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Sources
 
This site has been put together with material publicly available on the Web, for educational use, in the interest of providing as complete a treatment as possible in one place. The source, attribution or copyright has been quoted where known. Please let me know if the source of any material is insufficiently described of if you object to the inclusion of any material.

See the individual pages for further Web sites.
Primary sources:

There are no primary sources left from the Carthaginian side. Only the Greeks and victorious Romans left reports.

The main historical sources are:
Polybius (Greek, c. 204-122 BC) Universal History, books 3-16

The best authority for this period of history is Polybius. Polybius was an officer of the Achaean League, which sought by federating the Peloponnesus to make it strong enough to keep its independence against the Romans, but Rome was already too strong to be resisted, and arresting a thousand of the most influential members, sent them to Italy to await trial for conspiracy. Polybius had the good fortune, during seventeen years exile, to be allowed to live with the Scipios, becoming a personal adviser to Scipio Aemilianus. Polybius accompanied Scipio to Carthage and witnessed its destruction in the Third Punic War in 146 B. C. Polybius covers the history of the Second Punic was as well, relying on information available to him in Roman records. Polybius is the most reliable, but not the most brilliant, of ancient historians.

The Battle of Cannae, 216 BCE, History, Book III.107 | The Character of Hannibal, The Histories, Book IX, Chapters 22-26 | The Third Punic War, 149-146 BCE, The Histories, Book XXXVI-XXXIX | Rome at the End of the Punic Wars The Histories, Book 6
Livy (Roman, 59 BC-17 AD): History of Rome from its Foundation, books 21-39

Titus Livy was born in 59 BC and served as historian to the Caesars. But his long history of Rome is one of the best sources we have. Books XXI to XXX of his history are available in paperback in the Penguin Classics under the title The War with Hannibal. He was much read by many subsequent historians and political scientists. Machiavelli based his most important book on Livy - The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy.

Livy's History in English (external sites) - Summary of books 26-30 | Livy in Latin (!) | Critique of Livy's style

Plutarch (Greek, c. 45-120 AD) Parallel Lives: essays on Cato, Fabius, Flamininus and Marcellus, two of the Roman generals who opposed Hannibal in Italy; and Pyrrhus. Other texts

Appian: Hannibal and Hispanica

Cornelius Nepos (c.99-c.24 BCE): The writer of the first surviving biographies in Latin. Hannibal, from De Viribus Illustris, trans. J. Thomas, 1995. [At Iowa State]. Also Hamilcar (in Latin).

Silius Italicus: his epic poem Punica (the longest surviving peom in Latin). (text) Silius' Punica is the longest Latin poem to come down to us, a historical epic in 12,200 verses (17 books) recounting the events of the Second Punic War. The poem begins with Hannibal's oath and, except for digressions on Regulus and Anna, follows events in order until Scipio's triumph after Zama. Silius' main source was Livy, but the work also encounters Ennius, Virgil and Lucan. The work positions itself as the 'middle' work in the "Roman Trilogy" of the Aeneid, Punica and Bellum Civile. The work is at once a celebration of an ideal past and a realisation that the seeds of later changes were always there in the nature of Rome : both Scipio and the ambitious Hannibal prefigure later Roman rulers.

Petrarch: Africa

Dio Cassius

Cassius Dio was a Greek who became prominent in Roman imperial politics in the early third centuries after Christ, becoming a Consult in ca. AD 205. In retirement he wrote a massive history of Rome from the beginning. The years 68-10 BC are preserved intact, and the earlier years are summarized in a medieval author. He often has good sources, but has little understanding of the Repulic's institutions and is unreliable in his interpretation of the relationship of events to one another.

His Roman History is especially valuable to modern historians because Dio Cassius spent most of his life in public service, holding many high government offices during the reigns of Commodus, Pertinax, Septimius Severus, and Severus Alexander. He witnessed the decay of society under Elagabalus and Caracalla�s reign of terror. His insights into the workings of the Roman imperial government provide details that would not be considered important by a military man or writer of epic poetry. He was a senator from the early years of the Third Century, Consul under Elagabalus and Severus Alexander, and Governor of Pannonia under Severus Alexander. Dio Cassius wrote his history in eighty books, but only eighteen of these survive today. These eighteen cover the period from 68 B. C. to A. D. 46. Books 50 through 56, covering the death of the Republic and the reign of Augustus are available in a Penguin Classics edition translated into English.

Bill Thayer, has an on-line translation of the History: http://www.ukans.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/Introduction*.html

John Tzetzes, Byzantine scholar

Herodotus (c.490-c.425 BCE): The Carthaginian Attack on Sicily, 480 BCE
Other sources:

We know of the existence of a History of the First Punic War by Philinus of Agrigentum, and the records of the campaigns of Hannibal compiled by his friends and teachers the Spartan Sosylus and Silenus, a fragment of which, the famous Hannibal's Dream, has been preserved in the works of Cicero and Livy. Hannibal himself, it is said, wrote several works in Greek and Punic. In his Lexicon Suidas mentions a certain Charon of Carthage who wrote a whole series of Lives of famous men and women as well as a history of the tyrants of Europe and Asia.

Livy tells us, too, that during the Punic War "Hannibal spent the summer near the Temple of Juno Lacinia. He had an altar erected with a long carved inscription detailling his exploits in Punic and Greek characters". This inscription in the Temple of Hera Lacinia at Croton was painstakingly studied by Polybius. It contained in particular an account of the troops exchanged between Spain and Africa and of those left in Spain by Hasdrubal at the start of the war in 219 B.C.

Sallust The War with Jugurtha

Virgil The Aeneid

Pliny 8th Book of the history of nature

1. A word about Sources:

a) Livy (1) Used the earlier lost annalists and some state records (2) Family histories--lots of pro-Scipio stuff and note the effort to make Aemilus Paulus look good even when he's responsible for half of Cannae, and (no family) Varro to look bad even though he continued to have a succes sful political career.

b) Cato the Elder's 'Origines', the earlier version of Livy, in which two names appear: Cato the Elder and Serus the Elephant

c) Polybius of Megalopolis (1) Greek aristocrat, politician, Roman hostage from 169-150 (2) Intelligent man, decided to use his time to explain to his fellow Greeks why the Romans had conqured the Hellenistic World (3) Struck up acquaintance, friendship, with Scipio Aemilianus, adopted son and (4) Laelius, at Scipio Africanus's right hand during the whole time (5) Watched Carthage burn, wrote book, Livy used it too and we've got a lot of it.

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rrice/021327.html
Secondary Sources

"Although he had direct access to the documents in Roman archives - such as the series of treaties between Rome and Carthage (111, 22-7) - Polybius by no means neglected his predecessors, the historians who were contemporary with the events. For his account of the first Punic War, he consulted Philinos of Agrigentum, who had probably witnessed this conflict and championed the Punic cause, and Fabius Pictor, who also wrote in Greek but from the Roman viewpoint.

The last-named is to be found again in Polybius' sources for the account of the second Punic War, compared with the Lacedaemonian Sosylos, who had lived in Hannibal's camp (he had been his tutor in Greek literature), and another Greek, Silenos, from Kale Akte in Sicily, who had also been among the Carthaginian leader's entourage (Cornelius Nepos, Hannibal, 13, 3)." (page 26) "Naturally, Livy also delved into other sources, which he sometimes quotes: C. Acilius, Claudius Quadrigarius, Valerius Antias, and chiefly Coelius Antipater, who in the late second century BC had written a history of the second Punic War in seven books, unfortunately now lost, of which only a few rare membra disiecta survive, also known from quotations by Cicero.

The loss of Coelius' history is the more regrettable since he seems to have followed Silenos, one of Hannibal's historiographers whom we have already seen used by Polybius." (page 27). Seibert is silent on Silenos, but mentions Sosylos of Sparta, writing that Sosylos stayed with Hannibal "for as long as he lived". This sentence is ambiguous, as it is not clear who of the two is meant by "he". Certainly it seems to be taken an accepted fact that Hannibal fled from Carthage without any entourage. Seibert also mentions a "Sosylos Papyrus" in a footnote.