What Did Hannibal Look Like?

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 is an ancient bust:

Hellenistic Marble Bust of Hannibal, likely from Capua, Italy (Photo in public domain )

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 Ben Maccabee squints and later wears an eye-patch.

Ben Maccabee stars as Hannibal the Great (visit page)

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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This entry was posted in 1, Hannibal, Romans, war, warfare. Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to What Did Hannibal Look Like?

  1. Matthias says:

    They looked like modern day north Tunisian. Who range from pale to olive and look closer to Levantine than to other Maghrebis.

    Punic was spoken in the north of the country until the arrival of Arabs. Arab historians recorded this.

  2. Anonymous says:

    They were Natural African Descent toned

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