Tom Holland

You know, they have despaired of the situation.

Yes.

And in the speech that he's recorded as giving, I think it expresses what were almost certainly his real sentiments.

So Hannibal is made to say by Livy, I am not waging a war of extermination against the Romans.

I am merely contending for honor and empire.

My ancestors yielded to Roman valor.

So in the first Punic war,

Now, in the Second Punic War, it is the turn of the Romans to yield to my good fortune and to my valour.

And that, I think, is clearly what he thinks.

will happen.

Why wouldn't the Romans choose to negotiate?

He doesn't want to wipe them out.

He doesn't want to destroy them.

He just wants to do to the Romans what the Romans had done to his own city.

And so it seems cast in that light as very reasonable.

And for the Romans, this is a fateful turning point because it is in effect

their Lord Halifax moment.

Was there any possibility the Romans would accept this deal?

Well, the truth is that even as those emissaries, so the 10 Roman prisoners who were going to ask the Romans to ransom them, and also a Carthaginian officer called Catharlo, who is kind of in charge of the whole peace mission,

even as they are setting off from Cannae to Rome, I think Hannibal has already missed the bus.