Hannibal's Greed
Fond of money indeed he does seem to have
note
been to a conspicuous degree, and to have
had a friend of the same character—Mago,
who commanded in Bruttium. That account I got from
the Carthaginians themselves; for natives know best not
only which way the wind lies, as the proverb has it, but
the characters also of their fellow-countrymen. But I
heard a still more detailed story from Massanissa, who
maintained the charge of money-loving against all Carthaginians generally, but especially against Hannibal and Mago
called the Samnite. Among other stories, he told me that
these two men had arranged a most generous subdivision of
operations between each other from their earliest youth; and
though they had each taken a very large number of cities in
Iberia and Italy by force or fraud, they had never taken part in
the same operation together; but had always schemed against
each other, more than against the enemy, in order to prevent
the one being with the other at the taking of a city: that they
might neither quarrel in consequence of things of this sort,
nor have to divide the profit on the ground of their equality
of rank.
