kiwifruit @ kiwifruit @lemmy.world Posts 0Comments 3Joined 2 yr. ago
Livy in Ab Urbe Condita writes of a legendary meeting between these two great and influential men at the court of Antiochus III and a conversation that followed
"When Africanus (Scipo) asked who, in Hannibal's opinion, was the greatest general, Hannibal named Alexander, the king of the Macedonians because with a small force he has routed armies innumerable and because he has traversed the most distant regions, even to see which transcended human hopes. To the next request, as to whom he would rank second, Hannibal selected Pyrrhus, saying that he had been the first to teach the art of castrametation, besides no one had chosen his ground or placed his troops more discriminatingly; he possessed also the art of winning men over to him, so that the Italian people preferred the lordship of a foreign king to that of the Roman people, so long the master in that land. When he continued, asking whom Hannibal considered third, he named himself without hesitation"
Quick search shows he did condem it.