Prologue

Summary

The Hannibal of this book is Hannibal surnamed Barca. Scipio is Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus. The final extra name (‘the African’) was given to him in recognition of his victory over Hannibal in north Africa. The Prologue explains that the model for this joint biograohy of Hannibal and Scipio is not so much Plutarch’s series of parallel Greek and Roman lives, as Alan Bullock’s Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. Ancient, Renaissance, and modern explorations of the parallels between the two men are discussed, and a separate section sketches the career and approach of Bullock as a classically trained modern historian and biographer. Another section sets out programmatically the view of Roman and Carthaginian imperialism to be adopted in the book. The limitations of the evidence available to biographers of individuals from the ancient world are candidly acknowledged, and the use of the ‘past presumptive’ tense (so-and so- ‘will have’ done, known, or thought this or that) is renounced.