How reliable is the second punic war as the only written source

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quite likely H*nnibal of Barca was a mythical figure concocted by the Romans to have a worthy enemy that they defeated
if he exist then he's black

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>>3122955
I'll bite.


He was Phoenician. He was Northern African.

Born in Modern day Tunisia in Carthage.

Do you know what Tunisians look like? They look like Semites, Copt, maybe even Arabic.

The pic is a Carthaginians shekel.

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>>3122988
BUT WE WUZ MEDITERRANEAN N SHIET

>>3122942
All classic primary literary sources are highly unreliable. Some more, some less, of course. But the idea is to use other sources like archeology to judge what's reliable and what isn't.

>>3122942

Modern historians believe that Roman writers tended to exaggerate the scale of battles, especially in terms of the numbers of soldiers involved on both sides. This isn't to necessarily say that they were intentionally making up numbers, but their estimates tended to be improbably large. Hannibal's thought processes would be of immense interest to military historians as Hannibal tends to be one of the historic generals that military historians gush over because he managed to out-maneuver the Romans for so long.

>>3123062
>>3122955
You must feel so smart, knocking down easy strawmen

there's quite a bit of sources, retard. there's three major ones that cover it: Appian, a Greek who went on to be a Roman citizen; Polybius, a Greek whose native State went to war against Rome and lost, who was held hostage in Rome, and was present at the destruction of Carthage; and Livy, a Roman. Polybius is the best source we have on it, and he praises and criticizes both sides. There were also Roman historians, whose works haven't survived, who were Punicaboos who wrote accounts that were pro-Carthage.

>>3122942
History as an objective, academic discipline is a rather recent invention. Ancient historiography, especially Greek and Roman, was equal parts history and rhetoric--artistic prose written for a specific group of people, to entertain as much as influence. It wasn't until Cicero that anyone even tried to distinguish history from oratory and poetry.