184 BCE. Bithynia and Pergamon, two neighboring kingdoms in what is present‐day Turkey, are at war. A naval battle is brewing, and the Bithynian fleet, led by Hannibal, is heavily outnumbered. But Hannibal has a plan: he has ordered his ships to focus their attack entirely on the vessel carrying the Pergamenian King, Eumenes II. But how will his ships defend themselves against the many enemy craft that will try to intercept them? By catapulting clay pots full of poisonous snakes at them, that’s how. Certainly, few would contest that Hannibal had it in him to enlist the help of unwilling animal allies; after all, this was the former Carthaginian general who famously took elephants over the Alps to attack Rome from the north. Now in the employ of King Prusias I of Bithynia, and having led thousands of men to their deaths during his bloody career, I am sure he didn’t think twice about the welfare of snakes. I do however have a question: where did he get enough poisonous snakes from to fill the many pots he would need to scare off the Pergamenian armada?

This technicality appears not to have crossed the mind of Cornelius Nepos (110 BCE – circa 25 BCE), the Roman biographer who many years after the battle penned De Viris Illustribus, a compendium recording the lives of “illustrious men” and an important source of information on this ancient maritime punch‐up (see https://bit.ly/3kekoMx). In his chapter on Hannibal, Nepos informs that a few days before the battle, the now‐Bithynian general, knowing his forces inferior, ordered his men to collect as many poisonous serpents as possible to be put into a large number of clay pots, enough to easily defend themselves against the enemy fleet (425 vessels strong!). Having located Eumenes’ ship, Hannibal’s flotilla attacked, and with the aid of their vast number of serpents, pulled off the impossible. Eumenes fled, and when [the Pergamenians] saw their ships filled with serpents, and, startled at the strangeness of the occurrence, knew not what to avoid first, they put about their ships, and retreated to their camp upon the coast.

But is there really any way Hannibal could have collected a “vast number” of poisonous snakes? Certainly, it would have been easier if ancient western Turkey was crawling with them, like on the Ilha da Queimada Grande, a 0.43‐km² island 34 km off the coast of Itanhaém, Brazil, where some 2000–4000 venomous golden lanceheads (Bothrops insularis), mostly squashed into a 0.25‐km² patch of forest, make a living preying on visiting migratory birds. And certainly, where there are a lot of venomous snakes, a lot of dedicated people – given adequate time – might catch a bundle: every year thousands of rattlesnakes are captured across the southern US to eventually feature in ecologically destructive “rattlesnake round‐up” fairs. But there are no rattlesnakes or golden lanceheads in Turkey, and according to Nepos, Hannibal’s men had little time to get their ophidian stash together.

“It would have been impossible to collect that many poisonous snakes”, says Emin Bozkurt, a herpetologist at Çankiri Karatekin University (Çankiri, Turkey). “I did once see six Ottoman vipers (Montivipera xanthina) together, but that hardly allows for collecting ‘vast numbers’.”

But what if they collected any old snake? After all, Hannibal’s warriors were probably not herpetologists. And rag‐tag snake bombs could likely have been just as disconcerting as true viper ordnance to the sailors on the receiving end, who were probably not herpetologists either. And what if these creatures got together in large conglomerations? In Canada and the northern US, for example, thousands of nonvenomous red‐sided garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis parietalis) famously huddle in dens throughout the winter months, providing an early spring mass‐mating spectacle when they wake up from hibernation. Unfortunately, there are no red‐sided garter snakes in Turkey – but there are dice snakes (Natrix tessellata; Figure 1), which locally can reach very high densities. “This harmless snake could have been collected in the hundreds and perhaps the thousands if it was spring”, says Konrad Mebert (Global Biology; Birr, Switzerland). “I once collected up to 140 of these in 4 hours with 20 inexperienced pupils at a lake in Switzerland. Similarly high densities exist in fish‐rich lakes [across to] Central Asia. In Bithynia, high densities were likely around the [Sea of Marmara] and its adjacent wetlands. So if Hannibal had 30–50 men on the job in a habitat where this species was particularly dense, he could have got a lot of dice snakes together in a week.”

So, did Hannibal fake it? Did he take a chance that his enemy couldn’t tell one snake from another, and let fear do the rest? You know, it might just have worked! On a morning hike I once picked up a harmless ladder snake (Rhinechis scalaris) left motionless by the cold, and all my companions, none of whom were naturalists, bolted for cover! Perhaps Hannibal would have chuckled, “Your friends must be from Pergamon”.

Adrian Burton

184 BCE. Bithynia and Pergamon, two neighboring kingdoms in what is present‐day Turkey, are at war. A naval battle is brewing, and the Bithynian fleet, led by Hannibal, is heavily outnumbered. But Hannibal has a plan: he has ordered his ships to focus their attack entirely on the vessel carrying the Pergamenian King, Eumenes II. But how will his ships defend themselves against the many enemy craft that will try to intercept them? By catapulting clay pots full of poisonous snakes at them, that’s how. Certainly, few would contest that Hannibal had it in him to enlist the help of unwilling animal allies; after all, this was the former Carthaginian general who famously took elephants over the Alps to attack Rome from the north. Now in the employ of King Prusias I of Bithynia, and having led thousands of men to their deaths during his bloody career, I am sure he didn’t think twice about the welfare of snakes. I do however have a question: where did he get enough poisonous snakes from to fill the many pots he would need to scare off the Pergamenian armada?

This technicality appears not to have crossed the mind of Cornelius Nepos (110 BCE – circa 25 BCE), the Roman biographer who many years after the battle penned De Viris Illustribus, a compendium recording the lives of “illustrious men” and an important source of information on this ancient maritime punch‐up (see https://bit.ly/3kekoMx). In his chapter on Hannibal, Nepos informs that a few days before the battle, the now‐Bithynian general, knowing his forces inferior, ordered his men to collect as many poisonous serpents as possible to be put into a large number of clay pots, enough to easily defend themselves against the enemy fleet (425 vessels strong!). Having located Eumenes’ ship, Hannibal’s flotilla attacked, and with the aid of their vast number of serpents, pulled off the impossible. Eumenes fled, and when [the Pergamenians] saw their ships filled with serpents, and, startled at the strangeness of the occurrence, knew not what to avoid first, they put about their ships, and retreated to their camp upon the coast.

But is there really any way Hannibal could have collected a “vast number” of poisonous snakes? Certainly, it would have been easier if ancient western Turkey was crawling with them, like on the Ilha da Queimada Grande, a 0.43‐km² island 34 km off the coast of Itanhaém, Brazil, where some 2000–4000 venomous golden lanceheads (Bothrops insularis), mostly squashed into a 0.25‐km² patch of forest, make a living preying on visiting migratory birds. And certainly, where there are a lot of venomous snakes, a lot of dedicated people – given adequate time – might catch a bundle: every year thousands of rattlesnakes are captured across the southern US to eventually feature in ecologically destructive “rattlesnake round‐up” fairs. But there are no rattlesnakes or golden lanceheads in Turkey, and according to Nepos, Hannibal’s men had little time to get their ophidian stash together.

“It would have been impossible to collect that many poisonous snakes”, says Emin Bozkurt, a herpetologist at Çankiri Karatekin University (Çankiri, Turkey). “I did once see six Ottoman vipers (Montivipera xanthina) together, but that hardly allows for collecting ‘vast numbers’.”

But what if they collected any old snake? After all, Hannibal’s warriors were probably not herpetologists. And rag‐tag snake bombs could likely have been just as disconcerting as true viper ordnance to the sailors on the receiving end, who were probably not herpetologists either. And what if these creatures got together in large conglomerations? In Canada and the northern US, for example, thousands of nonvenomous red‐sided garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis parietalis) famously huddle in dens throughout the winter months, providing an early spring mass‐mating spectacle when they wake up from hibernation. Unfortunately, there are no red‐sided garter snakes in Turkey – but there are dice snakes (Natrix tessellata; 图1），局部可以达到很高的密度。“如果是春天，这条无害的蛇可能已经收集了成百上千个，也许是成千上万个”，Konrad Mebert说（全球生物学；瑞士比尔）。“我曾经在4个小时内在瑞士的一个湖边，有20名缺乏经验的学生，收集了其中的140件。同样，在整个中亚的鱼类丰富的湖泊中也存在着高密度的生物。在比西尼亚，[马尔马拉海]及其附近的湿地附近可能有高密度。因此，如果汉尼拔在这个物种特别密集的栖息地中有30至50名工人在工作，那么一周之内他可能会有很多骰子蛇在一起。”

那么，汉尼拔（Hannibal）伪造了吗？他是否有机会让敌人无法分辨一条蛇与另一条蛇，而让其余的人恐惧呢？您知道，它可能已经奏效了！在一次早晨的徒步旅行中，我曾经捡起一条无害的梯蛇（Rhinechis scalaris），在寒冷的天气中一动不动，而我所有的同伴，都不是博物学家，都用螺栓拴住了！也许汉尼拔会笑着说：“你的朋友一定是来自佩加蒙的人”。

阿德里安·伯顿（Adrian Burton）