Put Hannibal in the scales.

The line is from Juvenal’s Satire 10, a poem on the folly of human wishes (wealth, power, long life, fame) and the way “greatness” collapses under moral scrutiny and the reversals of fortune. In the section on military glory, Juvenal invokes Hannibal as the archetype of the celebrated conqueror. He urges the reader to “weigh” Hannibal—an image drawn from scales of judgment—to show that the immense reputation built on victories and terror ultimately amounts to little when set against the costs, the instability of success, and Hannibal’s own end in exile and defeat.

“Put Hannibal in the scales” treats fame as something measurable and therefore debunkable. Juvenal’s point is not that Hannibal lacked genius, but that the public’s admiration for conquest is a distorted metric of value: the same deeds that win monuments and triumphal narratives can be morally light—or even negative—when weighed against suffering inflicted, the fragility of political fortune, and the conqueror’s personal ruin. The imperative “put…in the scales” is satiric and judicial: it invites a sober audit of what military “greatness” really yields, anticipating the satire’s broader counsel to desire not external glory but a sound mind and virtue.