Creating History?

I'm always a little surprised when I get comments on posts that are several years old. I guess I shouldn't be, though. The posts live on, and they can be discovered by anybody at anytime. This is never more true in my case than with anything to do with Hannibal and Pride of Carthage. Way back when, I posted About Hannibal's Race. It's sort of ancient history to me (pun intended, kinda), but I just had an interesting exchange. It started like this...

Anonymous said...

Well, I dont think he was black, probably some Semitic type. We shouldnt forget that his mother was an Iberian noble and his wife too, so I dont think that he looked that much different from them. But mingling of Barca family with some sub-saharan Africans is also possible...

Well, pretty strange arguing about the identity of man so long dead :)

I slightly shortened that, but didn't change any of the substance. I responded thusly...

Hello Anonymous,

(This thread has more "anonymous" posters than any other thread.)

Personally, I'm not arguing with anyone. I agree that it's ancient history, and no matter how hard we try to believe absolutes we're not going to be right about it. The truth - whatever it really was - is long gone.

I don't recall coming across anything that said Hannibal's mother was Iberian. If I had I would've been happy to include that, but I mostly recall his mother being a blank. Since he was born in Carthage and since his father had not yet headed for Spain I thought it reasonable that Hamilcar's wife be North African.

Hannibal's wife, on the other hand, was said to have been Iberian. That's exactly what she is in my novel. She's an important character in the book, really, with her own scenes.

I've said it before - and people that have read my book know it to be true - but part of what I love about the Punic Wars is the multi-ethnic/polyglot character of it. It included so many peoples, and so much crossing of cultural boundaries. I think our perceptions of race have very little to do with that ancient reality.

That said, I'm living now, so our hangups can't entirely be ignored...

Anonymous came back promptly with...

Hi, its me again. Wow, now I noticed you are a well known writer, interesting.

So first I would like to take back claim that Didobal was Iberian. I did read on wiki and few forums that she was a daughter of Iberian king, but I wasnt able to find any quotation of the source. Except of that that name sound quite Phoenician - I think Dido was founder of Carthage, right? What did you use as a source for Hamilcars biography?

So its pretty hard to tell how he really looked like, probably some mix.

I have to admit being surprised that anyone reading my blog doesn't know I'm a writer, but I guess he could come across that post in purely Hannibal terms. So I get it. There was something in that response that I didn't get, though. Here's how I explained it to him...

I was struck by your use of Didobal's name. I may be wrong about this - and if you can find any documentation of it let me know - but as far as I can remember I MADE THAT NAME UP!

There was always a little bit of info on Hasdrubal in any bio of Hannibal, but not much. I don't recall ever reading an account of who Hannibal's mother had been, other than a vague mention that the Barcas were an established aristocratic Carthaginian family. When I did have names I'd use them, even if - as in the case of Hannibal's sister Sapanibal - they were only mentioned once. But this mother figure was a blank. I combined the "bal" structure at the end of so many Carthaginian names with Dido, but... that's my authorial license at play also. Dido is the name given to Carthage's mythical founder by Romans - as in the Aeneid. In Carthaginian lore the same character is call Elissa. In my book I use Elissa as the founding queen, but as a bit of play with the fact that so much Carthaginian history came to us via Roman sources I combined their version with a Carthaginian name and come up with Didobal. If I got that name from any other source I don't recall doing so. I'm pretty sure the name is mine.

I just Googled the name and found mostly references to my own work/comments. I didn't see any mention of that name on Wikipedia. I did see that a person on some forum about Hannibal's race mentioned Didobal and that she was Iberian, and that amuses me greatly. In my novel Didobal is not Iberian. But I also don't think Didobal exists anywhere but within my fictional pages. Whomever that person was has some garbled version of this stuff - a version that includes a fictional character that wasn't even depicted in the way he thinks!

Classic.

That discussion board that Anonymous must have come across is HERE. I'll quote the relevant portion. Somebody wrote:

Hannibal was 25% phoenicians (caucasian race, not black) and 75% iberian (ancient spaniard). His father was the great general Hamilcar Barca (50% phoenician 50% iberian). HAnnibal's mother was Didobal, a iberian. Hannibal's wife was too iberian (Himilce).

That's it. No mention of where he got this two thousand year old info. It's unforunate that Hannibal's wife was "too iberian". (When can you ever be too Iberian, I wanna know? But anyway...) What can I say in the face of such numeric certainty?...

I haven't heard back from Anonymous yet, but I was amused enough by this to post about it. On one hand, I'm... well, "amused" is the word, by the fact that a name of a fictional character of mine could become someone's staunch argument about an historical personage, and further amused that the character in question has already gone through "historical" morphing. I'm not in the least surprised at this because the people that have the strongest opinions on Hannibal often seem to know the least about him. Strange, that...

On the other hand, should I be troubled? Am I putting false information out in the world? Need I track down future Didobal references and set the record straight? Or will I soon find that she's worked her way into historical books? I should do a search for Imco Vaca. Tusselo. Aradna... Who knows what I'll find about these "historical" figures?

Ah, the perils - and the power - of the historical novelist...