Hannibal, the son of Hamilcar Barca 247 BC – ca. 183 BC) was a Carthaginian military commander and tactician, later also working in other professions, who is popularly credited as one of the finest commanders in history. He lived during a period of tension in the Mediterranean, when Rome (then the Roman Republic) established its supremacy over other great powers such as Carthage , Macedon, Syracuse and the Seleucid empire. He is one of the best-known Carthaginian commanders. His most famous achievement was at the outbreak of the Second Punic War, when he marched an army, which included war elephants, from Iberia over the Pyrenees and the Alps into northern Italy.
During his invasion of Italy, he defeated the Romans in a series of battles, including those at Trebia, Trasimene and Cannae. After the Battle of Cannae, Capua, then the second largest city in the Roman Republic, defected from Rome and joined Hannibal. Hannibal lacked the siege equipment necessary to attack the heavily defended city of Rome. He maintained an army in Italy for more than a decade afterward, never losing a major engagement, but he was never able to push the war through to a conclusion. During that period, the Roman armies regrouped. A Roman counter-invasion of Africa forced him to return to Carthage, where he was defeated in the Battle of Zama. The defeat forced the Carthaginian Senate to send him into exile. During this exile, he lived at the Seleucid court, where he acted as military advisor to Antiochus III in his war against Rome. Defeated in a naval battle, Hannibal fled again, this time to the Bithynian court.
Hannibal is universally ranked as one of the greatest military commanders and tacticians in history. Military historian Theodore Ayrault Dodge once famously called Hannibal the "father of strategy", because his greatest enemy, Rome, came to adopt elements of his military tactics in its own strategic arsenal. This praise has earned him a strong reputation in the modern world and he was regarded as a "gifted strategist" by men like Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington. His life has been the basis for a number of films and documentaries.