Luke Lentz, age 16, of New Bedford, Mass., for his question:
WHO WAS HANNIBAL?
Hannibal was the greatest general and statesman of Carthage, an ancient North African city.
Hannibal lived from 247 to 183 B.C. He was an outstanding leader. As a military strategist, he was able to overcome great handicaps and armies much larger than his own.
In 219 B.C., after Hannibal attacked a Spanish ally of Rome called Saguntum, Rome declared the Second Punic War on Carthage.
Hannibal astonished the Romans with a most daring maneuver. With 60,000 troops, Hannibal crossed the Pyrenees in France and the Alps in Italy. Because of snow and cold, and a fierce clash with mountain tribesmen, Hannibal reached the Po Valley in northern Italy with only 26,000 men, 6,000 horses and a few elephants.
In the Po Valley, Hannibal recruited between 10,000 and 15,000 Gauls into his army. After quickly training his new troops, Hannibal started marching south. He maneuvered the Romans into an ambush and defeated them in the Battle of the Trebia River.
Hannibal used elephants to shatter enemy lines, much like tanks are used in modern battles.
In central Italy in 217 B.C., Hannibal tricked a Roman army into following his army, and then destroyed his enemy in an ambush on the shores of Lake Trasimeno.
In 216 B.C., Hannibal found himself outnumbered by the Romans at Cannae in southern Italy. But he arranged his men in an arc and when the Romans attacked, the center of the formation retreated and the two sides, with the help of Hannibal's superior cavalry, encircled and crushed the Romans. The Carthaginians killed about 50,000 enemy troops in one day in the worst defeat ever suffered by a Roman army.
Hannibal was called home when the Romans invaded northern Africa in 203 B.C. The war ended in 201 B.C. with Rome the winner in spite of Hannibal's great effort.
Rome allowed Carthage to govern itself after the war, and Hannibal headed the government. Carthage made a rapid recovery under his leadership.
But Hannibal fled to Syria in 195 B.C. when he heard that the Romans were going to demand his surrender. He later fled to the ancient country of Bithynia, in what is now Turkey, where he died in 183 B.C.
Hannibal was born in Carthage. His father was a military leader who hated the Romans, his city's chief enemy. He made the young Hannibal take an oath that he would always be an enemy of Rome.
While he was still a very young man, Hannibal went to Spain with his father. Spain was partly ruled by Carthage at the time. At the age of 25, Hannibal became the Carthaginian commander in Spain.