Sobre la utilización de la religión en la II Guerra Púnica

Abstract

The interaction between religion and war, success and failure, charismatic personalities and divine heros forms the centre of this paper, devoted to stress the ideological utilization of religion during the 2nd Punic War. The Carthaginian religious strategy and its corresponding counterparts on the Roman side, the instrumentalization of gods and mythical personalities by both sides set up a second plane of confrontation, of equal or greater importance as the actual fighting. In analyzing the contrast between the figures of Hannibal and Scipio we obtain a matrix of paradigmatic actions which allows us to observe the transgression of the normal limits of cult in the service of political power.