Originally Posted by
Macilrille
Erik Christiansen. docent, dr.phil. Aarhus University, writes in his "Roman History" that had we not had Polybius we would have been left with a skewed picture of Hannibal, for Roman writers portrays him as the most faithless and nefarious of all faithless and nefarious Phoenicans, which according to the Romans were all Phoenicans. I have great respect for EC, he was competent and BTW fun to have as teacher and guide on our Roman trip when we wrote our Bachelor's (which was in Roman history), he is less competent now, having gone old and had a stroke, but I will take his word for this with what I have read of Polybius, he liked the Romans (despite being one of the hostages of KH in Rome AFAICR) and he was connected to the Scipii, but he was not a Roman propagandist like others were. He seems to give Carthage and Hannibal some credit.
Edited to add that I just read Polybius and he has lots of good things to say about Hannibal's skill, though he maintains that Scipio matched him (I suspect it was close indeed). So in that respect he was not just another Roman propagandist.
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