the middle ages feudalism in the middle ages readworks

He was a practiced statesman, a skilled diplomat, and a man deeply devoted to his family and country. But Hannibal was much more than just a great general. As a commander in war, Hannibal has few equals in history and has long been held as a model of strategic and tactical genius, studied in military academies even today. As a military leader, like Alexander the Great before him and Julius Caesar after, he understood the hearts of men and had an uncanny ability to read the unseen weaknesses of his enemy. As a boy and then a man, his self-discipline and determination were legendary. Hannibal appeals to many as the ultimate underdog-a Carthaginian David against the Goliath of Rome-but it wasn’t just his genius on the battlefield that set him apart. What kind of person would dare to lead his struggling homeland in a war against the greatest military power the ancient world would ever know? How could he conceive and then actually carry out his audacious plan to march his army over the towering Alps to carry his war into the very heartland of Italy? And how could Hannibal, consistently outnumbered and always deep in enemy territory, defeat Roman army after Roman army that was sent against him until he held the very fate of Rome within his grasp? But the fact that Hannibal was one of the most brilliant and daring generals in world history-and the man who almost destroyed Rome-was impossible even for the Romans to ignore. The story of Hannibal that began with a young boy in a Carthaginian temple has gripped the imagination of readers for over two thousand years, beginning with the Romans who delighted in seeing the African leader as the embodiment of the supposed barbaric, uncivilized enemies they faced on all sides and whom they felt it their duty and destiny to conquer.

No matter what the gods held in store for him in the years ahead, he would dedicate his life, his very soul, to fighting against the most powerful and relentless enemy of Carthage. He made his son, named Hannibal, vow before the gods eternal hatred towards Rome, to which the boy gladly assented. When the sacrifice was done, Hamilcar asked the priests to withdraw so that he might speak to his son alone.

After the morning sacrifice, Hamilcar would be on his way to Spain to take over the rich mines of Iberia to help pay the heavy burden imposed on his city by Rome.

Carthage had even agreed to pay the Romans a crushing indemnity in silver to buy peace. He had watched in silent rage several years earlier as the Carthaginian senate had abandoned the ancient Punic colonies in nearby Sicily to the rising power of an aggressive empire named Rome. The man, whose name was Hamilcar of the Barca clan, was the greatest general Carthage had ever produced. One day over two thousand years ago, a young African boy and his father walked up the cold stone steps of a temple in the great merchant city of Carthage in the hour just before dawn. Hannibal appeals to many as the ultimate underdog, but it wasn’t just his genius on the battlefield that set him apart. Image courtesy The Huntarian, Wikimedia Commons Note that Asian elephants are illustrated rather than the very small North African elephants used by Carthage. Engraving of the Battle of Zama by Cornelis Cort, 1567.

The middle ages feudalism in the middle ages readworks