The Romans destroyed every last statue of their arch-enemy Hannibal. So all we have to go by are coins with his image minted in his time. Like this one:
This photo from a famous movie about Hannibal shows a believable figure of the hero. Remember: he was blind in one eye because of an infection he got while crossing through a swamp with his army. That’s why this man squints.
Another question is what the Carthaginians themselves looked like. We have plenty of portraits of famous Romans but of Carthaginians there are few. We know they were of Phoenician stock originally (Carthage was founded about the same time as Rome by Phoenicians) and historians believe there was little mixing with the local natives–the Libyans or Numidians. Who were they?
See this good post on the subject at Matilde’s Anthropology Blog–here. You will find many other very interesting posts there too.
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