See Ridley Scott’s 1973 Bread Commercial—Voted England’s Favorite Advertisement of All Time

in Film, Television | December 14th, 2017

I have often thought that eat­ing some real­ly seri­ous brown bread is a bit like push­ing a bike up a very steep hill, a hill called “health.” So what a sur­prise to find that in 2006 a poll of 1,000 Britons vot­ed this 1973 ad for Hov­is bread as the Favorite British Com­mer­cial of All Time. And none oth­er than Rid­ley Scott direct­ed it. Indeed, this sto­ry of a young lad deliv­er­ing bread by bicy­cle up a steep cob­ble­stone min­ing-town street is laced through with nos­tal­gia and a sen­ti­men­tal use of Dvorak’s “New World” Sym­pho­ny. (So beloved is it that Brits often request the clas­si­cal work on radio as “the Hov­is music.”)

Before Rid­ley Scott became a block­buster film direc­tor, he cut his teeth by direct­ing episod­ic tele­vi­sion in the UK, and then form­ing an adver­tis­ing pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny with his broth­er Tony called RSA Films (Rid­ley Scott Asso­ciates). Accord­ing to Scott, he was involved in the pro­duc­tion of rough­ly 2,700 com­mer­cials over the company’s 10 years.

This icon­ic ad was one of sev­er­al he direct­ed that year for Hov­is, but this is the one that stuck. It might be the sim­plic­i­ty of the ad, the Sisyphean strug­gle of its young pro­tag­o­nist (who at least gets to eas­i­ly ride home), or any num­ber of fac­tors, but it would be a stretch to real­ly see the auteur in this film. If any­thing, it’s rem­i­nis­cent of his kitchen sink meets French New Wave short film from 1965, “Boy and Bicy­cle,” which is inter­est­ing more as an odd­i­ty and a star­ring vehi­cle for his broth­er than a great film.

The Inde­pen­dent tracked down the boy in the Hov­is ad, Carl Bar­low, who was 13 at the time, but is now 57 and a retired fire­fight­er.

“It was pure fate that I got the part as the Hov­is boy. I was down to the last three, and it turned out that one of the two boys could­n’t ride a bike, and the oth­er would­n’t cut his hair into the pud­ding bowl style — it was the Sev­en­ties after all. As the only boy who could ride a bike and would cut his hair, I got the part.”

This year, as part of an ad cam­paign for Evans Bicy­cles, Mr. Bar­low made his way to the top of the hill one more time, with the help of an elec­tric bike:

The orig­i­nal com­mer­cial is not Rid­ley Scott’s most famous one. That would go to his Apple Mac­in­tosh “1984” ad that screened dur­ing the Super Bowl. This list shows a few more that Scott direct­ed, into the 1990s.

Final­ly, an icon­ic com­mer­cial invites par­o­dy, and, in fact, cher­ished come­di­ans The Two Ron­nies made fun of the Hov­is ad in this brief skit from 1978.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rid­ley Scott Walks You Through His Favorite Scene from Blade Run­ner

Rid­ley Scott Talks About Mak­ing Apple’s Land­mark “1984” Com­mer­cial, Aired on Super Bowl Sun­day in 1984

How Rid­ley Scott Turned Footage From the Begin­ning of The Shin­ing Into the End of Blade Run­ner

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Underground Cartoonist Robert Crumb Creates an Illustrated Introduction to Franz Kafka’s Life and Work

in Comics/Cartoons, Literature | December 14th, 2017

The use of an author’s name as an adjec­tive to describe some kind of gen­er­al style can seem, well, lazy, in a wink-wink, “you know what I mean,” kind of way. One must leave it to read­ers to decide whether deploy­ing a “Bald­win­ian” or a “Woolfi­an,” or an “Orwellian” or “Dick­en­sian,” is jus­ti­fied. When it comes to “Kafkaesque,” we may find rea­son to con­sid­er aban­don­ing the word alto­geth­er. Not because we don’t know what it means, but because we think it means what Kaf­ka meant, rather than what he wrote. Maybe turn­ing him into short­hand, “a clever ref­er­ence,” writes Chris Barsan­ti, pre­pares us to seri­ous­ly mis­un­der­stand his work.

The prob­lem moti­vat­ed author David Zane Mairowitz and under­ground comics leg­end Robert Crumb to cre­ate a graph­ic biog­ra­phy, first pub­lished in 1990 as Kaf­ka for Begin­ners. “The book,” writes Barsan­ti of a 2007 Fan­to­graph­ics edi­tion called Kaf­ka, “states its case rather plain: ‘No writer of our time, and prob­a­bly none since Shake­speare, has been so wide­ly over-inter­pret­ed and pigeon holed… [Kafkaesque] is an adjec­tive that takes on almost myth­ic pro­por­tions in our time, irrev­o­ca­bly tied to fan­tasies of doom and gloom, ignor­ing the intri­cate Jew­ish Joke that weaves itself through the bulk of Kafka’s work.’” Or, as Maria Popo­va puts it, “Kafka’s sto­ries, how­ev­er grim, are near­ly always also… fun­ny.”

Much of that humor derives from “the author’s cop­ing mech­a­nisms amid Prague’s anti-Semit­ic cul­tur­al cli­mate.” Mairowitz describes Kafka’s Jew­ish humor as “healthy anti-Semi­tism.… but soon­er or lat­er, even the most hate­ful of Jew­ish self-hatreds has to turn around and laugh at itself.” Crumb pro­vides graph­ic illus­tra­tions of Kafka’s espe­cial­ly mor­dant, absur­dist humor in adap­ta­tions of The Meta­mor­pho­sis, A Hunger Artist, In the Penal Colony, and The Judge­ment and brief sketch­es from The Tri­al, The Cas­tle, and Ameri­ka. These illus­tra­tions draw out the grotesque nature of Kafka’s humor from the start, Barstan­ti notes, “with a grue­some graph­ic ren­der­ing of Kafka’s night­mares of his own death.”

Kafka’s self-vio­lence leaps out at us in its incred­i­ble speci­fici­ty, which can pro­duce hor­rors, like the ghoul­ish exe­cu­tion of “In the Penal Colony,” and dark­ly fun­ny fan­tasies like a “pork butcher’s knife” send­ing thin slices of Kaf­ka fly­ing around the room, “due to the speed of the work.” Turned into cold cuts, as it were. Crumb’s illus­tra­tion (top), imag­ines this gris­ly joke with exquis­ite glee—halo of blood spurts like squig­gly excla­ma­tion marks and bowler hat tak­ing flight. Along with Mairowitz’s lit­er­ary analy­sis and bio­graph­i­cal detail, Crumb’s fine­ly ren­dered illus­tra­tions make Kaf­ka an “invalu­able book,” Barsan­ti writes, one that gives Kaf­ka “back his soul.”

One only wish­es they had paid more atten­tion to Kafka’s weird ani­mal sto­ries, some of the fun­ni­est he ever wrote. Sto­ries like “Inves­ti­ga­tions of a Dog” and “In Our Syn­a­gogue” express with more vivid imag­i­na­tion and wicked humor Kafka’s pro­found­ly ambiva­lent rela­tion­ship to Judaism and to him­self as a “tor­tured, gen­tle, cru­el, and bril­liant,” and yet very fun­ny, out­sider.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Does “Kafkaesque” Real­ly Mean? A Short Ani­mat­ed Video Explains

R. Crumb Shows Us How He Illus­trat­ed Gen­e­sis: A Faith­ful, Idio­syn­crat­ic Illus­tra­tion of All 50 Chap­ters

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

Three Charles Bukows­ki Books Illus­trat­ed by Robert Crumb: Under­ground Com­ic Art Meets Out­sider Lit­er­a­ture

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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500,000 Years of Humans Degrading Nature Captured in a Biting Three Minute Animation by Steve Cutts

in Animation, Life | December 14th, 2017

Eng­lish ani­ma­tor Steve Cutts has a knack for sat­i­riz­ing the excess­es of mod­ern soci­ety. Just watch his 2012 short ani­ma­tion “Man,” and you’ll see what I mean. In three short min­utes, Cutts cov­ers a lot of ground, doc­u­ment­ing the rise of human civ­i­liza­tion and its ever-esca­lat­ing assault on nature and our nat­ur­al resources. It’s fun­ny. It’s bit­ing. And it may give you pause as we gear up for Christ­mas, the apoth­e­o­sis of Amer­i­can mate­ri­al­ism.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Employ­ment: A Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion About Why We’re So Dis­en­chant­ed with Work Today

Watch Glass Walls, Paul McCartney’s Case for Going Veg­e­tar­i­an

How Leo Tol­stoy Became a Veg­e­tar­i­an and Jump­start­ed the Veg­e­tar­i­an & Human­i­tar­i­an Move­ments in the 19th Cen­tu­ry

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What Happens When a Musician Plays Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Pride and Joy” on a $25 Kids’ Guitar at Walmart

in Music | December 13th, 2017

There’s a max­im that says, “It’s not the gui­tar, it’s the play­er.” And the video above bears it out.

In this clip, musi­cian Clay Shel­burn and his pal Zac Stokes vis­it a Wal­mart at 3 a.m. and pick up a Dis­ney Cars 2 toy gui­tar. Next, they pro­ceed to play Ste­vie Ray Vaughan’s “Pride and Joy” and unleash the full poten­tial of that $25 gui­tar. The Bar­bi­es all go crazy.

When it comes to the blues, any old gui­tar will do. That we know. But if you care to watch Shel­burn play the same song on a gui­tar that runs north of $1,000, check out the video below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an Plays the Acoustic Gui­tar in Rare Footage, Let­ting Us See His Gui­tar Vir­tu­os­i­ty in Its Purest Form

Ste­vie Ray Vaughan’s Ver­sion of “Lit­tle Wing” Played on Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment, the Gayageum

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Hear Paul McCartney’s Experimental Christmas Mixtape: A Rare & Forgotten Recording from 1965

in Music | December 13th, 2017

If you hear some­one com­plain­ing about the scarci­ty of good Christ­mas music, you know they’re doing some­thing wrong. As we point­ed out a cou­ple years back, you can keep a Christ­mas par­ty going for hours upon hours with hol­i­day clas­sics and funky orig­i­nals from James Brown, John­ny Cash, The Jack­son 5, Dinah Wash­ing­ton, Willie Nel­son, Ella Fitzger­ald, The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Low, Bad Reli­gion, Christo­pher Lee, The Ven­tures, and so much more besides.

And then there’s the Bea­t­les, whom we wouldn’t ever think of as an acquired taste, but whose Christ­mas records may only appeal to a spe­cial kind of fan, one who appre­ci­ates, and per­haps remem­bers, the band’s aggres­sive­ly cheer­ful spir­it of mar­ket­ing. Through­out the 60s, they made short, whim­si­cal Christ­mas “flexi discs” for fan club mem­bers. These are amus­ing, but hard­ly essen­tial, though I’d rec­om­mend putting 1967’s “Christ­mas Time (Is Here Again)” on any playlist, hol­i­day or oth­er­wise.

While the band made their light and breezy 1965 Christ­mas record, Paul McCart­ney under­took a decid­ed­ly dif­fer­ent hol­i­day solo side project—recording exper­i­men­tal tape loops at home, includ­ing, writes author Richie Unter­berg­er, “singing, act­ing, and sketch­es.” Only “three copies were pressed, one each for John, George, and Ringo.” As McCart­ney him­self described the record­ing, “I put togeth­er some­thing crazy, some­thing left field, just for the oth­er Bea­t­les, a fun thing which they could play late in the evening.”

You can hear what sur­vives of the record­ing above. McCart­ney calls it “Unfor­get­table” and begins the disc in an Amer­i­can announcer’s voice, “a fast-talk­ing New York DJ,” Rolling Stone writes, fol­lowed by Nat King Cole, then “an inven­tive selec­tion of songs by the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, and Martha and the Van­del­las.” McCart­ney described the project as “a mag­a­zine pro­gram: full of weird inter­views, exper­i­men­tal music, tape loops” and “some tracks I knew the oth­ers hadn’t heard.”

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, much of the exper­i­men­ta­tion has not sur­vived, or made it to a dig­i­tal for­mat. Nonethe­less, the tape “might be the ear­li­est evi­dence of the Bea­t­les using home record­ing equip­ment for specif­i­cal­ly exper­i­men­tal/a­vant-garde pur­pos­es,” Unter­berg­er notes, “some­thing that John and Paul did in the last half of the 1960s, though John’s ven­tures in this field are more wide­ly known than Paul’s.” It isn’t Christ­mas music, exact­ly, but when you put it on, you’ll know it began its life as a spe­cial mix­tape McCart­ney made just for his band­mates, not the fans. We might think of it as the hol­i­day album he real­ly want­ed to make.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds/Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to the Bea­t­les’ Christ­mas Records: Sev­en Vin­tage Record­ings for Their Fans (1963 – 1969)

Stream 22 Hours of Funky, Rock­ing & Swing­ing Christ­mas Albums: From James Brown and John­ny Cash to Christo­pher Lee & The Ven­tures

David Bowie Sends a Christ­mas Greet­ing in the Voice of Elvis Pres­ley

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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New Gabriel García Márquez Digital Archive Features More Than 27,000 Digitized Letters, Manuscript Pages, Photos & More

in Archives, Literature | December 13th, 2017

Uniden­ti­fied pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez in Ara­cat­a­ca, March 1966.
Cour­tesy Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter.

When Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez died in 2014, it was said that only the Bible had sold more books in Span­ish than the Colom­bian writer’s work: Love in the Time of Cholera, The Autumn of the Patri­arch, Chron­i­cle of a Death Fore­told, The Gen­er­al in His Labyrinth… and yes, of course, One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude, the 1967 nov­el William Kennedy described in a New York Times review as “the first piece of lit­er­a­ture since the Book of Gen­e­sis that should be required read­ing for the entire human race.”

Gar­cía Márquez began to hate such ele­vat­ed praise. It raised expec­ta­tions he felt he couldn’t ful­fill after the enor­mous suc­cess of that incred­i­bly bril­liant, seem­ing­ly sui gener­is sec­ond nov­el. Every­one in South Amer­i­ca read the book. To avoid the crowds, the author moved to Spain (where Mario Var­gas Llosa wrote a doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion on him). He needn’t have wor­ried.

Every­thing he wrote after­ward met with near-uni­ver­sal acclaim—bringing ear­li­er work like No One Writes to the Colonel, Leaf Storm, short sto­ry col­lec­tions like A Very Old Man with Enor­mous Wings, and decades of jour­nal­ism and non-fic­tion writing—to a much wider read­er­ship than he’d ever had before.

Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez’s revised type­script of Chron­i­cle of a Death Fore­told, 1980.
Cour­tesy Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter.

After Gre­go­ry Rabassa’s 1970 trans­la­tion of One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude, waves of “mag­i­cal real­ist” and Latin Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture from the 50s and 60s swept through the Eng­lish-speak­ing world, much of it in trans­la­tion for the first time. Gar­cía Márquez declared the Eng­lish ver­sion of his nov­el bet­ter than the orig­i­nal, and affec­tion­ate­ly called Rabas­sa, “the best Latin Amer­i­can writer in the Eng­lish lan­guage.” Upwards of 50 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide now know the sto­ry of the Buendía fam­i­ly. “Pub­lished in 44 lan­guages,” The Atlantic notes, “it remains the most trans­lat­ed lit­er­ary work in Span­ish after Don Quixote, and a sur­vey among inter­na­tion­al writ­ers ranks it as the nov­el that has most shaped world lit­er­a­ture over the past three decades.”

The sto­ry of the book’s com­po­si­tion is even more fas­ci­nat­ing. In the Democ­ra­cy Now trib­ute video below, you can hear Gar­cía Márquez him­self tell it. And at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin’s Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter, we can see arti­facts like the pho­to­graph of the author at the top, in his home­town of Ara­cat­a­ca, Colom­bia in March of 1966, dur­ing the com­po­si­tion of One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude. We can see scanned images of type­script like the page above from Chron­i­cle of a Death Fore­told.


In all, the archive “includes man­u­script drafts of pub­lished and unpub­lished works, research mate­r­i­al, pho­tographs, scrap­books, cor­re­spon­dence, clip­pings, note­books, screen­plays, print­ed mate­r­i­al, ephemera, and an audio record­ing of Gar­cía Márquez’s accep­tance speech for the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture in 1982… approx­i­mate­ly 27,500 items from Gar­cía Márquez’s papers.” These doc­u­ments and pho­tos, like that fur­ther down of young jour­nal­ist Gar­cía Márquez with Emma Cas­tro and, just below, of the sea­soned famous nov­el­ist, with her broth­er, tell the sto­ry of a writer who lived his life steeped in the pol­i­tics and his­to­ry of Latin Amer­i­ca, and who trans­lat­ed those sto­ries faith­ful­ly for the rest of the world.

Uniden­ti­fied pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez with Fidel Cas­tro, undat­ed.
Cour­tesy Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter.

Enter, search, and explore the archive here. This amaz­ing resource opens up to the gen­er­al pub­lic a wealth of mate­r­i­al pre­vi­ous­ly only avail­able to schol­ars and librar­i­ans. The project fea­tures “text-search­able Eng­lish- and Span­ish-lan­guage mate­ri­als, took 18 months and involved the efforts of librar­i­ans, archivists, stu­dents, tech­nol­o­gy staff mem­bers and con­ser­va­tors.” Per­haps only coin­ci­den­tal­ly, 18 months is the time it took Gar­cía Márquez to write One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude, bar­ri­cad­ed in his office while he ran out of mon­ey, pulled for­ward by some irre­sistible force. “I did not stop writ­ing for a sin­gle day for 18 straight months, until I fin­ished the book,” he tells us. As always, we believe him.

Uniden­ti­fied pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez with Emma Cas­tro, 1957.
Cour­tesy Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez’s Extra­or­di­nary Nobel Prize Accep­tance Speech, “The Soli­tude Of Latin Amer­i­ca,” in Eng­lish & Span­ish (1982)

Read 10 Short Sto­ries by Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Free Online (Plus More Essays & Inter­views)

Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Describes the Cul­tur­al Mer­its of Soap Operas, and Even Wrote a Script for One

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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New Iranian Video Game, Engare, Explores the Elegant Geometry of Islamic Art

in Art, Video Games | December 13th, 2017

The inter­sec­tion of math­e­mat­ics and art holds out great poten­tial for not just end­less dis­cov­er­ies but deeply mem­o­rable cre­ations. The 20th-cen­tu­ry vision­ary M.C. Esch­er under­stood that, but so did the Islam­ic artists of cen­turies before that inspired him. They’ve also inspired the Iran­ian game devel­op­er Mah­di Bahra­mi, whose newest effort Engare stands at the cross of math­e­mat­ics, art, and tech­nol­o­gy, a puz­zle video game that chal­lenges its play­ers to com­plete the kind of bril­liant­ly col­or­ful, math­e­mat­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous, and at once both strik­ing­ly sim­ple and strik­ing­ly com­plex pat­terns seen in tra­di­tion­al Islam­ic art and design.

“The leap from the bare bones pro­to­type to it becom­ing a game about cre­at­ing art was a small one, giv­en that Islam­ic art is steeped in math­e­mat­i­cal knowl­edge,” writes Kill Screen’s Chris Priest­man.

“The visu­al flair of Islam­ic art also helps to fur­ther ensure that Engare doesn’t ever feel ‘dry.’ Yes, it’s a game about math, but there are no dull equa­tions to solve. Yet, the same ideas that those equa­tions belong to are approached in Engare, just from a dif­fer­ent angle and one that Bahra­mi reck­ons can also evoke emo­tions. You can see this in mes­mer­iz­ing action in the game­play trail­er just above.

“There are geo­met­ri­cal shapes that make us feel hap­py, pat­terns that make some­one nervous/hypnotized, the tiling of a ceil­ing can make some­one feel lone­ly,” Priest­man quotes Bahra­mi as writ­ing. He’s done this sort of emo­tion­al think­ing about visu­al math­e­mat­ics before: his pre­vi­ous game Farsh “had you rolling out Per­sian car­pets in such a way as to cre­ate paths across the lev­els,” and his next one Tan­dis is “inspired by Celtic shapes, and is a wild and unpre­dictable exper­i­ment in topo­graph­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion.” If you’d like to give Engare a try, you can get it from its web­site or on Steam. When the 21st cen­tu­ry’s M.C. Esch­er dis­cov­ers Islam­ic art, will he do it through the medi­um of video games?

via Kill Screen

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Com­plex Geom­e­try of Islam­ic Art & Design: A Short Intro­duc­tion

Back to Bed: A New Video Game Inspired by the Sur­re­al Art­work of Esch­er, Dali & Magritte

Cal­i­forni­um: New Video Game Lets You Expe­ri­ence the Sur­re­al World of Philip K. Dick

Ancient Greek Pun­ish­ments: The Retro Video Game

Math­e­mat­ics Made Vis­i­ble: The Extra­or­di­nary Math­e­mat­i­cal Art of M.C. Esch­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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10 Reasons Why Hannibal’s Military Genius Still Captures Our Imagination Today

in History | December 13th, 2017

Note: This is a guest post from Patrick Hunt, author of the new book, Han­ni­bal.

Han­ni­bal Bar­ca, oth­er­wise sim­ply known as Han­ni­bal, lived and waged war over two thou­sand years ago – but is he still rel­e­vant in a world where the Romans are long gone? His famous cross­ing of the Alps in win­ter with an intre­pid army and ele­phants is unfor­get­table, but are his bril­liant maneu­vers and intel­li­gence gath­er­ing still worth exam­in­ing? Despite the enig­ma of this great Carthagin­ian gen­er­al being unable to pre­serve Carthage after him, Hannibal’s tac­tics and meth­ods offer great lessons not only for mil­i­tary his­to­ry but also for civ­i­liza­tion at large. His­to­ry reveals the Romans had a des­tiny of world con­quest, but what is less well known is how much Han­ni­bal changed the ways in which the Romans con­duct­ed the wars that even­tu­al­ly brought them Pax Romana, a peace often forged out of vio­lence after a bru­tal expan­sion that killed and enslaved mil­lions, includ­ing Carthage a cen­tu­ry after Han­ni­bal.

Before Han­ni­bal, Rome was hemmed in by seas on almost all sides and could hard­ly expand except north­ward into Etr­uscan and Celtic ter­ri­to­ry; acquir­ing Sici­ly was Rome’s first step out­side its main­land. But Han­ni­bal forced Rome to fight a very dif­fer­ent kind of war; his vic­to­ries taught them how exploitable their mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion was, and he pres­sured Rome to change for sur­vival. More rel­e­vant, while Han­ni­bal did­n’t invent spy­craft, he seem­ing­ly used it more effec­tive­ly than any oth­er ancient gen­er­al by his care­ful con­tin­gency plan­ning. Han­ni­bal set prece­dents for spy agen­cies and intel­li­gence gath­er­ing and how to stage bat­tles in any kind of ter­rain and weather–templates that cur­rent nations still study and fol­low. Every mil­i­tary acad­e­my today offers detailed class­es and sem­i­nars on Hannibal’s tac­tics. I am fre­quent­ly invit­ed to lec­ture on Hannibal’s intel­li­gence gath­er­ing in venues like the U.S. Naval War Col­lege, where class­es are filled with Navy, Army, Marines, and Air Force offi­cers along with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the intel­li­gence agen­cies. That is also why the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Soci­ety spon­sored my Han­ni­bal field research – send­ing me to every Han­ni­bal bat­tle site and to Carthage in Tunisia, along with Spain, France, Italy and even Turkey where Han­ni­bal con­clud­ed his dra­mat­ic life — and also why Simon and Schus­ter pub­lished my biog­ra­phy Han­ni­bal this sum­mer. Here are some nuggets from 20 years of Han­ni­bal field­work found in this new book.

  1. Han­ni­bal stud­ied his oppo­nents very care­ful­ly, employ­ing every means of gath­er­ing intel­li­gence in ene­my camps, includ­ing spies from allied pop­u­la­tions who pro­vi­sioned the Romans.
  2. When nec­es­sary, Han­ni­bal paid for cred­i­ble intel­li­gence with sil­ver sup­plied from mines in Carthagin­ian Spain; as long as that sil­ver last­ed to pay for good intel, he was unbeat­able. Once Rome con­quered Spain’s sil­ver mines, Hannibal’s abil­i­ty to gath­er and exploit such mil­i­tary intel­li­gence was cut off. There is a direct cor­re­la­tion to Han­ni­bal’s access to sil­ver for intel or mer­ce­nary use and his bril­liant vic­to­ries.
  3. Han­ni­bal usu­al­ly went for the unpre­dictable sur­prise maneu­ver that had nev­er been seen before, includ­ing cross­ing the Alps in win­ter and forc­ing the Romans to fight in the dead of win­ter and at night.
  4. Han­ni­bal got into the minds of his ene­mies with psy-ops, expos­ing their weak­ness­es, trig­ger­ing their anger and van­i­ty, and mak­ing them fall into his traps; under­min­ing the con­fi­dence of the Roman foot sol­diers in big bat­tles and par­a­lyz­ing them with fear. Romans taught their chil­dren to fear Han­ni­bal as the bogey­man – always warn­ing in crises for cen­turies that “Han­ni­bal is at the Gates”.
  5. Han­ni­bal proved it’s not the size of your army but how well pre­pared it is. He epit­o­mizes the old adage, “Bet­ter 10 men wise­ly led than 100 with a fool at the head.” Even if aus­tere, Hannibal’s lead­er­ship was leg­en­dar­i­ly charis­mat­ic – he even slept with his men on the ground wrapped in a blan­ket. He taught his men the bru­tal­i­ty of war with like­ly less PTSD than his ene­mies because he always pre­pared them with ideas like “fight or die.” Much lat­er, Machi­avel­li even allud­ed to Han­ni­bal in The Prince with the con­cept that it’s “bet­ter to be feared than loved.”
  6. Han­ni­bal effec­tive­ly used the most mobile units pos­si­ble with his Numid­i­an cav­al­ry, often out­flank­ing the Roman infantry on mul­ti­ple cam­paigns, espe­cial­ly in his famous “dou­ble envel­op­ment” or where he fin­ished bat­tles with ambush­es from the rear where there was no escape.
  7. Because his armies were almost always small­er – espe­cial­ly after his dif­fi­cult Alps cross­ing when he lost many sol­diers – Han­ni­bal aug­ment­ed his arse­nal with weapons of nature: forc­ing the Romans to cross the frozen Treb­bia Riv­er, hid­ing his armies in the fog above Lake Trasimene, dri­ving cap­tured cat­tle with torch­es tied to their horns to fool the Romans into think­ing he was on the move at night at Voltur­nus, mak­ing the Romans face the blind­ing dust and sand blow­ing from Africa at Can­nae. He even con­fused the Romans at Can­nae with some of his troops out­fit­ted with cap­tured Roman gear.
  8. Sim­i­lar­ly, after study­ing ter­rain and topog­ra­phy, Han­ni­bal always chose his bat­tle sites when pos­si­ble for the best pos­si­ble advan­tage, espe­cial­ly con­strict­ing the larg­er Roman armies where they would be unable to out­flank him and instead they would be hemmed in by rivers or hills, etc., also choos­ing ter­rain where he could hide ambush­es in near­by forests.
  9. Han­ni­bal sage­ly exploit­ed the 2‑consul Roman alter­nat­ing com­mand rotat­ed one day between an expe­ri­enced mil­i­tary vet­er­an and the next day with a polit­i­cal appointee pop­ulist lead­ing. On at least three occa­sions, Han­ni­bal anni­hi­lat­ed the Romans on the days when fools were the sup­posed com­man­ders. The fol­low­ing Roman gen­er­a­tions learned the hard les­son from this and the Sen­ate cre­at­ed a pro­fes­sion­al army com­mand­ed by vet­er­an lead­er­ship. Even­tu­al­ly Rome also amped up its cav­al­ry and became less depen­dent on infantry thanks to Han­ni­bal.
  10. Han­ni­bal taught his one for­mi­da­ble Roman oppo­nent Sci­pio how to imple­ment bril­liant tac­tics, how to mine data from mil­i­tary intel­li­gence and how to ben­e­fit from Spain’s mer­ce­nary sil­ver to bribe the Numid­i­ans to aban­don Carthage. Sci­pio – the only one to beat Han­ni­bal — respect­ed Han­ni­bal more than any oth­er Roman because he learned so much from him. It’s one of the great ironies in his­to­ry that Han­ni­bal is appar­ent­ly more famous than Sci­pio, and it’s not only because of cross­ing the Alps with ele­phants: ulti­mate­ly the Romans did­n’t appre­ci­ate a vic­to­ri­ous Sci­pio any more than the Carthagini­ans appre­ci­at­ed a vic­to­ri­ous Han­ni­bal. Han­ni­bal will remain a pro­found enig­ma in that he could not ulti­mate­ly win the war with Rome, yet he could win so many bril­liant bat­tles with incred­i­bly mem­o­rable tac­tics still taught today.

The Roman book Strat­a­ge­ma­ta by Fron­ti­nus — a com­pi­la­tion of mil­i­tary strat­a­gems — has more clever rus­es of Han­ni­bal than any oth­er com­man­der up to that time. His­toric great com­man­ders or offi­cers who stud­ied or emu­lat­ed Han­ni­bal include but are not lim­it­ed to Julius Cae­sar, Belis­ar­ius, Charle­magne, Napoleon, Suvorov, Kutu­zov, von Clause­witz, Mont­gomery, Lid­dell Hart, Rom­mel, Pat­ton and Schwarzkopf, among many oth­ers. Even the term blitzkrieg allud­ed to Han­ni­bal’s clan (Bar­ca = “light­ning”) and his rapid advance in his inva­sion of Italy.”  So, of course, Han­ni­bal is at least as rel­e­vant as any oth­er mem­o­rable per­son in his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly in a time of world chaos and rethink­ing strate­gic alle­giances.

Post­script: Han­ni­bal (Simon and Schus­ter 2017) has been acclaimed in reviews from The New York Times, Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, Philadel­phia Inquir­er, Ancient His­to­ry Ency­clo­pe­dia, a starred Kirkus Review and many oth­ers, and also nom­i­nat­ed in the Kirkus List of Best Non­fic­tion Books of 2017.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.