Hannibal

Hannibal was born in 247 BC into a Carthaginian military family still burning from defeat in the First Punic War; his father made him swear never to befriend Rome. In 218 BC he attacked Saguntum in Spain and triggered the Second Punic War, then invaded Italy by crossing the Alps with North African war elephants and a mixed Carthaginian-Celtic army. Over the next few years he won at Ticinus, Trebia, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae, inflicting staggering Roman losses and peeling away Rome's Italian allies. He occupied most of southern Italy for fifteen years, but Rome under Fabius Maximus avoided direct engagement, bleeding him through attrition while Carthaginian defeats in Spain cut off reinforcements. Scipio Africanus invaded North Africa and forced Hannibal home; he lost at Zama in 202 BC, ending the war. Afterward he won election as sufet and pushed through financial reforms to pay Rome's indemnity, which made enemies in Carthage's aristocracy and in Rome itself. He fled into exile, advised the Seleucid king Antiochus III against Rome, fled again after Antiochus lost at Magnesia, and finally took refuge in Bithynia, where he was betrayed and poisoned himself somet