Hannibal

Reading notes

• Ad Atticum 7.11 §1 or about Hannibal

  Cicero recoils that Caesar, a Roman commander, is being described as if he were Hannibal marching on Italy: an enemy seizing citizen towns, not a magistrate of the Roman people.

• On the Ends of Good and Evil §4.22 Hannibal had come to the gates

  The proverbial Roman cry 'Hannibal ad portas,' recalling the Carthaginian general's threat to Rome during the Second Punic War. Cicero uses it to expose the absurdity of a Stoic orator denying that capture and death are evils.

• Against Verres, Second Hearing, Book V §31 this Hannibal

  Cicero now applies the standing Roman name for the great enemy --- Hannibal --- to Verres in his women's-army camp on the Syracusan shore. The figure of the praetor as a perverse general fighting battles of luxury runs through 26-31.

• Thirteenth Philippic §25 you new Hannibal

  Antony, besieging Decimus Brutus in Mutina, is mockingly cast as a second Hannibal who has in fact trapped himself; the "poisoner" he abuses is Octavian, framed as the cure for Antony's poisons.

• Fifth Philippic §25 Is Hannibal then an enemy, and Antony a citizen?

  Hannibal, the Carthaginian general of the Second Punic War, is Cicero's standard byword for the foreign enemy; he argues Antony's devastations make him worse than Hannibal yet he is absurdly still treated as a citizen.

• Sixth Philippic §4 as though legates were being sent to Hannibal

  Cicero argues that the Senate's so-called embassy is really an ultimatum, framed exactly as the Senate once framed its demands on Hannibal: a denunciation of war if Antony does not comply.