Who was Hannibal?

Hannibal was the leader of the city state of Carthage and the greatest threat to the fledgling Roman Senate. He crossed the Mediterrranean sea with his famed cavalry of elephants and even marched as far as the Alps. Wherever he met the Romans in open battle he beat them, but the Romans had taken the precaution of occupying the areas which were his supply lines and ultimately defeated him. There were three Punic Wars (Punic = Phoenician, the Roman way of referring to the ancient state of Phoenicia which had included the city states of Tyre and Sidon.), the last of which was won convincingly by the Romans as they came into their own as a sea power. Lacking the seamanship to compete on level terms with the Carthaginians and their quinquiremes and triremes, the Romans hit open the simple but brilliant strategy of loading their galleys with soldiers and boarding the enemy craft, whose crews were unprepared for the close=in combat with hardened battle-veterans.