It's the ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's podcast

we are continuing our chat about Hannibal with Dr. Louis Rowlings from the University of

Cardiff.

Now the first part of this podcast aired just before Christmas and it focused on the

outbreak of the Second Punic War between Carthage and Rome and Hannibal's famous, intrepid

crossing of the Alps with his army and his elephants.

Now we are continuing the story. It is late in 218 BC. Hannibal has just finished crossing

the Alps, he has reached Sysalpine Gould, what is now northern Italy and the Po River Valley

and his army is in need of replenishing. But the Romans are there and they are growing

stronger. This would ultimately culminate in one of the great set piece battles of Hannibal's

career. Fort in December 218 BC on the snowy fields near the ice cold waters of the River

Trebia and it is this battle that is the climax to this podcast. Without further ado,

here's Louis.

So Louis, as you've been saying, he's got across the Alps. I'm astonished by actually

this sounds like he's actually not that long that he's doing the Alps journey as it

was, but it's incredibly hard on him and his men. It takes him a few days to resupply

his troops, but also I'm guessing to replenish because he's lost a lot of men in the crossing

too.

Yes, there are various figures that we're given about Hannibal's army. The army in Spain,

according to Livy and Polybius, and there are some differences with the ancient sources,

but the whole Carthage and army in Spain is about 102,000 men. Hannibal leaves about half

of that in Spain as a garrison with his brother, Hasdribal, to hold on to the territories

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