Me: I’ve just flown over the Alps in an aeroplane. Honestly, you really did surprise us all with your elephants!
Hannibal: Go to hell, mate!
Me: I just wonder why you didn’t flatten Rome while you were at it.
Hannibal: I’ll let time itself take care of that.
The Alps as a reverberation chamber for the impossible: the thundering roar of elephants! It was mid-winter when the Carthaginian commander Hannibal took military manoeuvring to an entirely new dimension. Leading 50,000 men on foot, 9,000 horsemen and a good three dozen war elephants he left the Iberian Peninsula and crossed an Alpine pass (today it is no longer possible to ascertain exactly which one) in order to destroy the Roman Ally System. The part that remains engraved in humanity’s elephant-like memory is this: the greatest triumphs (this also applies to art) result from outrageousness, from taking a huge No and making it into a huge Yes.
AR
Image: A marble bust, reputedly of Hannibal, originally found at the ancient city-state of Capua in Italy (some historians are uncertain of the authenticity of the portrait)
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