Prigozin’s was a death foretold. How his failure to learn from history led to his doom

Death is the solution to all problems. No man — no problem. Joseph Stalin

In 241BC the First Punic War between Rome and Carthage ended in defeat for the Carthaginians. The great Carthaginian general, Hamilcar Barca (father of Hannibal), was thus forced to see his military campaign against the Romans in Sicily over seven long years undermined and undone by hostile forces at home, weary of a war that had cost the North African state much in men and treasure over its protracted length, even for antiquity, of twenty-three years.

Hamilcar was recalled to Carthage along with his army of, in the main, Libyan mercenaries. The challenge for Hamiclar and the Carthaginian oligarchy at home now — given the large indemnity demanded by the Romans as part of the peace terms — was how to deal with the fact there were insufficient funds left to pay those mercenaries the money they were due for services rendered.

Hamilcar, with this in mind, was careful to send the army back to Carthage in small detachments on the agreement from the government there that their pay would be met by gradual instalments…