Hannibal Barca (247–c.183 BC) was the Carthaginian general who nearly destroyed Rome: marching from Spain across the Alps with war elephants in 218 BC, he spent fifteen years ravaging Italy and annihilated a Roman army at Cannae in 216 BC, killing some 50,000 men in a single day of battle.
He never took Rome itself — denied reinforcements by a Carthaginian senate that distrusted him — and was finally defeated at Zama in 202 BC by Scipio Africanus, who had learned his tactics. Hunted by Rome for the rest of his life, he took poison rather than be captured.
