In the entry for December 18, WIkipedia notes:
- 218 BC - Second Punic War: Battle of the Trebia - Hannibal’s Carthaginian forces defeat those of the Roman Republic.
In one of my five years of studying Latin, I had to translate parts of Livy’s (59 BC to AD 17) The War with Hannibal.
Synopsis
In The War with Hannibal, Livy (59 BC AD 17) chronicles the events of the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage, until the Battle of Zama in 202 BC. He vividly recreates the immense armies of Hannibal, complete with elephants, crossing the Alps; the panic as they approached the gates of Rome; and the decimation of the Roman army at the Battle of Lake Trasimene. Yet it is also the clash of personalities that fascinates Livy, from great debates in the Senate to the historic meeting between Scipio and Hannibal before the decisive battle.
It was during the Second Punic War that Hannibal, a Carthaginian commander and military genius, defeated the Romans by winning several early key battles. Despite heavy losses Hannibal led an army of roughly 80,000 men (disputed), complete with a herd of 37 war elephants, from Iberia over the Pyrenees and the Alps (!) into Northern Italy. The feat was accomplished in under a month.
Excerpt:
Livy 21.32.6-37.6; translated by Iana Scott-Kilvert
Getting on the move at dawn, the army struggled slowly forward over snow-covered ground, the hopelessness of utter exhaustion in every face.Seeing their despair, Hannibal rode ahead and at a point of vantage which afforded a prospect of a vast extent of country, he gave the order to halt, pointing to Italy far below, and the Po Valley beyond the foothills of the Alps. ‘My men,’ he said, ‘you are at this moment passing the protective barrier of Italy - nay more, you are walking over the very walls of Rome. Henceforward all will be easy going - no more hills to climb. After a fight or two you will have the capital of Italy, the citadel of Rome, in the hollow of your hands.’
…The track was almost everywhere precipitous, narrow, and slippery; it was impossible for a man to keep his feet; the least stumble meant a fall, and a fall a slide, so that there was indescribable confusion, men and beasts stumbling and slipping on top of each other.
…But even so he was no luckier; progress was impossible, for though there was good foothold in the quite shallow layer of soft fresh snow which had covered the old snow underneath, nevertheless as soon as it had been trampled and dispersed by the feet of all those men and animals, there was left to tread upon only the bare ice and liquid slush of melting snow underneath. The result was a horrible struggle, the ice affording no foothold in any case, and least of all on a steep slope; when a man tried by hands or knees to get on his feet again, even those useless supports slipped from under him and let him down; there were no stumps or roots anywhere to afford a purchase to either foot or hand; in short, there was nothing for it but to roll and slither on the smooth ice and melting snow.
In art history and currently on exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, we find:
J. M. W. Turner
Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps
Oil on Canvas, exhibited 1812This picture exemplifies Turner’s achievement in the Sublime, combining personal experience with complex historical and literary associations. The picture originated in observations of a storm in Yorkshire, though it represents Hannibal’s invasion of Italy in 218BC. Turner does not show the General himself, but focuses instead on the distress of Hannibal’s army. He thus aims at a universal, pessimistic vision of mankind, a theme Turner elaborated in poetry written to accompany this work. Nonetheless, the picture invites a contemporary parallel, between Hannibal and Napoleon, who had crossed the Alps to invade Italy in 1797.(From the display caption August 2004)
