Scipio Africanus: Did you mean...?

The Battle of Cannae (2 August 216 BCE) was the decisive victory of the Carthaginian army over Roman forces at Cannae, southeast Italy, during the Second Punic War (218-202 BCE). The Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca (l. 247-183...

The Description of Africa is the first comprehensive book about Africa, written by Leo Africanus, an African scholar trained in the Islamic intellectual tradition, in 1526, during the Italian Renaissance. A skillful mixture...

The armies of Carthage permitted the city to forge the most powerful empire in the western Mediterranean from the 6th to 3rd centuries BCE. Although by tradition a seafaring nation with a powerful navy, Carthage, by necessity...

The North African Berber kingdom of Numidia (202-40 BCE) was originally inhabited by a tribe (or federation of tribes) known as the Masaesyli, to the west, and a coalition of smaller tribes, known as the Massylii...

The Second Punic War (218–201 BCE) was the decisive conflict between the Roman Republic and Carthage for dominance in the western Mediterranean. It grew out...

The travels of Leo Africanus (al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fāsī, c. 1494–c. 1554) illuminate the political, commercial, and cultural connections of early...

Portrait of a Humanist by Sebastiano del Piombo c. 1520. The identity of the person is unknown. Dietrich Rauchenberger has suggested that the painting may depict Leo Africanus (1485-1554).

An early title page from The History and Description of Africa by Leo Africanus (1485-1554), first published in 1526.

Many scholars, without concrete evidence, believe that Leo Africanus 1485-1554 was the inspiration behind William Shakespeare’s Othello, shown here with Desdemona in an 1849 painting by Théodore Chassériau, currently...

This rose granite obelisk was found in Rome. Roman period, circa 50 CE. (State Museum of Egyptian Art, Munich, Germany).