The original Hannibal

This sheet of paper from my young friend Monte is in my journal because it’s dear to me. For the future, when my memory lapses, I should jot down the back-story.

One Saturday, while Monte was taking me to school with a little one-on-one on a nearby court, one of his classmates came by. Naturally, Monte introduced us. And as so often happens, I heard that hackneyed response.

“Hannibal? Eewww. You mean like that guy who eats people?”

Some days I explain who my parents named me after. I might mention that I was born before Thomas Harris wrote his novels featuring Hannibal Lector. Once in a while I talk about watching The A Team TV show with George Peppard playing a cigar smoking character who shared my first name. This time I just waved it off. Monte waited until his friend was gone before he said anything.

“Doesn’t that frost you? To know that everyone who meets you thinks of that creepy guy in a horror movie? Why would they give you such a weird name?”

I dribbled while I thought. “You know Monte, it just doesn’t matter what anybody thinks. I know who my folks were thinking of when they named me. Why’d they give me that name? You can figure that one out for yourself.”

Monte ran me around the court for another hour and I forgot all about that conversation. I thought he had too until about two weeks later when I walked into my office one afternoon and found this short essay on my desk.

Hannibal Barca

About 2,200 years ago, a General of Carthage named Hannibal Barca crossed the Alps with an army of elephants to fight the Romans. Carthage was in North Africa, near where Tunisia is today. It was an empire just like the Roman Empire. Both empires existed side by side for centuries. Then the Romans decided they didn’t want the trading competition and started the Punic Wars.

Hannibal fought the Second Punic War, after Carthage lost the first one. When the main general was assassinated, the troops elected Hannibal to lead them. He attacked Spain and crossed the Alps in 14 days to invade Italy, handing the Romans a series of defeats for 16 years. He kept his army in the field that whole time and they never mutinied against him or fought among themselves. That’s really cool because he had the first Army of diversity. It was made up of people from different countries-- Africans, Spaniards, Gauls, Carthaginians, Italians, and Greeks. They all had different customs and languages, but he got them all to recognize one authority.

He never lost a major battle in Italy but Rome invaded Carthage and he was called home to defend it. They beat him there, which ended the Second Punic War, but they didn’t catch him. Hannibal lived as a hunted man all over the Middle East but he never gave up. He hired out as a soldier against Rome's allies until they cornered him in Turkey. He was so unwilling to let the Romans catch him, he took poison.

Some might think we know more about the Roman leaders because they were European and the people of Carthage were Africans. I think it is just because Rome eventually destroyed Carthage and the winner of the war gets to write history. Hannibal was a military genius, very brave and a great leader. He never quit against a bigger army, and he got people of different cultures to work together. Anybody should be proud to be named after this man, and it’s a shame that his name is now attached to a fictional serial killer.


No, I’ll never tell Monte how touched I was that he cared enough to do the research and write this thing. But he probably noticed that I hung his essay to the front of my refrigerator for a couple of weeks and wrote the words “Nice Job” next to the big red “A” at the top of the page.