AWA384 - Did Hannibal and Scipio Africanus Really Meet?
Ancient Warfare Podcast
The History Network
4.3 • 645 Ratings
🗓️ 21 November 2025
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
Dominik asks: is the famous story of Hannibal and Scipio Africanus meeting to discuss history's greatest generals plausible? Murray Dahm examines the ancient accounts, the realities of elite travel in the ancient world, and whether such encounters between great commanders could have happened.
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Ancient Warfare Answers with me, Murray, your weekly fix of 10 minutes, hopefully, fingers crossed, on me discussing ancient warfare, generally in response to a viewer, reader or listener question about something that's vexing them about how ancient warfare was conducted |
| 0:22.2 | and I will do my best to speculate, stab in the dark or just guess and rant about it. |
| 0:28.2 | You can, of course, ask us a question. |
| 0:30.1 | You can back us on Patreon, one of three levels, legionary Optio and Centurion. |
| 0:34.0 | You can send me a postcard. |
| 0:35.7 | You can send an email. |
| 0:36.9 | You can reply or comment on a previous |
| 0:39.0 | video or podcast, and it will get to me where I can answer your question, such as this one from |
| 0:46.3 | Dominic, Dominic Mueller. Hi there, I've been listening to your podcasts and having an interest |
| 0:51.7 | on the topic for quite some time now. Thank you for providing |
| 0:54.7 | your valuable insights. My absolute pleasure. One famous anecdote about ancient warfare is the |
| 1:00.5 | story of the meeting between Hannibal and Scipio-Africanus and then discussing the greatest |
| 1:05.5 | generals and strategists of their time and history. My question is, is this occurrence of this meeting plausible, possible, |
| 1:13.3 | or even likely? And even if it might not have taken it place exactly as recounted by Livy, |
| 1:19.0 | I'm wondering about the mobility of such elite individuals. Is it plausible to have encountered |
| 1:23.7 | Scipio at different courts throughout the ancient world. How did individual travel work |
| 1:30.0 | and were the elites of the ancient world in constant contact? I hope these questions are |
| 1:34.4 | comprehensible. I would be happy to receive an answer to this question. Well, I hope you're happy. |
| 1:39.1 | Here's my attempt at your answer, Dominic. Now, okay, so travel in the ancient world is fascinating and obviously not |
| 1:49.2 | necessarily a warfare related question and more of an ancient history question. And there are, |
| 1:55.6 | of course, roads and pathways throughout the ancient world to be ridden or marched. And of course, sailing |
| 2:03.7 | or rowing is another way of getting between places quickly. But most of it seems to be by foot. |
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