Greek North Africa Carthage - Occupation Of Hannibal

Regarded as one of the greatest military leaders in history, Hannibal led the Carthaginian army in the Second Punic War against Roman forces, following in his father's footsteps who had been the leading general in the First Punic War. The beginning of the war in 218 BC was marked by the remarkable feat of Hannibal invading Italy via the Alps with his soldiers, horsemen and, most extraordinarily, North African war elephants. For nearly fifteen years the conflict was fought on Italian soil, wreaking devastation on the peninsula on a scale it had never before endured, but it was the first venture of Hannibal crossing the Alps into the Po plain that was most shocking to the Roman generals. Having achieved one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of military logistics, Hannibal was then able to inflict humiliating defeats on the Roman legions in a succession of major battles, at the Trebia [December 218 BC], Lake Trasimene [June 217 BC], and Cannae [August 216 BC], bringing Rome to very near breaking point. As a measure of the extent of the devastation, Hannibal had defeated the equivalent of eight consular armies [16 legions plus an equal number of allies] and within the space of just three campaign seasons Rome had lost one-fifth of the entire population of male citizens over 17 years of age. Furthermore, the ruinous effect these defeats had on morale was such that most of southern Italy defected to Hannibal's cause, thus prolonging the war for a decade.

The need to pay mercenaries prompted Carthage to begin minting coins using gold, silver, electrum, bronze and billon. The great success of the Carthaginian army is highlighted in Carthage's ability to use gold for coin issues, as exemplified by the present example. This was in sharp contrast to the Romans who had to debase their currency in order to pay for the war. Among the special coinage minted under Hannibal's influence are the ever-popular issues featuring a war elephant on the reverse. On this coin, however, we are presented with a much rarer iconography; a head wreathed in corn and Nike driving a biga. Uncertainly attributed to Capua in the past due to the retrograde K, the style of the obverse is truthfully more Punic [or Siculo-Punic] in character, particularly in the pronounced heavy chin, and the iconography is considerably more proximate to late gold issues of Syracuse around the time of Hiketas [287-278 BC]. It moreover lacks the characteristic inscriptions that would be expected of a civil issue, the absence of which clearly indicate that this is a Carthaginian military issue rather than that of a self-governing city-state.