Hannibal at the Court of the Selucid King Antiochus III the Great

Antiochus III Hannibal

Fourteen years after the victory of Zama, the Romans, alarmed by Carthage's renewed prosperity, demanded Hannibal's surrender. Hannibal thereupon went into voluntary exile. First he journeyed to Tyre, the mother-city of Carthage, and then to Ephesus, where he was honorably received by Antiochus III of Syria ( ruled 223–187 ) of the Selucid empire, who was preparing for war with Rome. He advised him to equip a fleet and land a body of troops in the south of Italy, offering to take command himself. But he could not make much impression on Antiochus, who listened to his courtiers and would not entrust Hannibal with any important office. In 196 BC he was placed in command of a Phoenician fleet but was defeated in a battle off the Eurymedon River. From the court of Antiochus, who seemed prepared to surrender him to the Romans, Hannibal fled to Crete, but he soon went back to Asia Minor and sought refuge with Prusias I of Bithynia, who was engaged in warfare with Rome's ally, King Eumenes II of Pergamum. Hannibal went on to serve Prusias in this war. In one of the victories he gained over Eumenes at sea, it is said that he used one of the first examples of biological warfare - he threw cauldrons of snakes into the enemy vessels.At Libyssa on the eastern shore of the Sea of Marmora, he took poison, which, it was said, he had long carried about with him in a ring. The precise year of his death is a matter of controversy. If, as Livy seems to imply, it was 183 BC, he died in the same year as Scipio Africanus, at the age of sixty four.