1 - Hannibal and Scipio on Themselves

Summary

Hannibal and Scipio left no autobiographies, except that Hannibal in 205, before leaving Italy for Africa, inscribed a bilingual account of his military resources. Scipio’s contemporary funeral elogium (list of his offices and achievements, a kind of succinct obituary) does not survive (a much later one does). This chapter offers, by way of introduction, semi-fictional replacements for these missing documents and explains what Hannibal’s full inscription is likely to have contained. Other first-person evidence by the two men is quoted and discussed, such as letters reported in the literary sources. The chapter closes by asking what Hannibal and Scipio looked like. Appendix 1.1 lists and evaluates the sources for the book, and there is a sub-section on reliability of speeches. Appendix 1.2 addresses the problem of whether Plutarch’s lost Life of Scipio was about Hannibal’s opponent or Scipio Aemilianus, his younger relative by adoption. Appendix 1.3 is about ‘roving anecdotes’.