Who was in the wrong here?

CARTHAGINIAN FUCKING SHITS

>a men of the people
>he didnt wear anything fancy and he slept with his troops like another soldier
why was hannibal so based

>muh elephants

>he actually took the elephants over a river
>over 30 survived

because he was a black man

was the supposed surprise of crossing the alps in the winter instead of waiting for summer actually worth it? how bad would it have been to just wait for summer?
>american education

why didnt hannibal just do this instead of going over the alps and all that shit?

>muh second-best general of the Punic wars
>muh terrible strategy
>muh elephants

Carthagefags pls go and stay go

Rome pushed their shit in during the first Punic war, and the Carthaginian Navy could no longer project force the way that the Romans could.

>second-best
Scipio Africanus was overrated. His saving grace was picking the right Numidian cavalry corps to back.

Even later in life, when the two men met met, Scipio Africanus asked him who the three best generals of all time were, and was disappointed when Hannibal's choices were, in order
1. Alexander the Great
2. Pyrrhus of Epirus
3. himself

When Scipio asked him where he would have placed himself if he had won the battle of Zama, his response was "above the other two"

Quintus Fabius was the true genius of the Second Punic War, anyway.

this. The Shield of Rome gets far too little credit in the2nd punic war, people are always drawn to the flashy battles like Zama and Cannae and just wave off the brilliance of fabian strategy as a given that any power in rome's position would have done, when it was revolutionary in that no "honorable" power would think to employ such "shameful" strategem.

It's virtually impossible to predict.
The further back 'what ifs' get the more ridiculous the range of possible answers become.

>...when Africanus asked who, in Hannibal's opinion, was the greatest general, Hannibal named Alexander, the king of the Macedonians, because with a small force he had routed armies innumerable and because he had traversed the most distant regions, even to see which transcended human hopes, to the next request, as to whom he would rank second, Hannibal selected Pyrrhus; saying that he had been the first to teach the art of castrametation; besides, no one had chosen his ground or placed his troops more discriminatingly; he possessed also the art of winning men over to him, so that the Italian people's preferred the lordship of a foreign king to that of the Roman people, so long the master in that land. When he continued, asking whom Hannibal considered third, he named himself without hesitation. Then Scipio broke into a laugh and said 'What would you say if you had beaten me?' 'Then, beyond doubt' he replied, 'I should place myself before Alexander and before Pyrrhus and before all other generals.'

Tl;dr Hannibal just had a huge hate boner for the romans and could only begrudgingly and indirectly admit that Scipio was better than him

>Put Fabius in charge
>Defense is going well but people get pissy
>Reduce Fabius's power and go on the offensive
>Disastrous defeats, Rome looks vulnerable
>Fabius back in charge to pick up pieces
>People get pissy again
>Repeat
>He dies before seeing the final victory anyway
Truly fucked over by history

Let's not forget that Carthage followed a religion demanding child sacrifice.

Wasn't that uncommon at the time. Rome was a bit ahead of times on human sacrifice, but even there it was still only a social rather than legal taboo until about a century after the punic wars.

I think that Rome had an impact on the development of religion in the Mediterranean that influenced the development of Christianity, which would not have been created without the Roman occupation of Judea. As such Carthage would have had a larger impact on the religious development of the Mediterranean, Europe, and the Middle East.

Alt-history is great when it comes to "what if this closely-won battle had gone the other way" or "what if very unlikely thing X hadn't happened" or even grander scale things based on realistic ideas of events which could have occured.

Unfortunately, most alt-history ends up being:

>WHAT IF LE VIKINGS FOUGHT LE SAMURAI
>Let me tell you how I would have easily won world war 2
>If this hopeless force had just overcome this overwhelming force then this thing easily could have happened

Or, the worst of all,

>MY COUNTRY IS RELEVANT

T. Irish shitter sick of hearing about how we saved europe

Pls Desu

Everyone knows that Hannibal was the superior general and lost because the state backing him was simply not a logistical equal to the Roman Empire

"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose... That is not a weakness, it is life"

>lost because the state backing him was simply not a logistical equal to the Roman Empire
Still his fault, since he was the one who pushed for war. The carthaginian senate was aware of their own inferiority, leave it to Hannibal to basically commit national suicide in a bid for glory and a gamble for an eventuality proven unlikely barely 50 years earlier.

Not necessarily true.

Generals typically enjoy success to the extent of the freedom provided them by the state.

Others in this thread have talked about Quintus Fabius who is a great example of this. He had to fight popular opinion and political rivals every step of the way. Without these restrictions it's certainly fair to say his victories would likely be more pronounced.

One could make the same case for Hannibal. He proved on multiple occasions his own brilliance as well as the might of Carthage. Without the throttling down of troops and supplies he likely could have won further victories in the peninsula.

tldr
>Hannibal wuz
>Carthage wuz
>Political turmoil/infighting and competing interests cut his legs out from under him
>Got fukt at Zama because he knew he was slowly losing and picked the wrong battle to go for an all or nothing victory

As a follow up to this, Fabian strategy also proves this point somewhat. Fabius knew that a delaying strategy was most effective because similar to Rome itself, Carthage was eager for distinct victories and impatient towards long term military action. Ultimately generals must to some extent serve the whims of the people. If Hannibal had more time and wasn't for all intents and purposes cut off by Carthage, the Roman Empire as we know it probably wouldn't be a thing

Plutarch considers Hannibal in Italy as the greatest crisis Rome ever experienced

>Ofc he wrote that before Rome fell but you get my point

>Without the throttling down of troops and supplies he likely could have won further victories in the peninsula
Too bad that the reason why he didn't receive troops and supplies was due to his being surrounded by roman armies annihilating all attempts at supplying him. Carthage sent whole armies to reinforce and supply him, but none reached him before being intercepted and destroyed by Rome.
He threw himself deep into enemy territory with naught a care for his own supply lines. That's just bad strategy.

>If Hannibal had more time and wasn't for all intents and purposes cut off by Carthage
Might as well say 'if Fabius had been the general from beginning to end Hannibal would barely be a footnote in history'.

>Be Hannibal
>Establish overland supply route
>Leave garrison under dumbass Nephew
>Tell him to not engage Romans in pitched battle until less dumbass brother arrives
>Dumbass nephew fights pitched battle against Romans without reinforcements
>Loses
>Carthaginians lose supply lines

Sometimes the team lets you down my dude.... You can't fairly blame the idiocy and disobedience of Hanno on Hannibal. The overall strategy was sound, supply lines were in place, reinforcements were on the way, and Hanno just fucked the dog.

And no, even if Fabius was at the helm from the start and never ran into opposition to Fabian strategy, delaying is only viable against a more powerful army that is conquering your land. Hannibal would still be relevant

What do we know about Carthaginian civilisation?

Roman society was the most disgusting immoral society we have extant records from. A very 'white trash' empire. I'm deeply disturbed by how much our society admires these people.

...

Hannibal's strategy was to win a couple battles, hope that the italics would rise and abandon Rome, and hope the city would surrender rather than face prolonged warfare.
It's basically a carbon copy of Phyrrus' warplan from 50 years before, and it worked just as badly. That's not what I call 'sound'. Also you may want to specify what battle you're referring to.

>Roman society was the most disgusting immoral society we have extant records from.
More like the most immoral you know of, and even then only if it's the only one you know.

Yeah thats precisely what i said you autist.

Degeneracy legitimised by the state, no thanks.

Except the Romans were goddamn retarded when it came to building ships and started building them out of wood that wasn't dried and their first attempts all sank so I wouldn't say it was "at once"

Carthage didn't expand to conquer or exert social influence, mainly set up trade stations. So IF they were victorious, Rome would have still existed but another Italian city state like Capua would have had the most influence there. Also the Etrsucans could probably have been salvaged.

Rome were pretty much the aggressors the whole time.

1st Punic War Beginning: The aristocrats of Campania in Rome wanted to expand into Sicily.
1st Punic War Ending: The Carthaginian council of elders surrendered although Hamilcar Barca never lost a fight all because they sent out an inexperienced resupply flight who chose to fight while the supplies were still on their boats.

Afterwards Hanno the Shit wouldnt pay the mercenaries then failed fighting them then had to rely on Hamilcar Barca to deal with it.

2nd Punic War Beginning:
Rome breaks it's own treaty of Versailles tier retarded treaty by taking Sardinia. Then they demand the Carthaginians in Spain (Barcid clan) the not interfer with Sagentum attacking Carthage's allies deep in agreed upon Carthage territory (the divider was the Ebro river). So Hannibal, who's father was Hamilcar, attacked Sagentum so he'd have no enemy at his rear and crushed the Romans. However because Hanno the Shit wouldnt resupply are do anything meaningful, Hannibal did not have the supplies to Siege Rome.

Overall the 2nd Punic War ended in a Roman victory because Hanno the Shit wouldnt properly supply Hannibal and the Carthaginians did poorly in Spain and Philip V also did poorly. Scipio was a good general, but he could only beat Hannibal as Zama because only a fraction of Hannibal's troops were trained and they had to be divided by conscripts, veterans of Italy, and New foreign mercenaries.

TLdr: Hanno was shit, Rome were expansionist assholes.

They're fine. Ironically, declaring that you "saged" a thread (as a sort of downvote) literally is against the global rules.

He said that YOU know of. You, personally. He's saying that if you think Roman society is the most degenerate society we have records of, you know nothing about history. He's right.

syracuse historically hated carthage with a vengeance tho

This is the dumbest post I've read in a while, congrats.

Good job, you triggered me. Here's your (you)

Carthaginians had no moral ground kill or be killed.