Hannibal of Carthage

A Biography by Harold Lamb

I always have a harder time writing a review for a book I really like than a book I dislike.

I’m not sure what it is. When I dislike a book the reasons usually seem clear-cut, obvious. For a book that I love, it seems harder to do the work justice. As if my words can’t live up to the feeling that work of art gave me.

Hannibal by Howard Lamb is one of those books where I’ll once again fail to do it justice. But here goes anyway.

This is a remarkable book. It’s a biography, but written with the pacing and character focus of a novel. Hannibal, the person, practically leaps off the page through Lamb’s descriptions.

Hannibal Barca died in 183 BC (incidentally the same year as Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, his great rival), more than 2,200 years ago, yet his tale is one that lived on in the nightmares of Romans for generations afterwards. Lamb paints a picture of a Rome wracked with disasters at every turn, yet fights through to ultimate, hard-won victory.

As the noose tightens around Hannibal’s coalition against Rome, Lamb conveys the dread of a brilliant mind that can see the writing on the wall, yet can see no way out of his quandary as allies, including his two brothers, are crushed one by one. Even knowing what happens, you still feel immense empathy for the man who did his utmost, who brought Rome to its knees.

I first found this book through an interview of Howard Andrew Jones on the So I'm Writing a Novel Podcast. Howard talks about how much of an influence this book was on him when he was young, and how Hannibal inspired the character of Hanuvar in his new Sword & Sorcery series by Baen Books. Lamb himself is quite a remarkable person. He served in World War 1, then in the OSS during World War 2. Later he became an advisor to the US Department of State. He spoke five languages fluently, something that boggles my mind.

You can probably tell by now that I loved this book. Part of it is that Hannibal and those he contended with are larger than life characters. People who forged kingdoms, fought great battles, and raged against overwhelming odds.

“Of all that befell both the Romans and Carthaginians the cause was one man and one mind—Hannibal’s” -Polybius

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