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dhampyresaSo I ended up writing a 2k primer on Hannibal Barca and Scipio Africanus yesterday, ending at about midnight last night, which is why it only occurs to me now to share it with y'all. Because, you know, I have a lot about feelings about these two? And now you can have context!
(Because not everyone is as familiar with generals from the Second Punic War as you are, dhampyresa. I mean, seriously. It probably says a lot about me that the only thing I had to look up for this was troop numbers at Trebbia.)
I'll just go over the broad lines and focus on the Hannibal/Scipio part of the story, even though that means my only chance to mention Archimedes' death lasers is now. BOOM! ARCHIMEDES MADE SHIP-BURNING RAYS. I call them death lasers, because seriously. DEATH LASERS.
Right, okay.
So Hannibal either starts the Second Punic War or doesn't, depending on who you ask, but it's Rome who declares war on Carthage. (Okay, a note on this being the Second Punic War: there was one before, in which Hannibal's father was a general and as a consequence of which he made Hannibal swear a blood oath to never be a friend to Rome or an enemey of Rome, depending on who you ask. There's going to be a lot of "DEPENDING ON WHO YOU ASK" in this and also massive Roman bias in any historical sources, because of what happened during the Third Punic War. Scipio Aemilianus burned Carthage for seventeen days and poured salt on its grounds, wait for it, depending on who you ask. The most common example of Roman bias is probably the "Carthaginians had child sacrifices" thing. Archeological evidence is very unconclusive, but hey, the Romans said they did, so of course they must be right. The peace treaty for the Third Punic War was signed in 1985, btw, because there is nothing about this whole thing that is not epic or ridiculous or ridiculously epic or epically ridiculous.)
(Actually, just pretend all of this is filtered through the Roman take on things (plus me, trying to talk more about the Hannibal the Romans showed us vs the one they told us about) because there was a biography of Hannibal written by Silenus (a Greek dude who was actually there at the time, unlike any of the Romans), the last known copy of which burned down with the Library of Alexandria, because we just can't have nice things, apparently.)
So, anyway, the war gets started by Fabius (remember this dude, he comes back later), who is Rome's envoy in Carthage and Hannibal is all "fuck yeah, Imma go march on Rome".
SO HE DOES.
Dude takes his army and marches up the Pyrénées, then down, then across the South of France (it's still Gaul at the time, because this is still the Roman Republic he's facing, but I'm not going to do the whole Roman names thing, because I don't want to). Meanwhile, Consul Publius Cornelius Scipio (there are a lot of Scipiones, because lol Roman naming conventions. This one will be referred to as Cornelius and is Africanus' father and Africanus is also Publius Cornelius Scipio, because lol Roman naming conventions) realises that, oh shit, Hannibal's route is not taking him to the coastal roads like everyone thought it would, which means that he is... crossing the Alps? In winter? WITH ELEPHANTS? What the fuck y'all
Because yes, Hannibal is crossing the Alps, in winter, with elephants, because he's just THAT HARDCORE. Like, I'm pretty sure that's the one thing anyone can name about Hannibal Barca: in the Alps, during winter, with elephants. He will "find a way, or make one".
He loses a considerable part of his army, because the Alps are never kind, especially not in winter. As far as I know, the pass he's most likely to have taken is the Col de la Traversette, which has its lowest point at about ~3000 meters, which means that the snow there never fucking melts and also Alps, in winter, it would be so far beyond freezing! Like, I've been in the Alps in winter, shit's insane. Coldest I've ever been (mostly because I got buried in a snow bank at some point, but anyway).
Hannibal crosses the Alps, which takes everyone by surprise, because, seriously what. Dude crossed the Alps in winter, you can't do that. Well, joke's on the Romans, because this is not the last impossible thing Hannibal is going to do in this war.
(All the elephants made it out, if you were curious.)
Hannibal takes advantage of this to ambush Cornelius at Ticinnus. Cornelius comes very close to dying, but thankfully his son, Scipio, the man who will become "Africanus" enters our tale by saving his life. (I'll refer to him as just plain Scipio.) He's a literal knight in shining armour, lmao.
Then Cornelius' co-Consul, Sempronius, shows up and decides that they will attack Hannibal. I'll cut Sempronius some slack, because this is the first time the Romans meet Hannibal in proper battle (ie, not an ambush) so he has no reason to suspect how badly this is going to go, but boy DOES IT GO BADLY FOR THE ROMANS.
Hannibal tricks the Romans to cross the river Trebbia on the coldest day of the year to fight him on the ground he chose. That thing I said above about cutting Sempronius some slack? Yeah, forget that. Sempronius was a moron. (No, but seriously. On the winter solstice. HOW did this not strike him as a bad idea?)
The Romans lose anywhere between 26 and 32 thousand men, out the 42 they had at the start. Good going there, Sempronius. (I'm not going to get into the intricacies of the way the Romans Republic worked, but if I'm laying blame at the feet of a Consul for shit, it's because he's the one who called the shots for that.) Scipio is among the people who survived, because Scipio is not a moron.
Change of Consuls! Because the Consuls change every year. Also, Hannibal loses his eye to infection sometime around this.
Then there's the battle at Lake Trasimene, in which Hannibal PWNS the Romans so hard again that they might as well be calling this the Second Pwnic War. The Romans lose half of their 30k men and one Consul. (As far as I or anyone knows, Scipio was not at Trasimene. Idk what he was doing.)
Hey, remember Fabius? This is where he comes back in! They elect him dictator (it is a thing, in the Roman Republic. Just roll with it) so he has full power for six months and decides to starve Hannibal to death by cutting off his supplies lines, etc... Which is a good plan, except that it wins the Romans no victories and they hate that.
They hate that so much that when Varro runs for Consul on the platform of kicking Hannibal out of Italy by throwing more troops at him (because that worked SO WELL the last two times, *eyeroll*) they elect him pretty much on the spot and he sets about to build himself an army.
So, Varro, right? Credit where credit's due, when the guy gathers an army, he does not fuck around. the Roman army gathered for the battle of Cannae borders on the hundred thousand men. Imagine that. 100k. That is unbelievably high, especially for the time period. The year is 216 BCE, for fuck's sake.
Hannibal's force, meanwhile, is about half of that, at 50k. Sounds like a surefire Roman victory, right? Except, this is Hannibal we're talking about and he's about to do the other impossible thing he's famous for.
The battle of Cannae changes the face of military tactics forever.
The encirclement of a greater army by a lesser army is how Hannibal does it. That's the impossible thing, that why they call him 'the father of strategy'. This.
Cannae is what makes Hannibal into Rome's worst nightmare.
Because Rome? Rome loses and Rome loses HARD. Maybe three thousand Romans survive the battle. Maybe. Scipio's among them. So's Varro, but not Varro's co-Consul and about, oh, 30% of the city's Senators.
In less than two years, Rome lost 1/5 of its male population. And the Battle of Cannae is still one of the bloodiest days in human history.
But then! But then! And this is the bit where historians will never stop fighting over how and why and would it have changed anything, but Hannibal doesn't march on Rome.
Then follows a long and almost entirely battleless campaign, because the Romans have finally caught on to the fact that throwing more troops at Hannibal isn't going to fuckig work and revert back to Fabian tactics while Carthage refuses to support Hannibal and send him more troops (because politics, in short).
(About the "Hannibal told" vs "Hannibal shown" issue: all the Romans texts keep going on and on about Hannibal being dishonourable and all that jazz, but after Cannae, he returns the bodies of at least all the dead who were once Consuls, of which there are three and negotiates the return of the prisoners he took. I don't know about you, but that doesn't strike me as especially dishonourable. Quite the opposite, in fact.)
Meanwhile! While Hannibal fucks around in Italy, shit's happening back in Spain (Spain is Hannibal's homebase. Barcelona? Probs founded by his family. Clue's in the name). Cornelius is doing military shit, the details of which are unimportant, because he ends up dead. Too bad, so sad.
Scipio then goes to the Senate and asks to be sent to Spain to avenge his father, which agrees too, even though he's too young, because ain't nobody else crazy enough to go that suicide mission.
First thing Scipio does when he gets to Spain is conquer Carthago Nova, Hannibal's hometown, via means of an ingenious strategy that involves emptying a lagoon. Oh yeah, Scipio has his fair share of epic stuff too.
Which I am going to skip over, because Hannibal's fucking around in Italy and so only involved from afar. I'll just say that it was epic and that the battle of Ilipa is not only a masterstroke of tactical genius, but it also never fails to make me laugh, because seriously. SERIOUSLY.
But Hannibal might be fucking around in Italy and not losing any battle, but he's not exactly winning, either. Scipio, however, is and once he's broken the Barcid hold on the Iberian peninsula he takes the fight to North Africa.
SHIT JUST GOT REAL, YO.
Carthage recalls Hannibal, because, well, they kind of have to, don't they? But it honestly breaks my heart to think of how Hannibal must have felt at that time. Everything he fought for, everything he lost, all for nothing.
So Hannibal and Scipio first meet before the Battle of Zama. Hannibal is all "you know, you're a genius and it would be an honour to surrender to you, so we don't really have to do this" and Scipio is all "I'm sorry, but we kind of do" and it is all very tragic.
They fight at Zama.
Hannibal loses. It's the first and only time he loses a battle and I don't want to say that Scipo's Zama strategy looks an awfully lot like Hannibal's Cannae's strategy, but it kind of does.
The war is over!
Party time? No. Or yes, if you're Roman, I guess.
Scipio becomes Africanus shortly after the Battle of Zama. Everything he is, everything he's remembered for, he owes to Hannibal.
There's a period of about ten years here wherein not much happens, until the Romans against Scipio's explicit reccomendation demand that Carthage surrender Hannibal. You may have heard of Cato trying to make "Delenda est Carthago" happen, this is when it happens.
Hannibal, of course, is so not down for that and legs it to Ephesus. (By the by, the politicians who wouldn't support Hannibal because they were, in essence, afraid that he would turn politician and reform things and get them out of power? They were right. Hannibal did a lot of reforms to the Carthaginian establishment before his exile.)
Imma skip over some more stuff, including, sadly enough, Hannibal's snake bombs. But yeah. Snake bombs, that was a thing that happened.
Ah, Ephesus. Ephesus ends up being the second time Hannibal and Scipio meet and the only thing we know about what they did is that they made each other laugh. The anecdote goes like this: Scipio asks Hannibal who the greatest generals are, Hannibal says (in order) Alexander the Great, Pyrrhus and himself, Scipio asks what he would have said if Scipio hadn't beaten him, Hannibal says that then he'd have been first and they laugh. It's honestly kind of adorable.
AND THEN!
Next we come to my favourite "coincidence" in the history of "coincidences". Hannibal and Scipio both die (supposedly) the same year, 183 BCE, in mysterious circumstances, with no body ever found. THEY TOTALLY FAKED THEIR OWN DEATHS AND ELOPED TOGETHER is what I'm saying, here.
So yeah, that's the story of Hannibal Barca and Scipio Africanus.
I skipped a lot of stuff, like the thing with the oxen and did you see how much I glossed over Ilipa? Ilipa! I love Ilipa! It's my favourite after Cannae. Plus, I, like, gave zero background on the political landscape of Rome and/or Carthage at the times and didn't talk at all about strategies or troop movements or or or! This is very abridged, but hopefully still gets to the core of the story.
(Some follow-up questions)
But hey! Have some links for sticking with me all this time:
A post where I talk about why I ship them
A movie where Alexander Siddig is Hannibal
Some cartoons explaining the Punic Wars
A song about Hannibal
One of my favourite poems which takes place immediately before Trebbia
Also! Have I mentionned yet that the meeting at Ephesus has been described as "Hannibal discreetly courting Scipio? Because it was.
So there you go, then.
(Because not everyone is as familiar with generals from the Second Punic War as you are, dhampyresa. I mean, seriously. It probably says a lot about me that the only thing I had to look up for this was troop numbers at Trebbia.)
I'll just go over the broad lines and focus on the Hannibal/Scipio part of the story, even though that means my only chance to mention Archimedes' death lasers is now. BOOM! ARCHIMEDES MADE SHIP-BURNING RAYS. I call them death lasers, because seriously. DEATH LASERS.
Right, okay.
So Hannibal either starts the Second Punic War or doesn't, depending on who you ask, but it's Rome who declares war on Carthage. (Okay, a note on this being the Second Punic War: there was one before, in which Hannibal's father was a general and as a consequence of which he made Hannibal swear a blood oath to never be a friend to Rome or an enemey of Rome, depending on who you ask. There's going to be a lot of "DEPENDING ON WHO YOU ASK" in this and also massive Roman bias in any historical sources, because of what happened during the Third Punic War. Scipio Aemilianus burned Carthage for seventeen days and poured salt on its grounds, wait for it, depending on who you ask. The most common example of Roman bias is probably the "Carthaginians had child sacrifices" thing. Archeological evidence is very unconclusive, but hey, the Romans said they did, so of course they must be right. The peace treaty for the Third Punic War was signed in 1985, btw, because there is nothing about this whole thing that is not epic or ridiculous or ridiculously epic or epically ridiculous.)
(Actually, just pretend all of this is filtered through the Roman take on things (plus me, trying to talk more about the Hannibal the Romans showed us vs the one they told us about) because there was a biography of Hannibal written by Silenus (a Greek dude who was actually there at the time, unlike any of the Romans), the last known copy of which burned down with the Library of Alexandria, because we just can't have nice things, apparently.)
So, anyway, the war gets started by Fabius (remember this dude, he comes back later), who is Rome's envoy in Carthage and Hannibal is all "fuck yeah, Imma go march on Rome".
SO HE DOES.
Dude takes his army and marches up the Pyrénées, then down, then across the South of France (it's still Gaul at the time, because this is still the Roman Republic he's facing, but I'm not going to do the whole Roman names thing, because I don't want to). Meanwhile, Consul Publius Cornelius Scipio (there are a lot of Scipiones, because lol Roman naming conventions. This one will be referred to as Cornelius and is Africanus' father and Africanus is also Publius Cornelius Scipio, because lol Roman naming conventions) realises that, oh shit, Hannibal's route is not taking him to the coastal roads like everyone thought it would, which means that he is... crossing the Alps? In winter? WITH ELEPHANTS? What the fuck y'all
Because yes, Hannibal is crossing the Alps, in winter, with elephants, because he's just THAT HARDCORE. Like, I'm pretty sure that's the one thing anyone can name about Hannibal Barca: in the Alps, during winter, with elephants. He will "find a way, or make one".
He loses a considerable part of his army, because the Alps are never kind, especially not in winter. As far as I know, the pass he's most likely to have taken is the Col de la Traversette, which has its lowest point at about ~3000 meters, which means that the snow there never fucking melts and also Alps, in winter, it would be so far beyond freezing! Like, I've been in the Alps in winter, shit's insane. Coldest I've ever been (mostly because I got buried in a snow bank at some point, but anyway).
Hannibal crosses the Alps, which takes everyone by surprise, because, seriously what. Dude crossed the Alps in winter, you can't do that. Well, joke's on the Romans, because this is not the last impossible thing Hannibal is going to do in this war.
(All the elephants made it out, if you were curious.)
Hannibal takes advantage of this to ambush Cornelius at Ticinnus. Cornelius comes very close to dying, but thankfully his son, Scipio, the man who will become "Africanus" enters our tale by saving his life. (I'll refer to him as just plain Scipio.) He's a literal knight in shining armour, lmao.
Then Cornelius' co-Consul, Sempronius, shows up and decides that they will attack Hannibal. I'll cut Sempronius some slack, because this is the first time the Romans meet Hannibal in proper battle (ie, not an ambush) so he has no reason to suspect how badly this is going to go, but boy DOES IT GO BADLY FOR THE ROMANS.
Hannibal tricks the Romans to cross the river Trebbia on the coldest day of the year to fight him on the ground he chose. That thing I said above about cutting Sempronius some slack? Yeah, forget that. Sempronius was a moron. (No, but seriously. On the winter solstice. HOW did this not strike him as a bad idea?)
The Romans lose anywhere between 26 and 32 thousand men, out the 42 they had at the start. Good going there, Sempronius. (I'm not going to get into the intricacies of the way the Romans Republic worked, but if I'm laying blame at the feet of a Consul for shit, it's because he's the one who called the shots for that.) Scipio is among the people who survived, because Scipio is not a moron.
Change of Consuls! Because the Consuls change every year. Also, Hannibal loses his eye to infection sometime around this.
Then there's the battle at Lake Trasimene, in which Hannibal PWNS the Romans so hard again that they might as well be calling this the Second Pwnic War. The Romans lose half of their 30k men and one Consul. (As far as I or anyone knows, Scipio was not at Trasimene. Idk what he was doing.)
Hey, remember Fabius? This is where he comes back in! They elect him dictator (it is a thing, in the Roman Republic. Just roll with it) so he has full power for six months and decides to starve Hannibal to death by cutting off his supplies lines, etc... Which is a good plan, except that it wins the Romans no victories and they hate that.
They hate that so much that when Varro runs for Consul on the platform of kicking Hannibal out of Italy by throwing more troops at him (because that worked SO WELL the last two times, *eyeroll*) they elect him pretty much on the spot and he sets about to build himself an army.
So, Varro, right? Credit where credit's due, when the guy gathers an army, he does not fuck around. the Roman army gathered for the battle of Cannae borders on the hundred thousand men. Imagine that. 100k. That is unbelievably high, especially for the time period. The year is 216 BCE, for fuck's sake.
Hannibal's force, meanwhile, is about half of that, at 50k. Sounds like a surefire Roman victory, right? Except, this is Hannibal we're talking about and he's about to do the other impossible thing he's famous for.
The battle of Cannae changes the face of military tactics forever.
The encirclement of a greater army by a lesser army is how Hannibal does it. That's the impossible thing, that why they call him 'the father of strategy'. This.
Cannae is what makes Hannibal into Rome's worst nightmare.
Because Rome? Rome loses and Rome loses HARD. Maybe three thousand Romans survive the battle. Maybe. Scipio's among them. So's Varro, but not Varro's co-Consul and about, oh, 30% of the city's Senators.
In less than two years, Rome lost 1/5 of its male population. And the Battle of Cannae is still one of the bloodiest days in human history.
But then! But then! And this is the bit where historians will never stop fighting over how and why and would it have changed anything, but Hannibal doesn't march on Rome.
Then follows a long and almost entirely battleless campaign, because the Romans have finally caught on to the fact that throwing more troops at Hannibal isn't going to fuckig work and revert back to Fabian tactics while Carthage refuses to support Hannibal and send him more troops (because politics, in short).
(About the "Hannibal told" vs "Hannibal shown" issue: all the Romans texts keep going on and on about Hannibal being dishonourable and all that jazz, but after Cannae, he returns the bodies of at least all the dead who were once Consuls, of which there are three and negotiates the return of the prisoners he took. I don't know about you, but that doesn't strike me as especially dishonourable. Quite the opposite, in fact.)
Meanwhile! While Hannibal fucks around in Italy, shit's happening back in Spain (Spain is Hannibal's homebase. Barcelona? Probs founded by his family. Clue's in the name). Cornelius is doing military shit, the details of which are unimportant, because he ends up dead. Too bad, so sad.
Scipio then goes to the Senate and asks to be sent to Spain to avenge his father, which agrees too, even though he's too young, because ain't nobody else crazy enough to go that suicide mission.
First thing Scipio does when he gets to Spain is conquer Carthago Nova, Hannibal's hometown, via means of an ingenious strategy that involves emptying a lagoon. Oh yeah, Scipio has his fair share of epic stuff too.
Which I am going to skip over, because Hannibal's fucking around in Italy and so only involved from afar. I'll just say that it was epic and that the battle of Ilipa is not only a masterstroke of tactical genius, but it also never fails to make me laugh, because seriously. SERIOUSLY.
But Hannibal might be fucking around in Italy and not losing any battle, but he's not exactly winning, either. Scipio, however, is and once he's broken the Barcid hold on the Iberian peninsula he takes the fight to North Africa.
SHIT JUST GOT REAL, YO.
Carthage recalls Hannibal, because, well, they kind of have to, don't they? But it honestly breaks my heart to think of how Hannibal must have felt at that time. Everything he fought for, everything he lost, all for nothing.
So Hannibal and Scipio first meet before the Battle of Zama. Hannibal is all "you know, you're a genius and it would be an honour to surrender to you, so we don't really have to do this" and Scipio is all "I'm sorry, but we kind of do" and it is all very tragic.
They fight at Zama.
Hannibal loses. It's the first and only time he loses a battle and I don't want to say that Scipo's Zama strategy looks an awfully lot like Hannibal's Cannae's strategy, but it kind of does.
The war is over!
Party time? No. Or yes, if you're Roman, I guess.
Scipio becomes Africanus shortly after the Battle of Zama. Everything he is, everything he's remembered for, he owes to Hannibal.
There's a period of about ten years here wherein not much happens, until the Romans against Scipio's explicit reccomendation demand that Carthage surrender Hannibal. You may have heard of Cato trying to make "Delenda est Carthago" happen, this is when it happens.
Hannibal, of course, is so not down for that and legs it to Ephesus. (By the by, the politicians who wouldn't support Hannibal because they were, in essence, afraid that he would turn politician and reform things and get them out of power? They were right. Hannibal did a lot of reforms to the Carthaginian establishment before his exile.)
Imma skip over some more stuff, including, sadly enough, Hannibal's snake bombs. But yeah. Snake bombs, that was a thing that happened.
Ah, Ephesus. Ephesus ends up being the second time Hannibal and Scipio meet and the only thing we know about what they did is that they made each other laugh. The anecdote goes like this: Scipio asks Hannibal who the greatest generals are, Hannibal says (in order) Alexander the Great, Pyrrhus and himself, Scipio asks what he would have said if Scipio hadn't beaten him, Hannibal says that then he'd have been first and they laugh. It's honestly kind of adorable.
AND THEN!
Next we come to my favourite "coincidence" in the history of "coincidences". Hannibal and Scipio both die (supposedly) the same year, 183 BCE, in mysterious circumstances, with no body ever found. THEY TOTALLY FAKED THEIR OWN DEATHS AND ELOPED TOGETHER is what I'm saying, here.
So yeah, that's the story of Hannibal Barca and Scipio Africanus.
I skipped a lot of stuff, like the thing with the oxen and did you see how much I glossed over Ilipa? Ilipa! I love Ilipa! It's my favourite after Cannae. Plus, I, like, gave zero background on the political landscape of Rome and/or Carthage at the times and didn't talk at all about strategies or troop movements or or or! This is very abridged, but hopefully still gets to the core of the story.
(Some follow-up questions)
But hey! Have some links for sticking with me all this time:
A post where I talk about why I ship them
A movie where Alexander Siddig is Hannibal
Some cartoons explaining the Punic Wars
A song about Hannibal
One of my favourite poems which takes place immediately before Trebbia
Also! Have I mentionned yet that the meeting at Ephesus has been described as "Hannibal discreetly courting Scipio? Because it was.
So there you go, then.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-20 02:50 pm (UTC)IT DOES LOOK VERY SUSPICIOUS
The only problem with that Hannibal movie is that I keep expecting Siddig to be wearing a blue science officer's uniform under those furs/armor (great furs, by the way) and to whip out a medical tricorder instead of a sword. What can I say, I'm on my second watch-through of DS9.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-20 11:07 pm (UTC)He didn't even drain the lagoon himself! He "just" figured out when the lagoon would drain itself and used that to his advantage. A fine weatherman, that Scipio.
History is SO weird and SO AWESOME.
It is the suspiciousest thing to ever suspicioused!
I actually saw this movie before I started watching DS9 (I need to get back to my DS9 rewatch as soon as I have a stable internet) so I kind of have the opposite problem: I keep wondering what Hannibal's doing on a space station? (Although Siddig's changed enough between the two that it's not all the time. He still has the most gorgeous smile, though.)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-21 07:26 am (UTC)One that doesn't dim with age. *dreamy sigh*
(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-22 03:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-23 10:31 pm (UTC)There should definitely be more fic!
(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-23 08:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-23 11:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-24 07:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-24 11:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-24 11:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-02-04 01:42 am (UTC)to the point where a few times in general conversation Hannibal has come up and I have almost said, 'He's the one who faked his death and eloped, right?" before remembering that part is probably Secret History and not Normal History.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-02-05 10:40 pm (UTC):DDDDDDDD
You may not be able to convince people he eloped with Scipio, but the case for Hannibal faking his death is pretty convincing, ngl.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-20 12:09 am (UTC)(Also, I am immensely tickled by the idea of snake bombs. SNAKE BOMBS!)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-20 10:19 pm (UTC)(I know, right? SNAKE BOMBS! Snake bombs are awesome and totally not something you would expect to happen in naval tactics, or ever, really.)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-20 04:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-20 10:26 pm (UTC)