In autumn 218 BC, Hannibal crossed the Alps with about 26,000 troops, several thousand cavalry, and a small number of war elephants. The crossing took fifteen days and lost him about half his army. Roughly how many elephants did he start with?
Polybius, the most reliable source, gives 37. They were probably North African forest elephants — a smaller subspecies than the Indian war elephant, now extinct, that the Carthaginians used in earlier wars. By the time Hannibal reached the Italian plains, only a handful were still alive. By the time of the Battle of Trebia later that winter, only one was left; Hannibal personally rode it. The 200-elephant figure belongs to Pyrrhus's much earlier Italian campaign of 280 BC.
Read the full facts →Hannibal Barca (247–c. 183 BC) was a Carthaginian general who invaded Italy with elephants across the Alps in 218 BC and won three of the most famous victories in military history against the Roman Republic. After his eventual defeat at Zama in 202 BC he served as Carthaginian chief magistrate, then as advisor to the Seleucid king Antiochus III, before killing himself in exile in Bithynia to avoid Roman capture.
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