I knew all three; I thought they were just basic history that everyone should know. But then again, I’ve been a lifelong history buff
Knew all 3 but I am a history buff and 4 yrs Latin in HS.
What are your conclusions from this unscientific poll?
Well you would have gotten a chortle from me.
I think everyone ought to know this, and I wonder why they don’t. If you know #1, 2 and 3 are not hard to figure out, if you think about it for a minute.
What I was interested to learn, reading Livy, was that Hannibal (by the end of his life) had only one eye.
Lots of one-eyed ancient history folks. I can now think of three. Musta been hard to hold onto them.
I don’t know. Everyone I’ve talked to in real life hasn’t heard of him, which is bizarre.
I asked my roommate. He knew all three.
Maybe they weren’t interested in ancient history? I don’t think anyone in my family would know all three facts in the spoiler boxes. But then again, we’re not from the West.
I knew all three because I have a passing interest in Ancient Rome and I think I saw an old movie about Hannibal once. It was a musical, believe it or not.
I knew all three, and I think my family would make a good showing, but we’re a bunch of freaks.
Sadly, I wouldn’t have laughed at **adam yax’s ** joke. I’d have been outraged any biography worth printing wouldn’t have mentioned the elephants.
Well sure, all those tusks are right at eye level. Elephants should have been sold with the driver’s eye patch as a standard feature, not an after-market item.
[sup]Dangerous beasties, all over everywhere, putting somebody’s eye out on nearly a daily basis during elephant swarming season.[/sup]
I’m not sure if you got that Hannibal is about the cannibal serial killer. If you did my apologies; I have been whooshed.
Not only did I already know the three items, I know a little bit about what caused the war, how Hannibal waged it, what his downfall ultimately was, the subsequent fate of Carthage, and Hannibal’s last years as a mercenary general, hiring himself out to anyone who dared to stand up to the Romans.
I was thinking that a bit of cork over the end of the tusk might be a helpful way to protect the eyes of passers-by.
But then how would all the goring go on? I mean, you can’t very well try to gore someone and then be all “oh, [Carthaginian curse], I forgot to decork my elephant. Hey, Roman guy, could you take that bit of cork off so we can try again?”
I think of it as something like the pin on a grenade…
I knew all three of the facts, but I studied ancient history. However, I knew these from high school world history, I believe.
Of course there weren’t any elephants in the book. Atticus put them all in Claudius’ history scrolls.
I knew all three.
However, I didn’t learn them in school. Hannibal – and indeed, pretty much the whole of Roman history – was not covered in any of my junior high school or high school history classes. Not a one.
You know how I learned who Hannibal was?
Sometime in the 80s, I heard the name “Hannibal” in a G.I. Joe toy commercial (this was back when the cartoon was in full swing). Apparently C.O.B.R.A. genetically engineered a new super-villain, who the narrator described as having the attributed of various famous military leaders.
Can’t remember who all these leaders were, but I am pretty sure there was a comment about " … the cunning of Hannibal" somewhere in the commercial.
So I went to my grandparent’s set of encyclopedias next time I was over there, and I read up a little bit on who Hannibal was and what he was known for.
Wow – you really can find anything on the Internet. The commercial was for the then-new character Serpentor, and here is at least some of the narration:
(or maybe all that was written on the back of Serpentor’s packaging).
I was going to mention that. It was the first question and the guy said something like “Well, I know it’s not elephants so I’ll pick camels” :smack:
I remember the next day at work I commented on how stupid the guy was for not knowing something so easy and of course it turned out none of my co-workers knew it either. :smack:
Knew the first two, might well have guessed the third.
On little follow up to my Hannibal ‘joke’. Like I mentioned the people I told the joke to were quite smart, 2 MDs and a guy with a PhD in material sciences or something like that. I figured that perhaps folks in those fields don’t get the same well rounded education that somebody with a degree in the Arts would get. So, I told the entire story to my good friends John and Michelle. John is ABD (all but dissertation) PhD in Archaeology and Michelle is doing field work to gather data for her PhD in Archaeology as well. Needless to say I was very disappointed when I had to explain the joke to them as well.
The whole Hannibal thing must not be the common knowledge that some of us thought.