Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Tides of History early and ad-free right now.

Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

His toes were freezing.

The harsh gusts blowing down out of the higher mountains surrounding the path,

sliced through the thick strips of woolen cloth wound around his feet and legs. Every part of him was cold,

colder than he'd ever been before, from his toes to the icicles hanging from the matted gray hairs of his beard.

The gentle winters of North Africa, and even his decade among the high hills and plateaus of Iberia,

had never prepared him for anything like this.

The Carthaginian thought he knew struggle that no hardship could possibly face him after a lifetime of fighting and privation.

He had felt the heat of the desert wind during the wars in

Africa and the burning pain from an Iberian sword slicing into his leg. Before all that,

he remembered the heat of the Sicilian summers 25 years earlier when he had been the youthful

son of a wealthy merchant family sent to learn the art of command from the legendary Hamilcar Barka.

Hamilcar was ten years in the grave, but the Carthaginian was still loyal to his family,

and he always would be. There, up ahead, was Hamilcar's son. He rode easily in the midst

of the marching column as it wound its way through the gorges and valleys between the alpine

peaks, always sparing a thoughtful

word for an old comrade and remembering some past deed that marked out an individual. Carthaginian,

Libyan, Iberian, Numidian, or even Gaul, none of that mattered to Hannibal. He played no favorites

and cared only for the sole thing that really mattered. Victory.

Hannibal was everything his father had been and more to the Carthaginian's way of thinking.

A brilliant planner before battle was joined, but also cool and collected in the fire of combat,

...