I don't know about much of the canon of Vampire, but would that mean Hannibal was a vampire in that setting?
Actually he was. And the reason the elephants survived the crossing is because they were ghouled. ;-)
Carthage was founded by Clan Brujah as their ultimate utopia, it was a place where vampires and humans could live together in harmony. At this time the Brujah were philosophers, generals, and very important people (later they become thugs and muscle without brain)...thus they did embrace Hannibal. He didn't really die in 183.
The main problem was Brujah's childe was literally in bed with one of the founders of the Baali who wern't actual kindred founded by Caine through Caine's curse from God...but a demon. There were 3 founders of the Baali, one was called Shaiten.
Anyways, the Baali corrupted Carthage (look up the real history...there was human sacrifice including the sacrifice of children and babies). If you look up the history, Carthage and Rome were always in a spat. In Kindred lore, it was because Carthage let the baali in the city and this was too much even for other monsters.
So the final chapter of Carthage was Rome sending an army of kindred and mages to level the city and salt the earth. It's said that Troile (Brujah's childe) and the Baali went to ground embraced in each other's arms. Since the earth was salted, any vampire who had the ability to go to ground were trapped for eternity.
I'm sure modern days got interesting when people started digging and building in the area.
But of course all of this pissed the Brujah off and they never really got over the destruction of Carthage. This is how the Brujah became the toughs vs the philosphers, especially since a critical power was lost, the manipulation of time. Now, depending on which supplement you read, Troile was supposed to have killed his sire Brujah....so this is the basis of the campaign I'm running.
Brujah has actually been fucking with the PCs and has tried to get them to kill Troile. That didn't work out too well. He sent them on various other missions they've failed as well. Now Carthage is falling. Since there's 2 PCs who know Julian (the name Brujah is going by), I'm sure they're not going to be happy when Carthage falls and they might possibly commit suicide so they don't have to deal with Brujah. hehe