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The Lion of Carthage is a Historical Fiction novel trilogy written by Spanish author Luis de la Luna Valero between 2012 and 2015. The title comes from its first book, The Lion of Carthage, which was followed by The Lion's Litter and The Conquest of Isphanya.It follows the lifes of Hamilcar Barca
and his son Hannibal through the time between the First and Second Punic Wars, covering the period in which Carthage started the conquest of the wild Hispania.
The trilogy provides the examples of:
- Artistic License – History: Despite De la Luna's otherwise admirable research, there are still enough licenses to deserve its own article.
- Artistic License – Linguistics: The first book gives the impression that the entire Iberian Peninsula had a single, unified language like modern Spain, because Kharbaal cohabites with a Lusitanian, a Carpetanian, an Oretanian and some Arevaci, which amounts to people from four different language groups, yet everybody seems to understand each other perfectly with all of their idiomatic nuances (and it is never explained whether they are using a single language as a common tongue, or which is it in that case - Punic? Celtic? - not that it would have been more likely for all of them to speak it fluently, anyway). This could be considered part of the Acceptable Breaks from Reality needed to make the narrative easier, but it doesn't make it any less weird, especially given that most of them are either low-ranked soldiers or labourers who shouldn't be exactly a Cunning Linguist each.
- Artistic License – Religion:
- In the first book, Uiro the Lusitanian once swears by the Celtic god Lugh. In real life, his people didn't worship Lugh, at least under that name. Their equivalent deity would have been Endovelicus, which is mentioned in the story, (only not among the Lusitanians, weirdly enough).
- Bodus was a northern god worshipped by Gallaeci and Astures, not the Oretani. The second books justifies it a bit by having Cerdubeles call it a northern god that some locals adopted, which could have been believably Truth in Television.
- Carthaginian characters sometimes mention Moloch, apparently as a synonymous of Baal Hammom. "Moloch" was actually a Hebrew mistranslation of the Phoenician word for king, which Biblical authors used for just every Canaanite god whose name remotely resembled it (not Baal, obviously). Intuitively, a Carthaginian already speaking in Phoenicio-Punic language could have not committed a translation mistake like that.
- Composite Character: Hasdrubal the Fair is also called Hasdrubal Gisco, because he was apparently part of the Gisco family. In reality, the family of Hasdrubal the Fair remains unknown: there was a famous Hasdrubal Gisco in the Second Punic War, but he was a different person and completely unrelated (possibly even opposed) to the Barca family.
- Decomposite Character: The name forms "Indikortes" and "Indortes" are traditionally considered to belong to a single person, a Celtic mercenary hired by the Turdetanians who might or might have not been the unnamed brother of Istolatius mentioned by some chronicles. In the books, as if it followed both theories, Indikortes and Indortes are two different people, the former being Istolatius's brother and the latter an unrelated Bastetanian chieftain.
- Hijacked by Jesus: While not exaggeratedly, the Oretani cult of the Dama de Baza is described with terminology that reminds of the Virgin Mary's worship in modern Spain.
- Made of Iron: Sodalis the spy gets an eye torn out by Hannibal's torturers, a kind of injury which sometimes kills due to the shock, yet he barely screams and is well enough to keep talking afterwards as if nothing.
- Series Continuity Error: The third book claims Ahusa was an apprentice to Sosylus along with the Barca brothers and Maharbal. This contradicts the first book, where he is shown to be just a friend Hannibal and company first met when they went out in Iboshim. Indeed, it would have been weird that a random barbarian local had the same educator as a Barca.
- Shout-Out:
- The expression of someone "having been born with dust and manure between his toes" to metaphorize his family's poverty is used a ton of times in Mika Waltari's The Egyptian.
- Quintus Fabius Maximus is portrayed as sneering and sarcastic during his brief cameo, which echoes much more his Historical Villain Upgrade in Santiago Posteguillo's Africanus Trilogy than his historical self. Another reference is made when the Castulo innkeeper is tricked by Hannibal's men with the same trick Hannibal used in Crete in the third Africanus book.
