Was Hannibal black?

by ericbruno

The man who crossed the alps with elephants and successfully walked in Rome to them travel around the peninsula for years and Gail, was he black?

It says he was from Carthage but was he?

Searocksandtrees

Hi, this question has come up a few times. Not discouraging more contributions here, but you can get started on these previous answers

Hawk_bat

The mod has already linked a number of well written discussions on this topic. There is just a few things I would like to add.

Yes, Hannibal was a Carthaginian. He is described as a Carthaginian by the ancient sources and there is nothing to suggest otherwise (Polybius, Livy etc). Carthage was settled by Phoenicians/Canaanites, which were a Semitic people, but by the time of Hannibal it is unclear what was the specific ethnic heritage of the people Punic Carthaginian culture in terms of whether it was dominated by the original settlers, the local north Africans, or a mixture of both.

There is also no widely accepted representation of Hannibal Barca. When discussing this topic online, I have seen people point to a Carthaginian coin of a man with features they identify as "black" and then attempt to claim this as evidence. While it is problematic to infer race from a coin, if these features are supposed to represent someone who is "black" it seems to be an outlier in the extensive numismatic evidence we have from Carthage. Indeed in the Carthaginian coin collections examined in the academic journals I will link, that is the only example of an individual exhibiting those features.

That is really the only evidence I have seen to suggest that Hannibal may have been black and it is incredibly flimsy. It is just a coin with a man who seems to have been black (which seems unusual for Carthaginian coins) that was minted for Carthage bearing a fairly standard depiction of an elephant that they often used and it has certainly not been proven to be a depiction of Hannibal (Gowers & Scullard 282-284). Other Carthaginian coins depicted in the cited articles are suggested to be of Hannibal's father Hamilcar and his brother Hasdrubal, and they do not seem to look "black" (which I believe is a problematic description anyway). And finally neither Polybius, Livy or any of the other ancient writers make mention of Hannibal having very dark skin, which would be a surprising feature to leave out when describing an enemy as hated as Hannibal, given that the Historia Augusta uncomfortably describes a black Ethiopian Roman soldier as having an "ominous" appearance (Historia Augusta:22).

Sources: A.H. Lloyd "A RECENTLY DISCOVERED HOARD OF GREEK AND SICULO-PUNIC COINS", Royal Numismatics Society (1925)

E. S. G. Robinson "CARTHAGINIAN AND OTHER SOUTH ITALIAN COINAGES OF THE SECOND PUNIC WAR", Royal Numismatics Society (1964)

Paolo Visonà "Punic and Greek Bronze Coins from Carthage", American Journal of Archeology (1985)

William Gowers & H. H. Scullard "Hannibal's elephants again", Royal Numismatics Society (1950)

See also: Historia Augusta "Life of Septimius Severus" Polybius "The Histories" Livy "History" Books 26-30