The Hannibal of this book is Hannibal surnamed Barca. Scipio is Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus. The final extra name (‘the African’) was given to him in recognition of his victory over Hannibal in north Africa. The Prologue explains that the model for this joint biograohy of Hannibal and Scipio is not so much Plutarch’s series of parallel Greek and Roman lives, as Alan Bullock’s Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. Ancient, Renaissance, and modern explorations of the parallels between the two men are discussed, and a separate section sketches the career and approach of Bullock as a classically trained modern historian and biographer. Another section sets out programmatically the view of Roman and Carthaginian imperialism to be adopted in the book. The limitations of the evidence available to biographers of individuals from the ancient world are candidly acknowledged, and the use of the ‘past presumptive’ tense (so-and so- ‘will have’ done, known, or thought this or that) is renounced.

This chapter takes as its central focus the triumphal games given by the Roman praetor Lucius Anicius Gallus in 167 BCE. The chapter deconstructs the hostile account of this event in Polybius’ Histories by examining how Anicius manipulated the musical dynamics of the spectacle in order to amplify the importance of his triumph. The second half of the chapter situates the episode in the context of broader developments in Greek and Roman musical culture during the second century BCE. As well as discussing the general treatment of music in Polybius’s Histories, it considers how the dissemination of Greek musical culture during this period sparked a reaction from senior members of the Roman political elite, as evidenced most notably by the fragmentary speeches of Cato the Elder and Scipio Aemilianus.

Caesar, a patrician war hero already from his youth, followed the model of the Scipiones in the combination of a patrician pedigree with a "popular" political stance and the pursuit of military glory. Despite his family connection, he was no "Marian" in the strong sense of reviving and refighting the battles of the 80s. By the time of his entry in 63 on the highest stage of politics, he was known as a popularis of a particular sort: one exceptionally skilled at cultivating the support of the Roman People but not a demagogue or even a significant player in the classic popularis proposals for land redistribution, debt relief, or the like. Caesar’s reputation for "largesse" does not seem to have exceeded the norms of his day, or perhaps even what many of his contemporaries considered to be mere necessity. The best evidence suggests that his objective at this time was, as Sallust writes, to obtain "a great command, an army, a new war in which his excellence could shine forth." But that path lay through the Senate. Like many aristocrats Caesar did not shy away from a feud with a powerful figure (Q. Catulus), but that did not put him at odds with the aristocracy as a whole.