A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

3. According to Justin (20.5), the commander of the Carthaginians in Sicily in one of their wars with Dionysius in the latter part of his reign (probably the last of all, concerning which we have little information in Diodorus), was named Hanno. He is apparently the same to whom the epithet Magnus is applied in the epitome of Trogus Pompeius (Prol. xx.); and it is probable that the twentieth book of that author contained a relation of the exploits in Africa by which he earned this title. These are omitted by Justin, who, however, speaks of Hanno in the following book (21.4) as "princeps Carthaginiensium," and as possessed of private wealth and resources exceeding those of the state itself. This great power led him, according to the same author, to aim at possessing himself of the absolute sovereignty. After a fruitless attempt to poison the senators at a marriage-feast, he excited a rebellion among the slaves, but his schemes were again frustrated, and he fled for refuge to a fortress in the interior, where he assembled an army of 20,000 men, and invoked the assistance of the Africans and Moors. But he soon fell into the hands of the Carthaginians, who crucified him, together with his sons and all his kindred. (Just. 21.4, 22.7.) The date of this event, which is related only by Justin and Orosius (4.6, who copies Justin almost verbatim), and incidentally alluded to by Aristotle (Aristot. Pol. 5.7), must apparently be placed between the first expulsion and the return of the younger Dionysius, i. e. between 356 and 346 B. C. There is a Hanno mentioned by Polyaenus (5.9) as commanding a Carthaginian fleet on the coast of Sicily against Dionysius, who may be the same with the above. Bötticher also conjectures (Gesch. der Carthager, p. 178) that the Hanno mentioned by Diodorus (16.81) as the father of Gisco [GISCO, No. 2] is no other than this one; but there is no proof of this supposition.