# Loeb Polybius prints a Carthaginian war machine of mercenaries and subject peoples

Date: 1922

## The fact

Polybius English describes hired and subject contingents. A fused money-and-war office is an opacity path of medium confidence: who was owed, who was expendable.

## Context

Not a unique embezzlement verdict. A received coalition-army as later told.

[Hannibal](/people/hannibal) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official heritage, Loeb, or encyclopedia pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Harvard / Loeb — Polybius, The Histories (https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674996373; [Harvard University](/organizations/harvard-university) Press).

## Significance

Printed mercenary-machine is not a 218 BCE payroll scan.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument. Not established: a unique Factrail-original body count, or a recovered 216 BCE civil-registry file.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.
Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is [institutional-corruption](/drivers/institutional-corruption). The welfare reading used in this dossier is worsening. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here. Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is institutional-corruption. The welfare reading used in this dossier is worsening. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Hannibal: https://factrail.ai/people/hannibal

## Drivers

- Institutional Corruption: https://factrail.ai/drivers/institutional-corruption

## Sources

- https://www.livius.org/articles/person/hannibal-3-barca/
- https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674996373

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/ha-institutional-mercenary-machine