Answer:
Elephants
Explanation:
Having battled their d e a d l y rivals the Romans in Spain, in 2 1 8 B C the Carthaginian army made a move that no one expected. Their commander Hannibal marched his troops, including cavalry and A f r i c a n w a r elephants, across a high pass in the A l p s to strike at Rome itself from the north of the Italian p e n i n s u l a. It was one of the greatest military feats in history.
The Romans had presumed that the A l p s created a secure natural barrier against invasion of their homeland. They hadn’t reckoned with Hannibal’s boldness. In December he smashed apart the Roman forces in the north, assisted by his awesome elephants, the tanks of classical warfare. Many of the animals d i e d of cold or disease the following winter, but Hannibal fought his way down through Italy. For 1 5 years he ravaged the land, k i l l i n g or wounding over a million citizens but without taking Rome. But when he faced the Roman general Scipio Africa n us at Zama in north Africa in 2 0 2 B C, his strategic genius met its match. So ended the second P u n i c w a r, with Rome the victor.
Hannibal’s alpine crossing has been celebrated in myth, art and film. J M W Turner made high drama of it in 1 8 1 2, a snowstorm sending the Carthaginians into wild disarray. The 1 9 5 9 sword-and-sandals epic movie, with Victor Mature in the eponymous title role, made Hannibal’s “c r a z e d elephant army” look more like the polite zoo creatures they obviously were.
The three Punic wars were a struggle for dominance of the Mediterranean region by the two great trading and military powers of the third and second centuries B C Carthage and Rome. Carthage, a former Phoenician city-state in present-day Tunis, had an empire extending over most of the north African coast as well as the southern tip of Iberia. Rome was then still a republic, and the two states were locked in a power struggle apt to flare into open war, until the Romans annihilated Carthage in 1 4 6 B C.
Hannibal, son of general Hamilcar who led troops in the first Punic war, gave Carthage its most glorious hour. He is ranked alongside Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and his nemesis Scipio as one of the greatest military strategists of the ancient world.
