Hannibal was born in 247 B.C. in North Africa. Polybius and Livy, whose histories of Rome are the main Latin sources regarding his life, claimed that Hannibal’s father, the great Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca, brought his son to Spain (a region he had begun to conquer around 237 B.C.) at a young age. Hamilcar died in 229 B.C. and was succeeded by his son-in-law Hasdrubal, who made the young Hannibal an officer in the Carthaginian army. In 221 B.C., Hasdrubal was assassinated, and the army unanimously chose the 26-year-old Hannibal to command Carthage’s empire in Spain. Hannibal swiftly consolidated control in the region from the seaport base of Cartagena (New Carthage); he also married a Spanish princess.
In 219 B.C., Hannibal led a Carthaginian attack on Saguntum, an independent city in the middle of the eastern Spanish coast that had shown aggression against nearby Carthaginian towns. According to the treaty that ended the First Punic War, the Ebro River was the northernmost border of Carthage’s influence in Spain; though Saguntum was south of the Ebro, it was allied with Rome, which saw Hannibal’s attack as an act of war. Carthaginian forces besieged Saguntum for eight months before the city fell. Although Rome demanded Hannibal’s surrender, he refused, instead of making plans for the invasion of Italy that would mark the beginning of the Second Punic War. Leaving his brother, also named Hasdrubal, to protect...