Hannibal belongs to the select group of classical figures whose names have some resonance in the popular culture, far beyond the realm of classicists or even those with a casual interest in ancient history. Many people who could not identify when the Punic Wars happened or who fought in them nevertheless may have some hazy notion that Hannibal once marched through the Alps at the head of an army that included war elephants--it surely being the vivid and incongruous image of elephants struggling through Alpine passes that has fixed this episode in the public mind.
As one moves inward from this outer circle of hazy recollection, one finds a variety of lasting imprints left by Hannibal and his campaigns. Fabius Cunctator and his strategy of avoiding a pitched battle with Hannibal has made "Fabian" a byword for a policy of delay and gradualism, and in Britain once gave its name to a distinctive branch of the socialist movement.
The Battle of Cannae is one of the handful of engagements that holds an enduring fascination at military staff colleges: the textbook example of a perfect envelopment action, leading to annihilation of the loser at the cost of almost trifling costs to the victor. As recently as the Persian Gulf campaign of 1991, Cannae was evoked as a model for the coalition's objectives in outflanking and enveloping the Iraqi army in Kuwait. It is perhaps less certain how often instructors and students at staff colleges reflect upon the great paradox of Cannae, one central to the historian's evaluation of Hannibal's career: that in the end his perfect victory availed him not at all, since the annihilated Romans won the war.
To those who remember fragments of their classical history, other episodes of Hannibal's campaigns remain in mind: Scipio the elder saved by his son, the future Africanus, or the head of Hannibal's brother Hasdrubal Barca, hurled into Hannibal's camp after Hasdrubal was defeated and killed. ...