Hannibal

Hannibal was a Carthaginian general and statesman who led Carthage's forces against Rome during the Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC). He is best known for leading an army, including North African war elephants, on a famous crossing of the Alps into Italy, where he inflicted a series of major defeats on Roman armies, most devastatingly at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC. After years of campaigning in Italy without capturing Rome itself, he was recalled to Africa and defeated by the Roman general Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC, ending the war. Historians widely regard him as one of the greatest military tacticians and generals of antiquity, and his campaigns profoundly influenced later Roman and Western military thought.