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Hi, everyone. It's time for another podcast from Ancient Warfare Magazine, and the issue under discussion today is issue 3-4, entitled Implacable Enemies, the Barcats at War, which we published this August. It's a familiar topic, basically the Second Punic War, but it's an attempt to discuss well-trodden ground from the opposite side, namely Carthaginians.

Obviously, this provides an interesting problem as next to know direct literary sources survive from the Punic side of things,

so we're left to discuss the Carthaginians through Roman eyes.

In this issue, we started with a historical introduction of the Barkett family.

Though we didn't have space for a separate article, Hamilcar Barca, the Potter Familius, so to speak,

was an accomplished general in his own right, who expanded Carthaginian power in Spain and laid

the basis for his famous sons cavalcade through Italy. The source this issue simply had to be Polybius,

and Yona Lendering provided us with an overview of this Greek author's

interesting life and focal points for his study.

Held hostage by the Romans, he became a family friend of the Scipione and Iemili.

Both those families featured very large on the

Roman side in all Punic wars which provided him with excellent sources for his history of the

rise of Rome and at the same time this cast of course lots of doubt on the dependability of

his testimony the meat so to speak of this issue came in four articles, one by Paul McDonnell staff and

Alberto Perez about the Barquette armies, which showed how the Carthaginian generals,

despite the great variety in troop types and origins, managed to weld them into a flexible

professional fighting force.

This article was followed by a discussion of Carthaginian siegecraft.

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