Tom Holland

And that means that rather like Britain in the wake of the Second World War, Syracuse is obsessed with maintaining a special relationship with the new superpower.

So the Syracusans, their harbors are open to Roman galleys.

If the Romans are short of manpower or of grain or supplies or whatever, the Syracusans will go to great lengths to meet the needs of Rome.

I think probably, yes.

So Carthage, like Rome, has a Senate, an assembly of its greatest and most influential men.

And most of the people on this Carthaginian Senate, as you say, are, I think, reluctant in the immediate aftermath of the war to return to Rome.

to open confrontation with Rome.

But there is one family that is very keen to do this, and it's the greatest and the most glamorous of all the dynasties of Carthage.

And this is a family called the Barkids.

And Barker, it means lightning.

And it's a name that has been given to the city's greatest general, who's a man called Hamilcar.

and he's pretty much the only Carthaginian general to have emerged from the war with Rome with much credit.

He had fought a brilliant rearguard action in Sicily, trying to keep the Romans at bay.

The fact that he ultimately failed doesn't impair his reputation for what had been a pretty good war.

Hamilcar, in the wake of Carthage's defeat, decides that there is a need to find a replacement for Sicily, a new base for empire.

He fixes on Spain and he builds a very substantial

empire there.

And he dies there fighting against Spanish Iberian warriors, but he has three sons to succeed him.

And the eldest of these is Hannibal, the famous general who will win the Battle of Cannae.

The two other sons, Hasdrubal and Mago, and they will also feature in the war that Hannibal launches against Rome.