(originally posted in historymemes and 196 but pugjesus also told me this is a good place to post here too, thanks ))

explanation:

hannibal is one of the greatest [punic] generals in all of history. There was an event where he had visited the gates of rome in his italian campaign (of destroying rome as revenge for the first punic war, too) and the romans were shitting bricks, crying “HANNIBAL AD PORTAS! (HANNIBAL IS AT THE GATES!!!)”. But after inspecting rome, he literally just left. He knew he wasn’t ready to invade it.

To put into perspective how terrifying this guy was: In the battle of Cannae, despite being outnumbered 50,000 to 80,000 and fighting on narrow terrain, due to incredible trickery he still managed to trap the entire roman army and massacred most of them. He killed 15% of the entire recruitable male population of Rome, in a single battle.

Jesus christ, this guy was a fucking badass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae