The Roman threat to Carthage, which was where Tunis is today, was constant and for them time was running out. When its great defender Hamilcar died in 226 BC, his son, Hannibal, then 26, took over his audacious plan to get Rome before Rome got them. They couldn’t go by sea because the Roman navy was vastly superior. Nor could they go by land because the Roman ground tactics were too strong. Instead, Hannibal decided to slip in through the back door to Italy, taking 35,000 men and 60 war elephants across the Pyrenees, the south of France, and across the Alps.
In general, the journey seems impossible, and they argue to this day about which route he might have followed. I rounded up some toy elephants and tried to float them on rafts of match-sticks or icy-poles across any available puddles or flooding gutters and they always capsized and sank. Hannibal got his full sized, lurching and alive versions across the Rhone, the Rhine and many other rivers, and then along narrow alpine ledges, heavy with snowdrifts. Even today, those people who know about elephants reckon it can’t be done.
For eleven years, Hannibal’s army ravaged towns and cities all over Italy and slaughtered whole legions that came against them. But the strength of his army was always slowly dwindling and the Romans eventually managed to cut his supply lines. He was finally defeated at Zuma in 202BC.