During the second Punic War, the Carthaginian general Hannibal led his troops, 25,000 strong, over the Alps, along with not a few elephants. At least that is how the story goes. But, did you know that we don’t have any archaeological evidence to support the story?
That’s right, no one has found so much as a single Carthaginian coin in the Alps in over 2000 years. Further, you would think that 25,000 men and some elephants would leave a trail that someone would be able to find, but no one has been able convincingly to map the route. What’s more, we don’t have any contemporary accounts of the feat; everything we have is later, and either in Greek or Latin, nothing in Punic. To make matters even worse, our manuscripts are late, and in some cases fragmentary and contradictory.
Now, with all this negative evidence, you would think that people would be up in arms about the tale that has been foisted on unsuspecting students over the years. How do we know that it wasn’t just an invention of the Roman propaganda machine to justify the destruction of Carthage? After all, Cato the elder ended every speech with the friendly phrase Carthago delenda est (Carthage must be destroyed); not exactly what I would call a sympathetic attitude. The only power that could have derailed the Roman imperial monster was Carthage. Revisionist history would seem to be the clear answer. But is it?
Nope. Hannibal’s march through the mountains is in the history books; on the exams; in the research; National Geographic even is funding yet another attempt to find the route he used.
At the risk of being simplistic, what is the difference between this and the history that is recorded in the Hebrew bible? You get people complaining that the exodus and David and Saul are being foisted on unsuspecting youth, corrupting them forever. Ah, you say that is a theological worldview. Right. Do you really think the Romans didn’t have a theological worldview that comes through loud and clear in their histories?
This might come as a shock to your secular worldview, but the ancient world didn’t move without consulting the omens. Armies would face each other for days, with neither side making a move. Why? Because the omens weren’t right! You don’t want to fight without the gods on your side; you’re sure to lose. Yes, especially the Romans. They were probably the most superstitious around. Don’t believe me, read Livy sometime. They could portray the Carthaginians as the bad guys for practicing infant sacrifice, which they did, but don’t push them too hard about the vestal virgins that they buried alive in their panic. No, they weren’t above human sacrifice, if it would bring a victory to Rome.
So, again, why isn’t Hannibal’s march questioned and the existence of David is?
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6 comments:
Possibly a more apt comparison would be Hannibal's march and the Exodus. How many have declared such a migration from Egypt as myth attendant purely upon the archaeological "fact" that no evidence exists in the Sinai region (have we not yet learned the difficulty of affirming a universal negative)?
It always amazes me that other textual witnesses are given the benefit of the doubt (Hannibal’s march over the Alps is a keen example), yet any inkling of historical events to be found in the Hebrew Bible must be “proven” with two or three witnesses. Are we afraid that if we affirm the possibility of historical reliability that we must then ascribe to every theological and social convention therein (or the theological preferences of a few)?
One wonders if these, acting like the Fundamentalists, are questioning its validity based not on fact, or even a well-thought theory, but on preconceived preferences. What preference might this be, one may ask? Does not doubting any remnant of historicity prove one’s impartiality and scholarliness? The scholarly preference (dare I say myth) is to appear as an impartial observer, that is to say, someone without prejudice, without creed, without ideology, when in fact no one is immune to presupposition or preference. Might it rather be fairer to present one's ideological preferences openly and then work from that understanding?
This is not to say, on the other hand, that one should take every written word as gospel truth or history (however 'history' may be defined). One should rather apply a proper and equitable historiographic methodology to every ancient document or tradition.
In other words, one does not prove themselves a "scholar" simply by discounting the biblical witness with ad hoc musings. This is the methodology of an infant. Let us rather handle the textual witness on its own merits and attempt to interpret it based on right-minded, or at least fair-minded, methodologies.
Simple: No one's faith is disproved by Hannibal crossing the alps or not.
Great piece. I don't think Chip's comparison with the exodus is as apt as yours with David. Even with archaeological data the exodus would be a bit sketchy --- the biblical accounts all point to some sort of supernatural activity, portraying the event as a miraculous event. It's a different animal.
The reign of David, however, has less of a preternatural overlay. One can take the stories as somewhat reliable whether one believes in the existence YHWH or not.
Of course, one unfortunate outcome of this post might be the rise of a new minimalist Carthaginian school....
Hannibal's march being a true story or not has little import in terms of how we ought to live our lives today. If the Bible is true, there are implications, which present various challenges for our behavior, our society, our culture, ...
I suspect Hannibal probably did cross the Alps, though I don't doubt the accounts we have of it may be something other than 100% accurate. Thing is, whether he did or didn't, it doesn't actually matter, not in any meaningful way.
What is perhaps more curious is that the holy books of most of the world's religions do not receive the same kind of hostile scrutiny as the Bible. To my knowledge, for instance, no archeologist, paleontologist, anthropologist, or historian has ever made it a major career goal to discredit the Bhagavad Gita.
James,
I have read Livy, Polybius, and Diodorus Siculus (Polybius, 2.1, 13, 36; 3.6-15, 17, 20-35, 39-56; 4.37; Livy Book 21; and Diodorus Siculus, 24.1-16). I reproduced the two most relevant quotes by Polybius below. It seems to me that the event is indeed spectacular if not extraordinary. I am sure that you are correct and that the minimalists would reduce Hannibal’s march to just a few men and some donkeys.
Quoting from Polybius Book III:14; “If the Carthaginians had been compelled to give these people regular battle, there can be no doubt that they would have been defeated: but as it was, Hannibal, with admirable skill and caution, slowly retreated until he had put the Tagus between himself and the enemy; and thus giving battle at the crossing of the stream, supported by it and the elephants of which he had about forty, he gained, to everyone’s surprise a complete success. For when the barbarians attempted to force a crossing at several points of the river at once, the greater number of them were killed as they left the water by the elephants, who marched up and down along the brink of the river and caught them as they were coming out.”
Quoting from Polybius Book III: 47; “The elephants having been thus got across, Hannibal formed them and the cavalry into a rearguard, and marched up the river bank away from the sea in an easterly direction, as though making for the central district of Europe.
The Rhone Rises to the north-west of the Adriatic Gulf on the northern slopes of the Alps, and flowing westward, eventually discharges itself into the Sardinian Sea. It flows for the most part through a deep valley to the north of which lives the Celtic tribe of the Ardyes; while its southern side is entirely walled in by the northern slopes of the Alps, the ridges of which, beginning at Marseilles and extending to the head of the Adriatic, separate it from the valley of the Padus, of which I have already had occasion to speak at length. It was these mountains that Hannibal now crossed from the Rhone valley into Italy. . . . Some historians introduce Hannibal as a prodigy of strategic skill and boldness, they yet represent him as acting with the most conspicuous indiscretion; and then finding themselves involved in an inextricable maze of falsehood, they try to cut the knot by the introduction of gods and heroes into what is meant to be genuine history. They begin by saying that the Alps are so precipitous and inaccessible that, so far from horses and troops, accompanied too by elephants, being able to cross them, it would be very difficult for even active men on foot to do so; and similarly they tells us that the desolation of this district is so complete, that, had not some god or hero met Hannibal’s forces and showed them the way they would have been hopelessly lost and perished to a man. Such stories involve both the errors I have mentioned – they are both false and inconsistent.”
Kind Regards
Joe Cathey
There are other kinds of evidence that support an invasion by Hannibal of the Italian Peninsula. For starters, you might want to check this out
In summary:
Scientific analysis of Roman coins in the British Museum has provided new evidence that Hannibal, the audacious Carthaginian general, nearly bankrupted the Roman state during the Second Punic War in the late 3rd century BC.
So, we can quibble over how Hannibal got his army into Italy, but it clearly was there.
Here's the thing though. Since Hannibal is alleged to have simply crossed the Alps, you would not expect to find as much left behind as say hundreds of thousands of people trudging across the Sinai and presumably wandering the area for 40 years. So, just because no one has found some dead elephants and some Carthaginian coins in a pass in the Alps doesn't mean we should take the Exodus account more seriously. That is comparing apples and oranges.
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