Suppose that Hannibal had an identical twin who has the same level of genius as he did,what would happen?Will this extra Hannibal help win the war?IOTL,few of the other Carthaginian commanders were able to gain any victories in theatres outside of Italy,which ended up nullifying Hannibal’s results. Will this extra Hannibal help in any way?
WI: Hannibal Barca had an identical twin?
- Thread starter Avrorrange
- Start date
Anaxagoras
Banned
Keep him back in Carthage to serve as the political enforcer of the Barca faction. Then that annoying Hanno fellow would be unable to limit supplies and reinforcements to the military Hannibal in Italy.
FillyofDelphi
Banned
... what is he going to do, coup the Senate and alienate the merchantile power base of the city? Hanno wasent a dictator acting alone out of spite; he represented a real political force with backing.
Anaxagoras
Banned
True, but Hanno kind of had the run of things as it was (near as we can tell, anyway, as we don't know much about internal Carthaginian politics). If the Barca faction had a recognizable leader and political organizer, we can expect things to be rather more even.
FillyofDelphi
Banned
I'd beg to differ. If you have the Barcids trying to push their way into City politics while still running Iberia as their own little kingdom, than i'd argue you'd see even more resistance by the powers that be to the Italian project as it appears the family is making a grab for total state control by seizing the African military and financial policy.
Anaxagoras
Banned
Quite possibly. One of the tricky things about Carthaginian alternate history is how little we know about Carthage itself. We know about their constitution, thanks to Aristotle, but the details of their internal politics and power struggles are mostly unknown.
Supposing a butterfly net is put into place and this identical twin of Hannibal returns to Carthage after the Italian Campaign has begun and several Roman armies have been wiped out. He'd come in with obvious credibility and the people would probably back him against the Hanno faction. We might then see the dispatch of reinforcements and supplies to Italy, rather than seeing them wasted on pointless excursions to Sicily and Sardinia.
There's the risk of sibling rivalry here such that neither achieves any kind of fame!
FillyofDelphi
Banned
True, we do have a lack of information on the exact system we'd be working with to see if Hannibal Clone could be capable overcoming the resistance via popular appeal. However, I will say it's a fundamental political reality that the oligarchs wouldent just roll over and accept a Barcid populist assention without at least trying to hold their ground. And, as I understand it, we do know they at least have the power of being the men contributing the lions share of the national purse.
H.C would need to find a way to get at least their gruding acceptance. Perhaps on his diplomatic circut he'd be able to leverage commercial concessions from Magna Gracea? I disagree Sicily was a bad target though: it's position in keeping the routes to Italy open, keeping Syracus in the effort, and denying Rome a key cereal source make its strategic value obvious
Do you have siblings? If so then you should be clearly aware of what happens when you compete on the same turf!
I suspect by asking that question you either don't or deliberately chose different fields.
Last edited:
Indeed. Taking into an account what (relatively little) we know about Hannibal, he was extremely ambitious, quite unscrupulous, not overburdened with the silly notions like love to his fellow citizens (look at the battle arrangements at Zama), more than a little bit insane in his hatred of the Rome and a lousy politician who, let's face it, screwed up things in Italy and then broke a reasonably good peace agreement that Scipio made with Carthage which resulted in much harsher terms after the Battle of Zama. Something similar to Charles XII on the steroids. His OTL brothers seemingly were reasonably average generals: they managed to lose Spain to the inferior Roman forces (led to a very good but still inexperienced general).
Scenario assumes that we have 2 identical personages like him. Which of them would voluntarily agree to play a second fiddle? And why do we have to assume the #2 would be able to stay in charge of the Carthage politics for a couple decades?