Now that Spain was no longer important in the war theater for Carthage, mostly removed from the picture and providing no silver for its war efforts, and because Italy had so far survived two invasions from sons of Hamilcar, Rome concentrated in keeping Hannibal isolated in Bruttium during 205 and 204. There was growing perception, no doubt encouraged by Scipio, that Rome had survived the Carthaginian threat and should turn its eyes toward Africa, where Carthage’s original Numidian allies were fractious and less likely to support their old masters.
So much had changed in the landscape of war with increased Roman successes, the Romans could make some compelling arguments to divide the Numidians still further in questioning Carthage’s ongoing ability to wage war if it was so dependent on allies such as the Numidians and mercenaries. The Celts in the north of Italy—who had been Hannibal’s allies while the booty flowed and Rome was backing up—were now also wary because Hannibal’s old gains had been reduced to only a foothold in Italy, and his promises of returning their hegemony had turned sour.
With less threat than ever in the war from Punic armies or their allied forces, Scipio was eventually persuasive in 205 in making his case to the Senate that the war could be taken to Africa and thus force Carthage to recall Hannibal. This seemed reasonable to many Romans, but his overtures were not met without resistance and argument from some, including from the faction of Fabius Maximus, whether from some hidden jealousy at Scipio’s success or prudent fear of leaving Hannibal untended in Bruttium, or both. Scipio argued that there was a huge contrast between ruining an enemy land, as Hannibal had been aggressively doing, than seeing one’s own land ravaged by fire and sword. Italy had been devastated for almost two decades. Give it some rest and now let Africa be the theater of war; let Carthage see from its gates what Romans had witnessed for too long.1
Some in the Senate, such as Quintus Fulvius Flaccus, voiced that Scipio was merely sounding them out about his plans and would put his bill before the people, who were thought to be firmly under his spell. In order not to be circumvented in its authority and made to look weak, the Senate confirmed Scipio not only in his consulship with power over Sicily but also with the provision that he could go to Africa if needed. Scipio always seemed to carry himself with sufficient moral rectitude—living publicly with abstemious behavior and delaying most of his personal gratifications2—that the Senate found little ammunition to pillory or undermine his stated intentions.
Locri had been one of the last cities left to Hannibal in Italy but was betrayed to the Romans in late 205. Hannibal lost a valuable outpost and Ionian port—also famous for its Temple of Proserpina and its zephyrs—but a city that the Carthaginians had not found easy to rule, with customs that Polybius also came to know well later.3 Scipio sent a Roman force of three thousand to take it under tribunes and his legate Pleminius, who was ultimately so heavy-handed that many complaints of mistreatment—some confirmed by quaestor Marcus Porcius Cato—went to the Senate in 204, where Fabius Maximus was still seeking restraints on Scipio and looking for any ammunition to limit his power. When the Senate’s investigators came to Sicily, Scipio was busy preparing for his invasion of Africa. His camps and military exercises and training drills were so impressive, he was able to escape censure.
Scipio’s provisioning for Africa was well planned, properly inventoried, and commissioned on an expected two-year campaign for as many as twenty-five thousand to thirty thousand men, although the actual number is debated.4 One nerve center of Scipio’s Roman forces was a core of retrained survivors from Cannae eager to prove their worth by erasing the shame of that defeat as O’Connell has so ably argued. The invasion of Africa would be done with forty transport ships carrying soldiers, arms, siege machinery,5 and rations. Almost two months’ worth of fresh water and food were packed, some bread even already baked. Safe passage across from Sicily to Africa was invoked by requisite sacrifices at sea by the general himself, and although it was somewhat risky to invade across more than 120 miles of water, during the actual voyage there was no Carthaginian naval resistance, either due to lack of Carthage’s resources, depleted Carthaginian naval power, lack of preparation in Carthage, or some other unknown reason.
Although the Roman fleet may have intended to land at Cape Bon on the east wing of the Gulf of Tunis, it veered west and landed instead at Cape Farina, not far from the city of Utica, either delayed by seasonal fog or possibly by intent if trying to surprise Carthage. Sextus Julius Frontinus, a highly respected Roman senator and author of a first-century CE book of war stratagems, tells the anecdotal story, true or not, about Scipio’s adept use of omens and transforming negative into positive: “Scipio, having transported his army from Italy to Africa, stumbled as he was disembarking. When he saw the soldiers struck aghast at this, by his steadiness and loftiness of spirit he converted their cause of concern into one of encouragement, by saying: ‘Congratulate me, my men! I have hit Africa hard.’ ”6 While this tale of Frontinus is almost certainly spurious, it nonetheless conforms to Scipio’s recorded keen skills in manipulating perceptions.
Soon after the Roman fleet landed, the immediate coast cleared as local people fled to nearby Utica or even farther south to Carthage. The city-state sealed its gates perhaps for the first time in decades, considering this huge turn of events as a perceptibly great threat for the first time in this war. While Scipio set up camp on land a brief distance from Utica, the Roman fleet soon moved to blockade Utica from the sea where it anchored.
The fact that Utica—actually an older Phoenician colony than Carthage7—was well fortified thwarted Scipio’s hope of a quick victory to establish a more secure African base as the days wore on. Assault barrages from his siege towers (fortified wooden towers that were filled with soldiers to attack city walls) were unable to make much headway from land, and attacks from the seaward side also proved ineffective against Utica. After forty-five days, another circumstance turned his attention elsewhere. A joint Carthaginian army of infantry and cavalry assembled by Hasdrubal Gisgo and the Numidian Syphax—larger than the invading Roman force—arrived to relieve Utica, and Scipio was forced to withdraw his army to a nearby walled camp for wintering on the headland.
Scipio now mulled a different approach: How could he disentangle Syphax from Carthage despite the king’s marriage to Sophonisba, his Carthaginian wife? Syphax was lured into private negotiations. For his part, Syphax demanded both a Roman exit from Africa to coincide with Hannibal’s exit from Italy. Typical for heated Numidian rivalries, Syphax seemingly wanted this so that he could try to get rid of his rival Massinissa himself and keep Rome out of Africa—better for his Numidians with a weakened Carthage than a surging Rome. Scipio knew this.
He was content to keep Syphax dangling, lulling the Numidian with a noncommittal exchange of envoys while playing his waiting game. Scipio sent trained officers as military spies under the guise of being lackeys or slaves to keenly observe the Numidian camp and the adjoining Carthaginian one. Scipio’s garnering intelligence assets was similar to what Hannibal had accomplished years before when he had resources among disaffected locals and Celts throughout Roman army camps in Italy.
The intelligence results Scipio learned in this way were useful in early 203: the enemy armies had an overly relaxed attitude, and morale was low, with both Carthage and Numidians eager for a treaty. Scipio concluded correctly that the enemy was ill-prepared for battle. Plus, the Carthaginian army was housed in wood huts, and the Numidians in reed shelters not always within the army camp stockade. Now Scipio acted far more like devious Hannibal than a methodical Roman, cleverly dissembling by pretending to reopen his siege of Utica with a renewed blockade and war engines. Since the enemy camps were made of highly flammable dry wood and reed, Scipio’s plan was to set fire to the two enemy camps simultaneously if needed and take advantage of the pandemonium to mow down the sleepy soldiers who fled their burning shelters. The enemy troops seven miles away went to bed thinking they were safely distant when Scipio sent a stealthy night force down to his enemies’ camps after the Roman night trumpets had sounded a pretend tattoo for bed in case any foe could hear.8
On arriving in the middle of the night under cover of darkness, Scipio quietly divided his forces, sending his adjutant Laelius with Massinissa to Syphax’s Numidian camp while he went to Hasdrubal Gisgo’s camp. Laelius and Massinissa with cavalry were easily able to quickly enter the camp of Syphax and his sleeping Numidians because much of it was outside the stockade; they set fire to it, and it was soon engulfed in flames as the Roman and allied forces rode through, cutting down any who stumbled around suddenly awake. Scipio in the same way took out the Carthaginian camp’s fighters when they were distracted by the neighboring conflagration. The outcome was that although their leaders Syphax and Gisgo escaped in time, the disastrous loss of both enemies, Numidian and Carthaginian, was almost complete, with many thousands dead or captured. If this act seemed treacherous on the part of Scipio—contra Livy, who repeatedly mentions “Punica fides” as the only fitting description of untrustworthy Carthaginians9—when Syphax and even Gisgo had expected peace as hinted, it was also brilliantly ruthless. A relentless Scipio pursued his enemies, who paid severely for their negligence as he mercilessly drove them away in slaughter before they had time to arm themselves. After his victory, Scipio swept through the region mopping up in North African towns before finally returning to Utica to renew his siege. But the inaction was temporary, as neither Scipio nor Carthage could afford to let an invasion simmer.
Carthage, with its still-deep pockets, quickly raised another mercenary army of thirty thousand within a few months, a portion of them reinforcements comprising the last four thousand mercenary Celtiberians from the south of Spain—those few remaining who still opposed Rome. This time the new Carthaginian army assembled on the Bagradas (Medjerda10) River southwest of Utica at a flat area called the Great Plain, again with King Syphax and whatever Numidians Hasdrubal could muster.
With Massinissa’s cavalry as his most mobile wing, Scipio formed three other Roman lines of battle: the faster light infantry (hastati) as the front line; the intermediate, better-protected infantry ( principes) forming the second line; and his heavy infantry (triarii) as his rear line. Scipio sent Massinissa and his cavalry into a furious charge driving forcefully into the Carthaginian line—almost like the flying wedge Alexander had used successfully against the Persians of King Darius III—which buckled the Carthaginian line. Most of the Carthaginian infantry fled in scattered retreat along with the modest Carthaginian cavalry, and the Numidians of Scipio chased most of the Carthaginians from the battle. This left only the veteran Spanish mercenary infantry fighting fiercely to hold the line against Scipio’s light infantry hastati, whose number they equaled. Scipio then sent in his second and third lines of heavier infantry from behind to move right and left along both flanks—the old Hannibal tactic of envelopment—and the Celtiberians were surrounded by battle on three sides with great loss. Only a few Celtiberian mercenaries escaped along with scattered troops led by Hasdrubal and Syphax, who again were able to flee. Hasdrubal fled back to Carthage and Syphax trying to reach the Numidian city of Cirta. As soon as Carthage found out it was such a clear victory for Scipio, the Carthaginian elders met in council to decide the safest salvage plan.
Massinissa and Laelius maneuvered southwest to Numidia, where Massinissa aimed to recapture Cirta, which had once belonged to his tribe before Syphax usurped it. Massinissa also hoped to take the king’s beautiful wife captive because Sophonisba had once been promised to him. This kind of “wife stealing” was not unprecedented in the ways the hotheaded Numidians conducted romance, given how history has portrayed Numidians—however barbaric in Roman eyes.11 The complete defeat of Syphax—thrown from his horse—was a coup for Massinissa and Laelius, who captured him alive en route to Cirta. Massinissa asked Laelius to let him go to Cirta without any accompanying Romans, where he was also temporarily successful in claiming Sophonisba, making her his wife in a hasty ceremony to keep her from Roman hands.
But this proud Carthaginian woman knew her fate—even begging for death as she clung to his knees—when Scipio instead demanded her as part of the Roman spoils, not for himself but for Rome. Regardless of Massinissa’s hopes that she would accept both marriage and captivity, she refused as a Carthaginian to go to Rome as a spectacle of triumph and committed suicide by taking poison. Apparently the poison had been provided by Massinissa, according to Appian12 (a variant on the idea that if he couldn’t have her, nobody could). As historical tragedy, her story has been adapted to many artistic genres more than a few times by sympathetic masters such as Petrarch and Voltaire in epic poetry or drama, Mantegna and Rembrandt in painting, and Henry Purcell and Christoph Gluck in opera. Although he had lost Sophonisba, Massinissa quickly took over the Numidian kingdom of the humbled Syphax, who would soon go as a prisoner to Rome, unlike his lost wife. Despite the mercurial way the besotted Numidian victor had tried to save Sophonisba but also allowed her poison, Scipio saluted Massinissa with the scepter of Numidian kingship, and Carthage had almost no remaining Numidian allies.
After this disaster of two Carthaginian forces defeated at the hands of Scipio and his Numidian allies close to home, a worried Carthage sued for terms of peace. This was most likely in part a delaying tactic while it also played the one card it had left: recall Hannibal from Italy to save Africa. Although cooped up in Bruttium with his military intelligence resources now far less extensive, Hannibal could have even guessed this last-gasp gambit if he had been following the events unfolding in Africa. Certainly the war that Hannibal’s original strategy must have envisioned and hoped would be short13—for the sake of his invasion and resources—had dragged on interminably and drained his military campaign coffers as well as Carthage’s patience—however stingy the homeland had been.
Hannibal would now have to abandon the extensive field of his many victories—where he had first roamed almost at will—but which had now shrunk to a mere wild peninsula at the extreme southwestern end of Italy. He first had to make sure to send home all his useless Italian allied forces; those unable to be counted on away from Italy and their own homes. Then Hannibal had to do something that must have been even more difficult: he was forced to slaughter all the horses he could not transport14 so that the Romans would not capture them and use them against Carthage. It must have been awful for a general to destroy such valuable assets, and if the screams of horses dying not in battle but in useless death were not utterly heart-wrenching to anyone who heard—despite the assertions of Diodorus Siculus and Appian, even one as tough as Hannibal would probably not want to be around for the destruction—the report of this slaughter does underscore the brutality of war and how ruthless a hardened general like Hannibal could be.
In Bruttium, Hannibal had doubted that his brother Mago would reach him from Genoa in Liguria for several reasons, one of them being his own isolation and another the increased power of Rome to mobilize. Hannibal’s doubts were soon confirmed. After Scipio had already taken the theater of war to Africa, the Romans blocked Mago Barca in Italy with four legions distributed from Ariminum to Arezzo. In 203 Mago tried to fight this combined Roman army of four legions near Milan with his Ligurians and remnant Carthaginians, even fielding war elephants, but, early in the battle, he was wounded in the leg and fell off his horse, likely then sustaining added injury. The battle quickly turned, and without his leadership, his army was defeated. Mago escaped to his ships at Genoa, but died at sea from his wounds. When Hannibal found out later, he mourned his second brother’s death. Two Barcid lions were down, and only the one—fiercest of all three—remained.
Carthage managed to get sufficient transport fleet protection to Italy and bring Hannibal home. Embarking from the Ionian coast, what Hannibal must have felt and contemplated looking back at the receding shore of Italy and his sixteen years there will always be a tantalizing prospect for historians. Livy concludes that Hannibal left Italy with bitterness and regrets, and while this may be true, it is also typical of Livy to negativize Hannibal whenever possible.15 However, Hannibal may have indeed felt as Livy wrote: that it wasn’t Rome undermining or conquering him but his own people and foes in Carthage, and that his Punic enemy Hanno could only bring down the Barcids by ruining Carthage.
In reflection, more than a third of Hannibal’s life had been spent on Italian soil. The first three years of lightning success had been so rewarding and full of promise as he brought Rome to her knees. But the last thirteen had been an endless, slow series of frustrating circles, at times one step forward and maybe more than one step back at other times. He had lost two brothers in or around Roman lands and waters, and had not accomplished his ultimate goal of forcing Rome to give way to Carthaginian sovereignty. And while he never backed down from his vow to his father of eternal enmity toward Rome, now he faced a greater obstacle. Rome had reversed the table on him, also slowly at first but unmistakable now with Scipio in Africa threatening the very survival of Carthage.
As his fleet neared Africa, it is equally fascinating to consider what Hannibal felt having been away from his homeland and his childhood city of Carthage for most of his life. Did he feel a deep, inherent loyalty to a place he hadn’t seen for so many decades? Did he feel betrayed, as his father had, by the decisions of weak leadership in Carthage? Hannibal could certainly sum up all the circumstances in which Carthage had taken the expedient and conservative but not so bold policy route, perhaps as could be expected for a commercial rather than military power. While it had tried to reinforce his campaigns, mostly with his brothers’ forces, Hannibal knew that Carthage could and would blame him for the largest share of responsibility of failure if Scipio could not be stopped, but it is likely Hannibal would not have necessarily shared that shouldering of ultimate responsibility as his forces landed and he touched the soil of Africa once again.
In the autumn of 203, Hannibal landed considerably to the south of Carthage—a cautious hundred miles away—at Leptis Minor (modern Lemta)16 in Tunisia. He brought with him possibly fifteen thousand to twenty thousand of his remaining veterans: Balearians, Libyans, Cartha-ginians, Spanish, and Celts, as well as the best of the Bruttians. How few of his original veterans remained from crossing the Alps is unknown—certainly not many—but if Hannibal had any left, most of them would have been in their thirties17 or, like him, in their midforties. This would make them at least a decade older than the average age of troops in general. These veterans may have been experienced and wily, but likely no longer strong enough to last through a full day of battle. If Hannibal cursed the gods and men, as Livy says, he was too smart to let his men know how low his spirits must have been at this irrevocable turn of his fortune.
Hannibal managed to secure a bit of time through the autumn and early winter before Scipio would march to meet him or he would confront Scipio, despite Carthage’s missals to defend its lands. In addition to his veterans from Italy, he was able to secure another twenty-five thousand soldiers—including Balearic islanders, Ligurians recruited by his brother Mago, and other African mercenaries—but could muster only three thousand to four thousand cavalry of mostly new Numidian allies. Hannibal had already long culled out the useless men in his forces while back in Italy. In addition there were those who probably refused to go to Africa,18 those his practiced eye knew could not fight a prolonged battle because they were now too old, those who would not be able to leave Italy, or those who had vacillating priorities (fear rather than loyalty, according to Livy19) and therefore weak ties to his war effort. Thus Hannibal had probably reduced his standing army to half its size. He knew he was deficient in cavalry, and while he also pulled together eighty war elephants, these were young beasts and not battle trained; hardly a surrogate for the mobile Numidian cavalry that had been so decisive in his best battles. He thus assembled an army of about forty thousand foot soldiers,20 likely around half of them totally inexperienced relative to about a third who were veterans.
When Carthage had called him to defend the city, Hannibal had delayed in bringing his forces to battle, knowing they were unready and that he was outmatched by Scipio’s trained army. But when he understood at last the danger of Massinissa’s Numidian cavalry joining with Scipio’s forces, he marched quickly and tried to intercept Scipio before Massinissa reached him. Hannibal failed to reach Scipio in time, since Scipio was already far to the west on the edge of Numidia, and Hannibal had to march from the Gulf of Sidra to the southeast of Carthage in short order, likely a distance of several hundred miles.
Scipio already had around twenty-eight thousand well-trained infantry, including some veterans of Cannae who had been exiled in Sicily and were now resolute in their new zeal and strength to acquit themselves honorably because Scipio had redeemed them.21 He also had two thousand cavalry ready for battle before Massinissa’s reinforcements. Hannibal may not have known the full state of Scipio’s cavalry, but he was highly aware of what Numidians could do in battle. Massinissa met Scipio with six thousand Numidian infantry and four thousand cavalry. Hannibal sent spies to assess the Roman army, but Scipio intercepted them. Rather than kill or torture them, the Roman general instead sent them around his camp with a Roman tribune to tour all of his preparations and gauge his strength so that they could go back to Hannibal with a full report. Perhaps this happened after Massinissa’s arrival, which would have given Hannibal an even more discouraging assessment.22 This subtle but daring move on the part of Scipio had the desired effect on Hannibal’s army: it was apparent that Scipio was so unafraid in the knowledge of his strength that he seemed already confident of the outcome. It was a page right out of Hannibal’s tactics copied by the master’s best student: getting inside the minds of the enemy. Hannibal, too, was canny enough to sense the outcome before the battle began.
Both brilliant generals had a strong sense of the outcome beforehand, a rare event in history. Too often the brutal psychology of war is reduced to mere statistics. Stripping the physical horrors and mental devastation from one side and the exhausted elation on the other makes warfare seem like a sporting event with only win and loss columns. But it is equally naïve to ignore the calculation and planning for supply lines and the jockeying to intimidate and outwit the opponent.
Some extrapolate from Polybius the idea that Rome’s aim for universal dominion came via Scipio just before his victory at the Battle of Zama.23 Perhaps one of the best war planners in history, Scipio marshaled every known possibility to his advantage before taking the field at Zama, and Hannibal was no less aware of this than Scipio. Before, Hannibal’s best ploys had always been to quickly analyze his immediate options and his enemy’s weaknesses and then to seize the day by springing the element of surprise and undermining his enemy’s confidence as part of his battle plan.24 Hannibal usually had been able to use stratagems and ambushes to strike terror into his enemies, but here at last in Scipio was a formidable enemy who would not be swayed—a master of manipulation himself.
At Zama, Hannibal knew he had no surprise to unfold. Carthage had given him little that he could play into a winning hand. The environment and terrain yielded no advantage for him on the large plain, which the greater Roman cavalry could exploit, having chosen the battlefield. Weaknesses that had precipitated previous Roman failures—insufficient training and overwhelmingly raw recruits and lack of mobility in cavalry—were now Hannibal’s. Whether through bribery or Scipio’s diplomacy, the Numidians who had been a considerable part of Hannibal’s previous strength and success were now mostly on the Roman side. Hannibal may not have been afraid, but it is certain that his new army assembled at Zama would have been. “The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men.”25 This sentiment of military historian B. H. Lidell Hart was epitomized by the speech Livy puts into the mouth of Scipio right after the battle of Cannae, when he berates Lucius Caecilius Metellus and his fellow surviving Romans for their flight and possible treason. Referring to the fear and defeatist thoughts of the Roman stragglers from Cannae, Scipio reputedly says, “The enemy’s camp is nowhere more truly than in the place where such thoughts can arise.”26 The perception of despair would haunt the combatants in war, first the Romans between 218 and 216 and now Carthage, especially from 205 to 202. In the time leading up to Zama, Carthage’s armies were already “defeated in spirit” after the failure at Utica, as Polybius assesses accurately.27
After his spies were sent back—graciously—with a full report of Roman readiness, Hannibal gauged Scipio’s confidence from a distance and perceived it was not the overconfidence displayed by prior Roman generals. The report of Scipio’s surprising treatment of the spies must have spread like wildfire in the Carthaginian camp and added to its trepidation. Knowing the effect Scipio was having on his army, Hannibal admired Scipio’s courage and apparent magnanimity. Hannibal asked Scipio to meet him, hoping to avert disaster but also wanting to see his new worthiest foe face-to-face and make his own judgment, after having learned—as Scipio might have even wanted—that Massinissa’s Numidian cavalry force had joined the Romans.
The famous story of the momentous meeting between Hannibal and Scipio and a few of their aides before battle reveals much about both commanders. Although it is likely both spoke each other’s language, they appear to have used translators for effect: neither would want to appear the least bit inarticulate or be judged by their accents. Livy says Hannibal and Scipio were struck dumb at first in each other’s presence out of respect, but Hannibal broke the silence. He is supposed to have said, “What I was at Trasimene and Cannae, you are today.”28 But Polybius emphasizes as always the fickleness of fortune in Hannibal’s words to Scipio about his own reversals.29 Hannibal would have been about twelve years older than Scipio and likely tried to exploit the age and experience differences by expecting the younger man to defer to his fame—looking for a psychological advantage.
But knowing how difficult a victory would be for Carthage this time, especially given Roman cavalry superiority with Numidian allies, Hannibal asked for the previous terms of settlement offered before Carthage had broken the truce. To maintain Carthaginian freedom, Hannibal offered that Carthage would give up all claims to Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, and all islands between Italy and Africa—a hollow concession, since Rome now controlled them anyway—and that Scipio could make this settlement for Rome without any risk of battle. These terms were less onerous than Rome’s demands after Carthage had attacked the envoy. Scipio essentially said, “No deal,” noting that Hannibal fully understood the Romans had the advantage. Scipio demanded instead that Carthage place itself under the authority of Rome with respect to the broken truce or fight this decisive battle to determine it by a military outcome. Livy’s reconstructed long speech has Scipio finishing with these words to Hannibal: “Prepare to fight because evidently you have found peace intolerable.”30 Of course, peace is what Hannibal requested; it was the Roman terms for peace that Hannibal found intolerable. Scipio offered to renegotiate if Carthage offered compensation for the Roman cargoes taken and the violence suffered by the envoys, but neither Hannibal nor Scipio would concede anything.31 They returned to their respective camps—possibly even both of which were visible from the meeting place—knowing that battle was imminent.
The two generals’ speeches to their men, as Polybius records them before battle, employed different psychological ploys. Scipio exhorted his men to remember their recent victories rather than their past defeats. He left them no choice but to conquer or die, warning that any outcome other than victory or death would end in dire captivity for surviving Romans, as there could be no safe place to hide in Africa in defeat, and they were far inside Punic territory, where little relief would come to them from the distant Mediterranean if they lost.32 Scipio said men who enter the field with steady resolve to conquer or die have the advantage of no other choice for living. Hannibal, on the other hand, reminded his men of the long string of past victories in Italy, not their recent trials in Spain, south Italy, and Africa, suggesting that the Romans facing them had the tainted memory of defeat, a weakening factor. Hannibal additionally had his squadron commanders speak to his multicultural forces in their own languages. Using fear as motivation, they specifically singled out Carthaginians to consider what would happen to their wives and children if they lost. The whole army was further encouraged to maintain its reputation for invincibility under Hannibal’s leadership at Trebia, Trasimene, and Cannae.33
The battle that would end the Second Punic War commenced the day after the two great generals met. It was probably around mid-October during a dry spell, which would be optimum for troop and animal movements. It took place somewhere at or around Zama, about eighty-five miles and a five-day march to the southwest of Carthage, on the often vague frontier between Carthage and Numidia, within modern Tunisia. It seems to have been a wide place on the plain now loosely called Zama Regia (Djama), between two modern wadis (creekbeds that are dry much of the time), Tessa and Siliana, and somewhere around the modern villages of Maktar, Sebaa Biar, and Lemsa.34 Scipio’s position seems to have been nearer a spring than Hannibal’s. Better water access could easily affect battle outcomes.
Hannibal may have had a numerical advantage with perhaps as many as forty thousand infantry in his army, but many of the soldiers fighting for Carthage would have been fairly raw recruits or recently acquired mercenaries. Hannibal’s cavalry included in the above total would have been barely four thousand after his force had been doubled earlier when joined by a minor Numidian prince named Tychaeus. Hannibal also had eighty war elephants, but these were mostly young and untrained. The makeup of the Carthaginian army was extremely diverse, with Carthaginians. Libyans, Balearics, Celts, Ligurians (from Mago), and Spanish added to Hannibal’s troops from Italy, which would include Bruttians and Lucanians as well as his old veterans.35 Hannibal knew that Scipio now had an advantage of 50 percent more cavalry than he could muster for Carthage, and Hannibal also knew from experience that the Romans’ Numidian cavalry were skilled.
Even given the disadvantages he faced, the outcome of the battle was not inevitable. Hannibal arranged his battle formation to suit what strengths he had. Starting at the break of day, the battle would favor Carthage, since the Romans would have faced east into the sun about the time the war elephants would be charging. But if the battle lasted long into the day with growing heat, the Carthaginians would be fighting with the sun glaring in their eyes.
Thinking hard about his position and possible outcomes, Hannibal placed his eighty war elephants in the front with some of his light infantry skirmishers, hoping the beasts would cause fear and confusion and break up the Roman center with their charge. Next he placed his first line of twelve thousand mercenaries, possibly quite a few of whom were trained in some form of warfare. Behind them he assembled his Libyan and Carthaginian levies and recruits numbering at least eight thousand to ten thousand, although because many of these would have been young and undertrained, they would be fighting for their homeland as a primary incentive, a mind-set different from the mercenaries’. Finally, Hannibal placed his old veterans from Italy several hundred meters behind the other lines. Possibly numbering up to fifteen thousand, Hannibal’s Italian veterans would have been the least mobile and needed to reserve their strength, as they were likely the oldest men on the field except for the Bruttians among them. On his flanks, Hannibal placed his four thousand cavalry, with his Numidian allies at his left making one half, and the other half being Carthaginian horsemen at his right.
In his troop placements, Hannibal seems to have predicted correctly that Scipio would try an enveloping tactic with his superior cavalry, but he hoped his cavalry would draw Scipio’s off the field of play.36 Hannibal was asking his own cavalry to bear a hard burden, which could have worked if their smaller numbers had been able to keep the larger Roman cavalry occupied long enough for Hannibal’s numerical advantage in infantry to bear fruit. Given the choice between having more cavalry or elephants, Hannibal would surely have chosen cavalry, but he didn’t have that choice. Both Hannibal and Scipio knew that the elephants could be frightened.
Scipio also planned well for possible outcomes and especially designed a way to neutralize the war elephants.37 He also divided his Roman army into the similar three lines he had used at the Battle of Ilipa in Spain in 206 and the Battle of the Great Plains west of Utica in 203. His hastati or lightest infantry made up the front line, his heavier principes were the second line, immediately behind the hastati, and his triarii were the heaviest infantry, his third line, deployed close behind the principes to prevent the war elephants from getting between the lines. Massinissa’s Numidian cavalry flanked the infantry on the right, and Laelius commanded his Italian cavalry on the left. Scipio, by this time, expected Laelius to almost fight as an extension of himself. The two generals, Hannibal and Scipio, appeared to be mostly imitating each other’s placements at this point, and there was nothing immediately deceptive or daring about their battle tactics as recorded.38
Scipio introduced a unique strategy aimed at the elephants. From his experience with Carthaginian battles in Spain, he knew that the beasts were often unmanageable.39 But Scipio took Hannibal’s elephants into account with more deliberation than he had Hasdrubal’s elephants at Ilipa.40 He now divided his Romans into distinct groups of small mobile maniples, units of sixty to one hundred soldiers, that would separate to each side when the war elephants charged straight ahead, drawing them through the empty corridors.41 This would have been frightening for the soldiers unless they were highly trained to block with their shields together almost in unison. Scipio may have practiced these tactics if he could have done it without prying eyes. The elephants could be disposed of behind the army lines if they charged straight through the lanes made for them. Scipio placed his very mobile light velites skirmishers either between the maniples to hide the slight maniple breaks in his ranks or in small groups barely in front and between the maniples. When the elephants came, these light velites would run back through the gaps as fast as possible.
This canny maneuver depended greatly on the trained maniples and their commanders knowing when and how to move to the side and how far. The tactic may suggest that the Roman maniples left more space between the ranks of soldiers than usual, and that the three lines were so close behind one another to keep elephants from moving left or right through the line gaps. The assembly of the army on the field had to be extremely well executed, but the broad Zama plain made this new maneuver possible, as Scipio planned, unlike the much narrower field at Cannae, where the compression of Roman forces had been fatal.42 No doubt Scipio was aware that no matter how much he prepared in advance, he was dealing with a brilliant adversary who could improvise on the spot in the heat of battle.
The war trumpets sounded, and the first phase of battle began. Romans beat on their shields and gave their war cry while the shouts of the assembled Carthaginian army must have been a cacophony of languages. Livy says the Romans were louder, but this is dubious, since they were fewer, although contrasting vocables uttered in so many languages would have just added to the confused din. Livy, however, implies the opposite, that war cries made a slight difference in the spirits of the soldiers: Hannibal’s forces made a discordant noise, no doubt loud but possibly canceling any desired effect because there was no discernible meaning; whereas the Roman war cry was in unison and thus all the more terrifying.43
Hannibal’s elephants and skirmishers charged forward, kicking up clouds of dust, and aimed straight ahead to make breaches in the Roman line. But many elephants, always hard to control when their vision was relatively suspect, veered away to the right; many of those who did charge were channeled forward as the Roman maniples opened up as planned. Some elephants did inflict damage on the Roman front lines. If the Roman army faced eastern sun, the low morning light reflected off metal traces may have even disconcerted some young elephants, who were also unused to the din of horns and trumpets, as Polybius notes.44 Some mostly untrained elephants who veered right never encountered Romans and instead ran amok into Carthaginian lines, wreaking great damage and confusion there as they stampeded their own forces. Most of Hannibal’s war elephants were ineffective, spoiling his desired aim of sowing great confusion among the Roman ranks. So the first phase of battle did not go Hannibal’s way.
About the same time, the superior cavalry forces under Massinissa and Laelius overwhelmed the Carthaginians and their allied cavalry units, driving them back, especially on the Carthaginian right cavalry flank, where Laelius and his Roman horsemen attacked after elephants had broken up that side of the infantry. Livy says that the rogue elephants caused Cartha-ginian cavalry to flee away from battle rather than charge the Roman cavalry.45 Hannibal had hoped that if his inferior cavalry retreated on his flanks and the Romans chased them, then the Roman cavalry would be drawn off the battlefield and could not outflank Hannibal’s infantry. This worked as long as the Carthaginian cavalry could engage the enemy cavalry, but soon the cavalry engagement ended.
The initial infantry phase of battle also disappointed Hannibal. Even though the Romans were outnumbered, the surge of Hannibal’s front line of allied mercenaries did not penetrate the disciplined Roman line. Instead it gave way to Scipio’s deeply massed front of trained hastati, principes, and triarii. Hannibal’s first line of mercenaries then retreated into his untested second line of Carthaginian and Libyan levied recruits, causing disarray as they backed into their own army. Now the mercenaries, who had never fought under Hannibal, were more than matched by the advancing Romans, who had formed into a cohesive army since Sicily and had yet to be defeated under Scipio’s bold leadership. The mercenaries tried to turn away from the Romans but had nowhere to escape, blocked by their allied second line of Carthaginian recruits and levies. Instead, in pandemonium, to preserve their lives, the feckless mercenaries began to attack their own Carthaginian allies of the second line to get away from the Romans.
Because the number of Roman infantry was now mostly equal to the combined first and second lines under Hannibal, the Roman advantage began to show, as it was also the better trained fighting force. The esprit de corps of the untrained and confused Carthaginians in the second line turned to panic as they were pressed between their first and third lines, the mercenaries forcing them toward the third line of Italian veterans, who refused to move back. Because Hannibal had kept his old veterans in the rear as needed reserve, the empty space he had left between his first two lines and his third line quickly disappeared as the Romans continued to move forward fighting as a tight-knit block now that the elephants were no longer a threat.
Now many of the desperate Carthaginians and mercenaries fell victim to their own army, mostly unknown to one another and having no loyalty to the oversight of their general, fighting internally in great disarray as well as falling to the more disciplined Romans. To arrest the retreat, Hannibal’s Italian veterans of the third line put their wall of spears facing forward, not allowing the Carthaginian and mercenary lines to back up any farther. The veterans finally forced their allies instead to run to the right and left, at first filling up the flanks left by the evacuated cavalry and then many fleeing the battlefield altogether. But somehow Hannibal masterfully pulled his disorganized army back together, mostly stopping the hemorrhage of flight.
In this second battle phase, Hannibal’s army coalesced into one line as Scipio advanced his army, keeping his hastati in the center and spreading out his other two lines of principes and triarii to right and left on his own flanks to also make one line so that Hannibal could not outflank him. The difference was that Scipio’s infantry strength was now on his two sides, whereas Hannibal’s Italian veterans created the strong center of his line. Both armies were now fighting in full engagement, and Hannibal’s wily veterans in the middle—his original third line—could have turned the day in his favor, since they were mostly fresh and were facing the weaker Roman center of light infantry. The courage of Hannibal’s Italian veterans may have temporarily rallied their remaining mercenary infantry and Carthaginian companions, even though these were hard pressed by the Roman heavy infantry fighting on the flanks. Both master strategists, Scipio and Hannibal had balanced their strengths against the enemy’s weakness. The battle seemed to become a stalemate for a while.
But in the third phase, the tide turned after the superior Roman and Numidian cavalry had routed the smaller Carthaginian and allied cavalry. The Romans and Numidians on horseback now returned to the battle from the rear, and as they were far more mobile on horseback and had suffered few casualties, they began to systematically slaughter Hannibal’s army from behind. Once again this became a battle where superior cavalry seemed to have the ultimate role in victory. It was an enveloping outcome eerily similar to Cannae but where the victim was the teacher and the victor his student.
At Zama, the death toll for Hannibal’s army mounted to twenty thousand, with another twenty thousand captured, as Polybius maintains,46 whereas Scipio’s losses were possibly only about two thousand men.47 Whether the western sun was glaring in the Carthaginians’ eyes and whether the accessibility to fresh water in the spring—here controlled by Scipio, who had arrived first at Zama—were factors in battle, we will likely never know, but these were in any case certainly minimal to Carthage’s defeat. Zama was Hannibal’s Waterloo, and like Napoléon, it was his last battle against his arch foe.
At the end of his Zama disaster, Hannibal escaped with a small detachment of cavalry that had either stayed with him or returned before the final outcome, making his way east not to Carthage, where he would have faced only enemies among his countrymen, but the farther distance to his old family estates in Hadrumetum, now Sousse, Tunisia, 120 miles to the east.48 Scipio then plundered the Carthaginian camp and soon returned to Utica with his prisoners and great booty as a Roman victor before sending his fleet toward Carthage to present Rome’s demands.
When Hannibal finally returned to Carthage weeks later to give his report—his first visit in thirty-six years—he told the tribunal of Carthage he had lost both the battle and the war. He told the elders their only recourse was to seek peace with Rome and pay whatever indemnity was imposed. Scipio’s ships were thus met with a vessel out of Carthage laden with olive branches and herald’s devices—which protected the occupants as messengers, not soldiers—suing for peace. Its humbled ambassadors were to see firsthand what Scipio’s victory now meant. As in the First Punic War a half century earlier, one decisive battle determined Carthage’s fate. But unlike the prior campaigns, this defeat took place in their homeland rather than on the sea. It must have been perceived as far more disastrous. Hamilcar had contested the first war and the indemnity of 241, but his son made no such protest after Zama.
At Zama, Scipio had figured out how to render war elephants useless or more dangerous to their own ranks, somehow observing from military intelligence or Numidian complicity that these difficult animals could be Carthage’s first attack force. The inequity in cavalry was also a major factor and had probably been uppermost in Scipio’s mind for some time, whether that meant bribing the Numidians or creating compelling circumstances such as Massinissa’s passion for Sophonisba and desire for revenge against Syphax.
Conversely, Hannibal, having just returned from Italy, did not have such opportunity to assemble sufficient Numidian cavalry or train his new army as a unit between the late autumn of 203 and the autumn of 202 leading up to Zama. The better training of Scipio’s army was also very much a factor, since he planned and trained his men for almost two years and had fought with at least some of them since Spain. The slight advantage in number of Hannibal’s army was not a factor when so many of his forces had not fought together like Scipio’s army had.
Polybius says Hannibal had done all he could at Zama as a good and experienced general. He had tried by interview with Scipio before battle to secure a diplomatic resolution, knowing the odds were against him. Even though he had a long history of victory, he understood the many possibilities and unexpected contingencies of war. Thus, he had accepted battle when he had no other choice, and planned as best he could for it both before and during battle. Hannibal likely understood that the outcome would be universal dominion for Rome.49 Zama made Carthage despair in similar terms as Rome had despaired after Cannae, but Zama was the beginning of the end for Carthage, whereas Cannae proved to have been only a setback for Rome.50 Few would disagree with a bluntly honest Hannibal that his loss determined the course of history. As one historian has said, Zama was “one of the most crucial [battles] in the history of Europe.”51
At Tunis, where Scipio met the ten humbled ambassadors from Carthage in the late fall of 202, Scipio’s authority imposed a far heavier penalty than in 241. Carthage could continue as a sovereign state for now without a military occupation by Rome, but it would exist with severely limited scope. It had already lost all claim to Spain, Sicily, and the islands, but now it also had to accept that its fleet was reduced to ten triremes, its elephants must all be handed over to Rome, it was expressly forbidden to wage war outside Africa, and it must seek Rome’s permission to exercise any war in Africa.
Whereas the Treaty of Lutatius in 241 exacted 2,200 talents of silver, the new indemnity for defeat was 10,000 talents of silver to be paid out in installments for fifty years. Carthage must also submit 100 hostages chosen by Rome between the ages of fourteen and thirty,52 and therefore in their prime, who could be rotated or replaced. Carthage must also release any Roman prisoners, amounting to 4,000 Roman slaves released from Carthaginian captivity—some of them patricians such as Terentius Culleo, who walked behind Scipio in his now triumphal return. Some have calculated the value of the indemnity, in the most current estimate, this 572,000 pounds of silver would be worth over $183 million.53 This would not bankrupt Carthage as a state, but it did penalize the people with added taxes rather than coming from the official treasury, which Hannibal later on protested to the Council of Elders.54 Interestingly many modern war reparations assigning responsibility for war are derived partly from at least the spirit if not the letter of this Carthaginian precedent.55
Many of the Carthaginians wept as their ships were burned in the gulf in plain sight of the city, with the whole populace watching the primary means of their trading wealth go up in flames, possibly in the presence of Scipio and his army. If Hannibal were also there witnessing the conflagration, he surely suffered as a defeated general at home rather than as a victorious commander who had made Rome tremble for years. For the first time in his adult life, Hannibal had no army.56
Scipio’s victory at Zama worried some in the Senate that he might covet the tyranny of an old-style rex (king).57 Livy even mentions the words regius (“royal” or “regal”) and regnum (“rule” or “realm”) as allegation by Scipio’s critics.58 But Scipio was content to bring Carthage and its territory to defeat.
The Senate ratified Scipio’s terms by early 201. Confirmed in his proconsulship over Africa, Scipio remained there until 201, arriving at Lilybaeum in Sicily and then marching through Italy in triumph until he arrived in his chariot in Rome as the conqueror of Africa. He would thereafter be known as Scipio Africanus, the conqueror of Africa.59
Hannibal was not forced to march alongside Scipio as his defeated enemy. Perhaps Scipio understood that the very sight of Hannibal in Rome might have been unnerving to Romans and would even detract from Scipio’s own persona of victory. Plus, he might have concluded that taking such a dangerous person as Hannibal to Rome might not be wise, since Scipio gauged Hannibal to be as crafty as himself. Possibly also out of respect for his adversary’s reputation, Scipio allowed Hannibal to remain in his homeland. He may have considered Hannibal the only person strong enough to keep Carthage on the stable path of honoring its financial payments as they came due.
Immediately after Zama in 202, when negotiations were brokered over the treaty with Rome, while voting, Carthage’s Council of Elders had a sole elder opposing the treaty—likely named Gisco—and an angry Hannibal is reported to have seized this dissenter and thrown him from the speaker’s platform. When Hannibal’s indignant fellow Carthaginians objected to his physical aggression, his verbal response was both an apology for being away so many years and for behaving more as a military leader before the council than as a legislator. But he also offered a compelling argument that Rome could have acted much more severely against Carthage. Livy recorded this event, so word got back to Scipio and to Rome.60
When the first indemnity installment of silver came due for Carthage to send to Rome, Livy says in a singular anecdote61 that many Carthaginians wept in shame but that Hannibal laughed a bitter laugh, possibly revealing contempt for the mercantile powers of Carthage that had never fully supported him and must now pay up in consequence. The prolonged conflict had been called “Hannibal’s War,” since Carthage had disavowed him more than once.62 Hannibal also knew that the charge of this being his war was in many ways an accurate assessment.
Livy put a retort in Hannibal’s mouth that seemed prescient: he was not laughing except at misfortune. He who had long been the beneficiary of Fortuna, the Roman goddess of luck, as Polybius reminded, now mistrusted her.63 Hannibal now warned that Carthage would find out all too soon that this war indemnity was the least of its troubles to come.