Hi, thanks for tuning in to ancient Greece, declassified.

Episode 10, Hannibal takes on Rome.

Can one person single-handedly alter the course of history? Or think of it this way, if you were to go back in time and remove one of these towering figures like

Jenghis Khan or Joan of Arc or Gandhi, would history look completely different?

Or would the greater societal and geopolitical forces at work move things along much the same

lines anyway?

The extent to which one individual can shape history is an issue that has been debated

by historians as long as

there have been historians.

But whatever your own view on the matter, it's hard to deny that the protagonist of today's

episode seems to have held in his hands, at least for a moment, the destiny of many nations.

His name was Hannibal, and unlike his fictional

namesake, he was no cannibal. He was a general from the Republic of Carthage on the northern

coast of Africa. And for a few years, in and around 216 BC, he came so close to toppling the

seemingly unstoppable power of Rome that he's been a fascination to students of history ever since.

Now, you may be wondering why we're discussing Hannibal taking on Rome on a podcast about ancient Greece.

And it's not just because our main source for this conflict is a Greek historian named

Polybius, or that Hannibal himself was educated in Greek. It's because, as astute observers of the

conflict at the time realized, the outcome of this clash between Rome and Carthage would determine

the fate of the entire Mediterranean.

The Mediterranean at this time, in the 3rd century BC, was unrecognizable compared to what it had been in the previous century.

This was no longer a world of thousands of city-states. Now there were five or six superpowers calling all the shots. In the east, there were the

...