Rome Takes It All

A History of Mankind (182)

To check all previous newsletters in the History of Mankind, which is pretty long, you can click here.

The memory of Hannibal, a figure who was an everyday obsession for almost two decades, remained strong among the Roman populace well after his defeat.

One prominent fact about Plautus’ later plays is that his cunning slave protagonists probably reminded everyone of Hannibal's well-known martial trickery, in a reverse-identification with Rome’s uber-enemy. Pseudolus and Epidicus, the eponymous heroes of their plays, trick and defeat their enemies using manipulation, traps and deceits, while displaying their superior intelligence. Curculio, a trickster in his own eponymous play, imitates Hannibal’s use of Marcellus’ stolen ring in an attempt to capture the city of Salapia¹.

Hannibal himself, however, was vanquished, and the field was wide open for Rome to become the dominant power across the Mediterranean basin. In full control of Italy, the basin’s most populous region, and highly productive Sicily, also having a solid foothold in fabulously wealthy Spain with its mineral resources, timber and numberless warring tribes waiting to be subdued and enslaved, by the year 200 BC the Republic didn’t have anything resembling a direct rival left.