>>18448543
Because the Romans couldn't just say "oh yeah we curbstomped all these barbarians and then started fighting each other"
They needed a badass antagonist and Hannibal was the closest thing to it
But I don't think it's all lies unless you believe they fully bought their own lies
They were still using '"Hannibal at the gates" as a rallying cry during a siege centuries after he was dead

>>18448543
>win 3 decisive battles against the romans due to Roman arrogance


Every victory is due to enemy inferiority in some respect, the fact it was exploited does not make the victory hollow.

>>18448603
>well take for instance battle of lake trasimene
>romans do zero reconnoisance and march their entire army in a narrow passage with a mountain on one side and a lake on the other
>hannibal hides his army in a cove in the mountain and ambushes

I think even a retard would have won the battle given how badly the romans set themselves up

>>18448586
when hannibal actually seiged rome to life the seige of nola (at the time a carthaginian collaborator) the romans didn't give a fuck. they even sent roman troops from rome to campaign in spain instead of garrisoning

>>18448645
They also sold to each other the land Hannibal's army was camped on
That's because neither the Romans nor Hannibal were retarded. They both knew what could and could not be accomplished, even as they tried to out-bluff each other
That doesn't make what I said any less true though, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make (assuming you have a point to make)

>>18448650
not really trying to rebuff u, just pointing out the irony in their rallying cry "hannibal's at the gates"

>>18448543
>win 3 decisive battles against the romans
>spend like 16 years fighting them
no one else (at least outside Italy, if you count the early republic I guess the Samnites are kind of similar) did anything close to that
Everywhere else that stopped the Romans (until centuries later) did so by being remote and far away and not worth the trouble. Carthage was the only peer rival the Roman Republic had, the only opponent who could've dethroned them utterly instead of just limiting their expansion.

>>18448658
I don't think the Romans used it ironically
They weren't scared of Hannibal but they were cautious and sensible. Hannibal ad portas did not mean run and hide in the wine cellar, but grab a torch and a weapon and run to the city wall. They didn't have the majestiic Aurelian Wall yet so they had to make do with the Servian one, which still proved enough of an obstacle for Hannibal to not even attempt the siege. Romans lived and died by the vae victis, they reacted forcefully to catastrophic defeats