43 — Second Battle of the Eurymedon 190 BCE. Hannibal goes to sea

In 190 BCE the Seleucid Empire (A Greek successor state to Alexander’s empire based largely on the old Persian Empire) fought two major battles at sea against the Romans and their Greek allies.

The extent of the Seleucid Empire under Antiochus The Great

The first of these was fought at the mouth of the Eurymedon River (in modern day Turkey) in 190BCE and despite formally being part of the Roman–Seleucid War I’m including it in the Punic Wars for reasons that I think will become clear as I tell this story.

Roman allies in blue, Seleucids and allies in red.

So the Second Punic War finished in 202 BCE with the Roman victory over Hannibal at the Battle of Zama and the subsequent peace treaty of 201 BCE.

Under the treaty Carthage lost its territories outside of Africa, was forbidden to keep war elephants, and was limited to a fleet of 10 warships.

Elephants were a big deal

They also had to pay 10,000 talents of silver. A talent is around 33 kilograms.

In today’s money it’s around $4 billion dollars, so chump change to modern nations states, but a big deal back then.

Now here’s where things get interesting.

With the war over Hannibal (yes THE Hannibal) ran for, and was elected, Carthage’s suffete, or Chief Magistrate.

This certainly runs against the narrative of vengeful Romans hounding the genius who had dared to humiliate them, as he held the role for around five years, which is a fair time for any ruler.

Trying to figure out how to pay the Roman reparations Hannibal set about an audit of Carthage’s finances which determined two very interesting things.

1. The revenues of Carthage were sufficient to pay the Romans without needing to…