embassy to Carthage in 218 to declare war. Their initial plan is to send a consul called Publius Cornelius Scipio. He's actually the father of the famous Scipio to fight Hannibal in Spain. And their idea is they're going to send one consul to Spain and another consul to Africa. So two consuls, take the Roman army in two directions and get rid of the whole threat in both directions. But then what happens is that Hannibal, again, basically decides to kind of call their bluff, and he actually decides to invade Italy himself, which they are not expecting. You know what? I'm really liking this, Hannibal. I didn't expect that at all. That's great. He doesn't care, does he?
13:06 Speaker 04 So he basically has to take his troops and elephants overland from Spain to Italy. Because Rome essentially controls the sea at this point.
13:15 Speaker 05 You imagine going to a battle, you've never seen an elephant.
13:17 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
13:17 Speaker 05 You're like, what is that? What? That's a very good... Yeah, I never thought of that. Yeah, I guess they don't have Discovery Channel. They can't check these, they can't check these things out. That would terrify me if I went to a battle and there's an elephant there.
13:28 Greg Jenner? Darren, obvious question. How would you convince a bunch of angry elephants to cross some mountains? He's crossing from Spain to Italy, so he's going over the Alps. Well, he's going over the Pyrenees first. Pyrenees and then the Alps.
13:38 Speaker 05 That's a very good, that's a very good point. Do peanuts work? I've seen peanuts work quite a bit. Maybe a trail of peanuts just... Maybe some cashews going off a mountain.
13:51 Greg Jenner? 14,000 tonnes of peanuts along hundreds of miles of mountain pathway.
13:59 Greg Jenner? Okay, Joe, how do you convince elephants to go off mountain pistes?
14:03 Speaker 04 Okay, so the real problem with the elephants isn't actually the mountains. The elephants can kind of manage the mountains. It's the river. It's when he has to cross the Rhone in between the Pyrenees and the Alps. And elephants really don't like crossing water. So what he has to do is construct a kind of bridge of rafts and then cover it in earth. So the elephants think that it's land. But then they leave the female elephants on first, so the other elephants will just follow. So that's also, that's also how they get...
14:33 Speaker 05 It's like a night out, that is.
14:34 Speaker 04 So eventually, they do. But we don't know. He leaves Siberia with 37 elephants. And we honestly don't know how many arrive in Italy.
14:42 Greg Jenner? He leaves with 37 and he shows up with...
14:45 Speaker 04 We don't, we don't know.
14:46 Greg Jenner? Two elephants.
14:47 Speaker 04 Some elephants.
14:48 Greg Jenner? Okay, so he leaves Iberia with 50,000 soldiers.
14:51 Speaker 04 Yeah.
14:51 Greg Jenner? On foot, 9,000 cavalry, 37 elephants. How many soldiers do you think he arrives with, Darren?
14:58 Speaker 05 I'm gonna go 20,000.
15:00 Greg Jenner? Ah, that's bang on.
15:01 Speaker 05 Whoa, come on!
15:03 Greg Jenner? That's amazing. As far as we can tell, Joe, he arrives 20,000 soldiers to the left and about 6,000 cavalry. So he's lost more than half his army. And then what? Was there a Roman army waiting for him to ambush him?
15:15 Speaker 04 Yeah, there is, but it doesn't do them much good because he has this series of incredible victories. In his first months in Italy, he wins the Battle of Thikinas in November, like right after he's crossed the Alps. He wins the Battle of Trebia in December, then the following June, he wins this enormous battle at Lake Trazemini. This is all kind of northern central Italy. And then he carries on south. And in the autumn of 2017, there's a-
15:43 Greg Jenner? 2017 B.C., right?
15:45 Speaker 04 Sorry, sorry, yeah, 2017.
15:46 Speaker 05 Sure, okay.
15:47 Speaker 04 Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. In the autumn of 217, Rome has a temporary dictator because it's a state of emergency, Quintus Fabius Maximus. And he tries to block a pass in Apulia and ambush the Carthaginian army. But what Hannibal does is that he ties burning brands to the horns of 2,000 cattle and drives them up against the Roman troops. So that gets rid of the Roman troops.
16:12 Greg Jenner? So he sets fire to live cows and charges them at the Romans?
16:15 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
16:16 Speaker 05 He's got a lot of time on his hands, hasn't he?
16:19 Speaker 04 He's doing very well. He also gains loads of allies in Italy. And then comes the Battle of Cannae. And this is the biggest defeat of all for the Romans, unsurprisingly. And they've got more troops. So Rome's got somewhere between 70,000 and 85,000 troops. There are 50,000 Carthaginians and allies at this point. But the reason that Hannibal wins is this amazingly brilliant tactic, which is that he has a deliberately weak centre in his army to attract the Romans to attack him in the centre. And then he has cavalry, a very strong cavalry on both wings, with one of his nephews, and his called Hanno, and another guy called Hasdrubal on the other side.
17:03 Greg Jenner? Another one, yeah.
17:04 Speaker 04 And so what happens is that the Romans kind of surge into the centre where they see the weakness. And then they're surrounded by the cavalry. And this is complete and bit of tactical brilliance on Hannibal's part. And Rome suffers incredibly heavy losses.
17:17 Greg Jenner? So geographically, where is he now, Hannibal, after this big win at Cannae?
17:21 Speaker 04 After Cannae, he's in the south of Italy.
17:23 Greg Jenner? So how close is he to Rome?
17:24 Speaker 04 About 400 kilometres.
17:27 Greg Jenner? Darren, would you? Would you march on Rome?
17:29 Speaker 05 I would so go into Rome. Yeah, I think he went into Rome and just tried to take over. And just tried to kill whoever he could kill. And then just set fire to a bunch of cats with like little daggers. And they just all ran in there.
17:46 Greg Jenner? Joe, does he march on Rome? Because Darren would.
17:50 Speaker 04 No, no, he doesn't. He doesn't. No, I'm afraid he's really sensible. I mean, what he does is he consolidates.
17:56 Speaker 05 The sensible thing you said about him. I'm actually in shock that he didn't do that.
18:01 Greg Jenner? Okay.
18:01 Speaker 04 But eventually, so he does eventually march on Rome, but it's five years later in 211. And so Hannibal marches right up to the gates of Rome, but he doesn't attack.
18:11 Speaker 05 He doesn't attack? Is it just a show, I can do this? Like, I can come in any time I want?
18:18 Speaker 04 Well, the later Roman sources make it out to all be a kind of terrible mistake. That there's a hailstorm that he takes as an unfavorable omen. And he also hears that Rome is diverting troops to Spain at this point. So he thinks they're not taking him seriously. And he basically chickens out. But, I mean, that's quite important to Romans to make him seem like a really superstitious, kind of scared person.
18:44 Greg Jenner? So this is a later Roman historian called Livy?
18:46 Speaker 04 Exactly. This is Livy's version of the story. But actually, I think a much more likely way of telling the story is that he never intended to actually conquer Rome. It's much too big a job. And also, there's no real profit to Carthage in acquiring Rome or destroying it. I think the strategy behind his whole campaign is to reduce Roman power in Italy and then in the Mediterranean more generally. Basically, to put Rome back in its box. I mean, what's the really bad piece of luck for Hannibal? Is that on the very day that he arrives at Rome, unbeknownst to him, the Romans have actually called a muster of soldiers in the city because they're recruiting some new legions. So actually, Rome is full of soldiers.
19:31 Speaker 05 He got there on the parade day.
19:32 Speaker 04 He got there, basically, yeah.
19:33 Speaker 05 On everyone's day.
19:36 Greg Jenner? This is a hinge point in history, right? Because if he'd crushed Rome in that moment,
19:39 Speaker 04 Yeah.
19:39 Greg Jenner? we might never have had the Roman Empire.
19:41 Speaker 04 Yeah.
19:42 Greg Jenner? Okay, so the hailstorm is probably a later sort of Roman literary sort of legend or whatever. But he doesn't take Rome and then it doesn't kind of work out. So he gets sort of trapped down in Brutium.
19:52 Speaker 04 Yeah.
19:53 Greg Jenner? And he's there for four years.
19:55 Speaker 04 Four years, exactly, yeah. What goes on in this period is that Scipio, Scipio the son.
20:01 Greg Jenner? Oh, the good one, the good one.
20:02 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah. He gets elected commander in Spain and he captures. So he start, they start, the Romans start to make real progress in Spain. So basically the Bar kids lose control of Iberia. Scipio, having done quite a bit of damage to the Carthaginians in Spain, he now takes the war to North Africa. So the Romans actually invade North Africa and Scipio sets fire to a Carthaginian camp near Utica, which is west of Carthage in Tunisia. They win 203 now. And Scipio then defeats the Carthaginians in battle. A Carthaginian force led by another hazdrabal, I'm afraid.
20:40 Greg Jenner? Another one.
20:40 Speaker 04 Hadrabal Disco, yeah. And at that point, the Carthaginians sue for peace and they try and blame everything on the Bar kids.
20:46 Speaker 05 Of course they do.
20:47 Speaker 04 So Scipio orders them to withdraw from Gaul, Spain and Italy. They have to give up their navy apart from 20 ships and they have to pay a huge fine.
20:58 Greg Jenner? Oh.
20:58 Speaker 04 Now, this, then it gets a bit tricky. So they provisionally accept this treaty, but it hasn't been formally signed off. And at that point, the Council of Carthaginian Elders finally summon Hannibal home to Africa.
21:12 Greg Jenner? So he's been at war in Italy for 15 years.
21:14 Speaker 04 Yeah.
21:15 Greg Jenner? And then suddenly he gets a letter saying, get home.
21:17 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, come home. Yeah, yeah. And then what happens is that Carthage breaks this, certainly what Rome think is a truce, by looting Roman supply vessels. Some Roman envoys get attacked by a mob at Carthage. And the Council of Elders encourages Hannibal to go after Scipio. And then you have the Battle of Zama and this is the final big Roman victory in Africa. Yeah. There is a final peace treaty, which means that Carthage now can't fight wars outside Africa. They have to pay 10,000 silver talents.
21:53 Speaker 05 Oh, no.
21:55 Speaker 04 A massive amount of money. They have to hand over all their elephants. And they have to reduce their fleet to 10 ships, the rest of the fleet is burned.
22:04 Greg Jenner? 10 ships? It's handing over your elephants like in a movie where a sort of maverick cop has to turn his shield and gun.
22:12 Speaker 05 There you go, chief.
22:13 Greg Jenner? Yeah. Sorry, Sarge.
22:16 Speaker 04 He does disappear from the records for a few years after that. But then he comes back, he comes back, so he comes back to politics in Carthage, you know, where he hasn't been since he was a child. He becomes one of the two choffets, who are the two kind of senior magistrates at Carthage. 196 B.C. But the next year, he gets into trouble with Rome. So the Romans by now have moved on, they're fighting the king of Syria, the Seleucid king, Antiochus III. And they hear that Hannibal is in contact with Antiochus.
22:55 Speaker 05 I love that.
22:55 Speaker 04 And even though...
22:56 Speaker 05 You can't let it go.
22:57 Speaker 04 Yeah, even though Scipio himself defends Hannibal and the Roman Senate, they believe that he's plotting behind their back.
23:04 Speaker 05 Wow. Oh, and he was, it was burning inside him, I bet. Just so angry. All those winds and that one time, everything just goes downhill.
23:14 Greg Jenner? I mean, so, Joe, in terms of what we know, was Hannibal colluding with Antiochus of Syria?
23:20 Speaker 04 Okay, we don't know, but when Rome asks Carthage to indict him, he's outlawed and he does flee to Antiochus's court. So, you know. And he does then play kind of a minor role in Antiochus's war with Rome. But then the Romans defeat the Seleucids and again, they demand that they give up Hannibal. And he escapes again. He goes further east and he ends up in the kingdom of Bithynia on the Black Sea.
23:50 Greg Jenner? Darren, do you know what happens to Hannibal in the end?
23:52 Speaker 05 No, no, he, I mean, he defeats the Romans.
23:56 Speaker 04 Oh, you're clinging to that story, eh?
23:58 Speaker 05 It just sounds great. It's either, ah, no, I don't know what happens to him. How, okay, how does he die? I don't think it's gonna be in battle.
24:08 Greg Jenner? Okay.
24:08 Speaker 05 I think, I, I, just one of those like stupid deaths that happens back then or something. That's what I honestly, I really think it was. Was it an animal?
24:17 Speaker 05 Did an elephant accidentally fall on him?
24:20 Speaker 04 That is not...
24:21 Speaker 05 What happened to my new hero?
24:25 Speaker 04 Reportedly, he always carried poison with him in case he was captured by the Romans. So, he seems to have died by suicide sometime around 182 BCE.
24:36 Greg Jenner? It's quite the life, Darren.
24:38 Speaker 05 Quite the life, yeah. He's one heck of a traveller. I just, I really like the fact that he just wouldn't give up. He just always had it in his heart that he just didn't like them, just wanted to get them, and he nearly did. Ah, poor guy.
24:54 Greg Jenner? Hannibal of Carthage, quite the career. The Nuance Window!
25:02 Greg Jenner? Okay, time now for the Nuance Window. This is where Darren and I sit silently in the command tent to strategise for two minutes, while Professor Joe takes centre stage to tell us something we need to know about ancient North Africa. So, my stopwatch is ready. Take it away, Professor Quinn.
25:17 Speaker 04 Thank you. Okay, so after all these men and all their battles, I want to talk about a Carthaginian woman who played her own important role in the war between Carthage and Rome by marrying not one but two Numidian kings, and in the end proved braver than both of them. So, Sophanisba was an aristocratic Carthaginian woman, Saffanbal in her own language. We hear that she was beautiful, learned, musical, and she was the daughter of the general Hasdrubal Disco, who we've seen being defeated by the Romans in 203. And what we're told is that in 206, she had been engaged to the local Numidian king Massenissa,
25:58 Speaker 04 and he controlled the inland region beyond Carthaginian territory, so in a lot of what's now Tunisia. The Carthaginian Senate, though, ordered her to marry his rival Syphax instead, and Syphax ruled most of what's now Algeria, from Kirtam on Constantine. Syphax was considered a more important strategic ally to Carthage than Massenissa. And Sophanisba accepted this decision, but Massenissa wasn't happy, and this is supposedly what persuaded him to throw his support and his crack cavalry behind Rome instead of Carthage. And this was absolutely crucial for Rome's eventual victory at Zama.
26:39 Speaker 04 Meanwhile, Sophanisba had persuaded her new husband Syphax to stick with Carthage in the final stages of the war. But in the end, after Scipio defeated Hasdrubaldisco in 203 with Massanissa's help, Massanissa himself wins a decisive victory over Syphax with Roman help. And he takes the other king prisoner, and he comes to Certe to take possession of his palace and his wife. And so Sophanisba and Massanissa finally marry. But when Scipio, when the Roman general finds out that Sophanisba had played a decisive role in Syphax's calculations against Rome, he demands that Massanissa turn her over to him as a prisoner. And that's not going to happen.
27:22 Speaker 04 So instead, Massanissa offers his new bride a cup of poison, which she courageously drinks, and then he takes Scipio her corpse. I have to say, he can't have been too upset, though, because he then remains an ally of Rome for 50 years, so that's men for you.
27:40 Greg Jenner? What a story. Thank you, Joe. I mean, Sophanisba, she really, I mean, she played quite a dangerous game there.
27:48 Speaker 04 Yeah. I mean, she was in all the rooms where it happened.
27:51 Greg Jenner? Right.
27:52 Speaker 05 Did you say, did she know it was poison? Or did he?
27:55 Speaker 04 Yeah, she knew.
27:56 Speaker 05 She knew, she knew.
27:57 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah. No, she was absolutely in on it. She didn't want to be a prisoner of Rome any more than he did.
28:00 Greg Jenner? Wow.
28:01 Speaker 05 She was like, are you going to take it? No, no, no, afterwards. You first.
28:05 Greg Jenner? I've just cleaned my teeth, actually. I don't want to. Thank you so much, Darren. And of course, thank you so much, Professor Joe. Listener, if you want more from Darren, of course, check out the episode on Victorian bodybuilding. That was also huge fun. For more plucky generals from history, we've got episodes on Joan of Arc, Julius Caesar the Younger, well, the young Julius Caesar, Robert Bruce, of course. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with friends. I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We had the amazing Professor Josephine Quinn from the University of Cambridge. Thank you, Joe.
28:37 Speaker 04 It's been a pleasure. Thank you.
28:39 Greg Jenner? And in Comedy Corner, we had the dazzling Darren Harriet. Thank you so much, Darren. Thank you so much for having me. Loved it. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we lay siege to another tricky historical topic. But for now, I must go and teach elephants how to ski. Winter Olympics, here we come. Bye.
28:58 Greg Jenner? Your Dead to Me is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4.
29:12 Speaker 06 I'm Rory Stewart and I want to talk about heroes. When I was a child, I imagined a heroic future for myself in which I would achieve great things and die sacrificing my life for a noble cause before I was 30. But my experiences in the Middle East and in politics showed me that there was something deeply wrong with my idea of heroism. From BBC Radio 4, my podcast The Long History of Heroism explores ideas of what it meant to be a hero through time. How have these ideas changed? Who are the heroes we need today? Listen to Rory Stewart: The Long History of Heroism, first on BBC Sounds.
29:54 Speaker 00 Sometimes we all need an extra helping hand, especially with a tricky business problem you've been putting off. Claude is the AI for just that. It's the collaborator that understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, not for you. And Claude isn't just for quick questions. Hand it a whole task, like turning a folder of scattered notes into a report, and it does the work and hands back something finished that you can open and edit. Claude can now draft a doc or deck right in front of you, and Claude Design now lives right inside Claude. Describe the website or prototype you're picturing, attach your design system, and it comes back in your own design language, ready to edit right on the canvas. It works with your files and the tools you already use, like Gmail and Slack.
30:39 Speaker 00 And whether you're debugging code at midnight, building a financial model, or strategising your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at claude.ai/solve. That's claude.ai/solve. And check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all of the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude.ai/solve.
31:05 Speaker 07 Ever wondered what you would do if you found yourself lost in the wild? If disaster struck, would you make the right decisions to stay alive? Real Survival Stories from the Noiser Podcast Network brings you astonishing tales of ordinary people thrust into extraordinary situations.
31:21 Speaker 08 It's the biggest tiger shark I've ever seen in my life. So I just swam. I just swam and swam as fast as I could.
31:29 Speaker 09 I realized those two parachutes tied up together is what a dead man sees. I am not going to survive.
31:36 Speaker 07 Real Survival Stories. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Previous Alexandria (Radio Edit) Next Marie Antoinette (Radio Edit) Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated