It is a great temptation for a writer or filmmaker, too much, to miss the opportunity to reflect a personal encounter between two great antagonists, who would have starred in a more or less important historical episode, even when it is not proven that they actually came into direct contact. There are several cases in literature and movies, such as the hair-raising interview between General Gordon and the Mahdi in the movie Khartum or the unexpected incident between Crassus and Spartacus in the homonymous novel (and its film version). But one of the juiciest is the one allegedly maintained by Hannibal and Scipio, which is reviewed by Santiago Posteguillo in his bookLa treason de Roma .
To be exact, the anecdote is not original to Posteguillo but is taken from three outstanding classical historians:Tito Livio, Apiano Alejandrino and Plutarco. Except for small circumstantial details, which are not important, the background and practically the forms are almost the same and the meaning of that conversation is the same:it is a dialogue between both in which the Carthaginian, at the request of the other, lists which he considered to be they were the best generals in history.
Before seeing it, the context must be taken into account, seven years after the end of the Second Punic War, which saw Hannibal's defeat against his opponent, Publius Cornelius Scipio, after a disastrous clash for the former (twenty thousand dead against fifteen hundred) in which his eighty fighting elephants were neutralized (most perished and eleven were captured), his cavalry could not contain the enemy's thrust (supported by the Numidians of Masinisa) and the three lines of infantry fell successively one after the other. after another despite their numerical superiority. That victory earned Scipio the agnomen (nickname) of African .
Hannibal was able to escape and take refuge in Carthage, abandoning the army to devote himself to politics for the democratic party, the one sponsored by the Barcas, to face the harsh peace conditions imposed by Rome. But the measures adopted for this, which harmed the oligarchic class and generated animosity from the sufetes (senators) of the opposition, led to accusing him of corruption and even treason (for not having entered Rome when he had the opportunity), even requesting a new intervention of the Romans against him. These used the contacts that Hannibal had with the Seleucid king Antiochus III and, thus, seven years after Zama, Hannibal had to go into exile in 195 BC
Indeed, it was in Syria where he found a welcome, since Antiochus was about to challenge Rome, the only major obstacle he found to his expansion across the Mediterranean, in a kind of reissue of what had happened before with Carthage. The friction had begun around 196 BC, with both powers trying to attract the alliance of the Greek peoples, since the Macedonians of Philip V, who decades earlier had signed a treaty with Syria, were defeated by the Romans that year in Cinoscéfalas and forced to become his allies.
Meanwhile, Antiochus took over Egypt and launched incursions against Asia Minor, organizing in his favor the Aetolian League (a federation of Greek cities except the Peloponnesian, which were grouped in the Achaean League and refused their support for fear of falling under the domination of the others). In this state of affairs, Hannibal's military advice was very useful to Antiochus, who recommended that he take the operations to Italian soil and offered to take charge, but there too he ran into misgivings at court and in the end, he he worked so hard to highlight the shortcomings of the Syrian army that a haughty Antiochus denied him the coveted command (and he would pay for it with defeat).
In 193 BC, Scipio was included in a Senate delegation whose mission was to visit Syria and try to negotiate an agreement with Antiochus that would prevent a war that seemed increasingly insurmountable. Both sides met in the city of Ephesus, since the Seleucid king had begun his campaign in Pisidia (the southeastern part of Asia Minor) and had established his headquarters there. It was then that the Roman found himself face to face with his old Carthaginian adversary, having a memorable conversation. Let's see how Tito Livio tells it in Ab urbe condita (Liber XXXV, 14):
Tito Livio used Polybius as his main source and, although Scipio was not a saint of his devotion, compared to the terrible image he had of Hannibal («In him there was nothing true, nothing sacred, there was no fear of God, nor jury law, or religiosity» ) comes out quite well. Something similar happens with Apiano, a native of Alexandria, a Greco-Roman historian, author of a great work entitled Roman History whose eleventh volume, one of the few that are preserved complete, is entitled De rebus Syriacis . It is popularly known as Syriaca and in his account he includes the anecdote between Hannibal and Scipio, providing the fact that they met in a gymnasium :
Needless to present the characters chosen by Hannibal, given the historical dimension they have. Alexander the Great was known as the Great , because after assuming the legacy of his father Philip he subdued all of Greece and united it in a campaign against Persia, the secular enemy, to avenge past attempts at conquest on Greek soil. Once that empire was conquered, he did not stop and continued, taking possession of Phenicia, Egypt and Mesopotamia and then continuing towards Asia and reaching northern India, at which time his men threatened mutiny if they did not return. A sudden illness killed him in 323 BC. He was never defeated in battle.
For his part, Pyrrhus was the basileus (king) of Epirus, a mountainous state in northwestern Greece, although he also briefly held the crown of Macedonia twice as he expanded his dominions into that region and into Thessaly. In the year 280 B.C. he jumped to the Italian peninsula in aid of Taranto, which faced the Roman Republic in two wars that bear his name (curiously, he also fought against the Carthaginians, then owners of Sicily). Pyrrhus triumphed in most of the battles, but Asculum was won with so many casualties that the expression pyrrhic victory has passed down to posterity. to refer to a success achieved at the cost of serious damage. Plutarch put these words in his mouth:“If we beat the Romans in another battle like this, we perish without remedy.”
As for the third candidate, Hannibal himself, before falling in Zama, he led a famous expedition against the Roman Republic starting from Hispania with an army that included thirty-eight elephants that were no obstacle in crossing the Pyrenees and the Alps, crushing the legions in a series of brilliant battles, some considered examples of tactical mastery and inspired by the lessons of Pyrrhus:Trebia, Trasimeno, Cannae...
He stayed in Italy for a decade and was about to take Rome, which he was unable to do due to lack of support from Carthage. He whom Cornelius Nepos described in De viris illustribus as "the greatest of generals" he could only be beaten by Scipio, who, as we saw, was desperate to be on the podium; Hannibal's last words were a deference to the other in that sense.
The fact is that there is no proof that that meeting in Ephesus took place. As we said at the beginning, it was too great a temptation not to imagine it and it is true that just four years after that supposed episode they were about to cross paths again in the Battle of Manganesia, when Scipio the African he accompanied his brother Lucius Cornelius as legate. Fate would have it that it could not be that time either, since the Roman could not go to the front due to illness while the Carthaginian had already been removed from command by Antiochus.