HANNIBAL

born 247 BC, North Africa died c. 183, 181, Libyssa, Bithynia Carthaginian general, one of the great military leaders of antiquity, who commanded the Carthaginian forces against Rome in the Second Punic War (218201 BC). city, Ralls and Marion counties, northeastern Missouri, U.S., on the Mississippi River, there spanned to Hull, Ill., by the Mark Twain Memorial Bridge (1935). Noted as the boyhood home of Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), it was the setting for some of his books, including his classics about Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Settled (1819) by Moses Bates on land given (1818) to Abraham Bird as compensation for property damaged in the New Madrid earthquake (1811), the town received its Carthaginian name from Hannibal Creek (later Bear Creek). A trading centre for grain and dairy products, it has light manufacturing (electrical appliances, cement, and fabricated steel buildings). Memorials to Mark Twain include his boyhood home and museum (1937), Judge Clemens' Law Office, Becky Thatcher House, and the Pilaster House. Mark Twain Cave, also a reputed hideout for the outlaw Jesse James and a station on the Underground Railroad for runaway slaves, is 2 mi (3 km) south. Jackson's Island, adventure territory for Tom and Huck, is near the Illinois shore of the Mississippi. Twain's two-room cabin birthplace at Florida in Monroe County is preserved in the Mark Twain State Park, 25 mi southwest. Tom Sawyer Days, a national fence-painting contest, is held in July. Molly Brown, heroine of the Titanic sinking and the subject of the musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown, was born in Hannibal, and her birthplace is preserved. Portraitist Carroll Beckwith was also a native of the city. HannibalLa Grange College was founded in 1929. Inc. town, 1839; city, 1845. Pop. (1990) 18,004. Additional reading Ernle D.S. Bradford, Hannibal (1981), is a popular account of his life and generalship; Howard H. Scullard, A History of the Roman World: 753 to 146 B.C., 4th ed. (1980), discusses his tactics in Spain and Italy and the opposition by Fabius Cunctator and Scipio Africanus; Brian H. Warmington, Carthage, 2nd ed., ch. 89 (1969), includes a valuable discussion of Hannibal's relations with the government of Carthage. A penetrating study of Hannibal's personal history, together with a treatment of his political aims in Italy and his relations with the democratic element at Carthage, has been made by Edmund Groag, Hannibal als Politiker (1929, reissued 1967). Classical sources were unsure of Hannibal's route to Italy. Frank W. Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius, vol. 1 (1957, reissued 1979), summarizes both the textual and the topographical criticism. English reconstructions of the Alpine crossing include Gavin R. De Beer, Alps and Elephants (1955), a lively and practical approach not only to topography but also to the problems of elephant transport; and Dennis Proctor, Hannibal's March in History (1971), a scholarly chronology and routing of the march. De Beer's Hannibal (1969) collects photographs of topography, together with cultural material on Rome and Carthage in Hannibal's time.