The battle of Zama, supposedly waged in North Africa in 202 BCE, between the armies of Hannibal Barca and the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio, was the final military engagement of the Second Punic War, and a decisive turning point in the history of the Mediterranean cultures and the rest of the world. The traditional accounts of the battle, based practically in their entirety on pro-Roman sources, paint a strange and highly unlikely picture of the conflict and its outcome. Let us first examine the reasons for the distortions presented by the classical record, and the circumstances leading up to the battle. In a following article I will attempt to reconstruct what actually happened on that fateful day, looking through what can only be characterized as smoke and mirrors in the standard sources.
To understand what took place in 202 BCE at Zama—not the name of the actual locality of the engagement, but the label most easily recognized—and the reasons why the records of the event were presented in the manner in which they have been preserved, it is necessary to go back to 216, the year of the greatest defeat in the history of Roman military power, the battle of Cannae. Only by taking into account Hannibal’s victories at the Trebia (in 218), Trasimene (in 217), and especially Cannae, can we gain a measure of the magnitude of the humiliation Rome experienced at the hands of the great Carthaginian hero, who remained undefeated on Italian soil for 15 years. We can then comprehend the psychological and political need to build up the image of a Roman counter-hero, Scipio Africanus, and to exaggerate and distort the account of Zama by presenting it as a Cannae in reverse. The descriptions of Cannae and Zama in Roman historiography offer a curious reciprocal contrast, as will be seen below.
At Cannae, in 216 BCE, Hannibal was able to field 40,000 infantry plus 10,000 cavalry to face a vastly numerically superior Roman force under Lucius Aemilius Paulus and Gaius Terentius Varro, numbering 80,000 infantry and close to, or actually well over, 10,000 horse (not merely 6,000, as usually claimed—see Mosig & Belhassen, 2006). Hannibal, through his brilliant battlefield tactics, managed to destroy the Roman horse early in the engagement and totally encircle the huge infantry force, achieving within a few hours the annihilation of the largest army Rome had ever assembled.
This terrible defeat was not only a severe blow to the military might of Rome; it was an affront to Roman arrogance and pride. The description of the battle of Cannae in Roman historiography was influenced primarily by the accounts of Polybius—who, although Greek, was in the employ of the Cornelian family—and Livy, a patriotic Roman propagandist. The reports of Polybius, Livy, and other pro-Roman historians distort the events at Cannae in several ways (detailed in Mosig & Belhassen, 2006). One claim was that, although the Romans had a two to one advantage in infantry, Hannibal had almost a two to one superiority in cavalry, and that the numerically superior horse was the deciding factor in the disaster. Polybius astutely gives the size of the Roman horse as “over 6000,” which is not technically false, although clearly misleading, since the actual figure was probably close to twice that number. A force of 10,000 to 12,000 horse and 80,000 foot soldiers allows for the total Roman deployment to exceed 90,000. With 10,000 survivors plus 10,000 captured 90,000 is consistent with Polybius’s reported casualty figure of 70,000. Livy, on the other hand, following Polybius’s “6,000” number for the Roman horse, sees the total strength as 86,000, and gives a much lower number for the Roman fallen, 50,000. By the creation of a fictional numerical superiority in the Carthaginian horse and the sharp reduction of the Roman dead, the greatest shame of Roman arms was substantially diminished (Mosig & Belhassen, 2006).
Additionally, Roman pride, which had rationalized the defeats at the Trebia and at Lake Trasimene as the results of ambushes rather than “fair” engagements, needed some excuse to explain how they had been crushed on an open plain at Cannae, where no ambush could be concealed. To that end, Livy reports a spurious incident (not mentioned by Polybius) of treacherous trickery, fitting his portrayal of Hannibal (21:4) as possessing “inhuman cruelty” (inhumana crudelitas) and “no regard for truth” (nihil veri), as well as the standard Roman stereotype of Carthaginian perfidy and “Punic faith.” A contingent of 500 apparently unarmed Numidians allegedly pretended to defect and then attacked the Romans from behind with weapons hidden in their clothes (22:48). It seems that vanity demanded that only through treachery and overwhelming cavalry superiority could the “noble” Romans have been defeated!
But wounded Roman arrogance needed more than fabricated lower casualty figures, inflated enemy numbers, and imagined trickery to alleviate the incurred disgrace. The Romans needed a hero behind whom they could rally, a greater than life figure to restore lost confidence, infuse new pride, and, above all, to counteract the image of the apparently invincible Hannibal, Rome’s worst nightmare. They also desperately needed a great victory, comparable to Cannae, to erase their dishonor. The heroization, deification, and hagiography of Publio Cornelius Scipio the Younger, later known as Scipio Africanus, provided the Romans with a legend to accomplish the former, while the exaggerated and distorted accounts of the battle of Zama supplied the illusion that a reverse Cannae had been achieved. We will examine below both of these developments.
A number of ancient sources provide information allowing us to follow the creation of the legend and apotheosis of Scipio Africanus. Besides Polybius (who regarded him as a hero, but had reservations concerning his character) and Livy, Haywood (1933) mentions support for the idolizing of Scipio in reports by Appian, Lactantius, Ennius, Cicero, Oppius, Hyginus, Valerius Maximus, Gellius, Nepos, and others. Members of the Cornelian family, as could be expected, “were united in believing Africanus one of the greatest men of history. Ennius and others had considered him more than a man” (Haywood 28-29).
The earliest expression of the heroization of Scipio in Roman historiography seems to be the incident that supposedly took place during the cavalry engagement at the Ticinus river, in 218 BCE, the first clash between Punic and Roman forces after Hannibal’s epic crossing of the Alps. There, Scipio’s father, the commanding consul, was seriously wounded, and was supposedly saved by the bravery of his son, the future Africanus (Livy 21:46, 9-10), who was at the time barely 18 years old. Nevertheless, according to Coelius Antipater, “the honor of saving the consul should be credited to a Ligurian slave [rather than to the young Scipio].” Livy actually says “servati consulis decus Coelius ad servum natione Ligurem delegat” (21:46, 10), while expressing a preference for the version attributing the act to the young hero. The Ligurian slave is also mentioned in Macrobius’s Saturnalia (1:11, 26), but the more popular account, giving Scipio as the savior, is found in Appian, Hannibalic War, 7; Valerius Maximus 5:4, 2; Floros 2:6, 10; Silius Italicus 4, 417-479, Orosius 4:14; 6; and Zonaras 8:23, 9. Polybius does not mention the incident in his description of the battle of the Ticinus, but includes Scipio’s presumed heroism much later, attributing the information to Scipio’s friend Laelius, hardly an unbiased source. As Lancel (1998) points out, “in his laudatory portrait of his hero leaving to conquer Punic Spain in 210 claims that the young man had single handedly saved his father, who was hemmed in by the enemy, while his companions hesitated in the face of danger […]. This narrative smacks of the hagiography that very soon developed around the figure of Africanus, doubtless with the complicity of the interested party.”
Beck & Walter (2004) also comment on the discrepancy between Coelius Antipater’s description of the incident and the version favored by the mainstream of Roman historiography: “The intention to decorate the young P. Cornelius Scipio with the heroic deed from the Ticinus goes deeper than a mere attempt to express his virtus. Polybius and afterwards Livy were much more interested in portraying him as a man who, from the very beginning of the war till the victory at Zama, struggled tirelessly against Hannibal. Coelius was unencumbered by that intention.”
If Scipio actually was at the Ticinus, he must have been at the battle of the Trebia as well, (also in 218 BCE), but there is no mention in any of the sources indicating either his presence or his participation in the first major engagement of the war, where Hannibal crushed the combined armies of Scipio’s wounded father and of Sempronius Longus, the other consul of that fateful year. Clearly, if the young Scipio was there, he did nothing to distinguish himself.
Scipio, supposedly, was also at Cannae, but, as Ridley (1975) points out, he is not mentioned by either Livy or Polybius in their descriptions of the battle. Nevertheless, Livy (22:50-52) lists his name as one of four military tribunes among the survivors who escaped from the debacle. Livy, but not Polybius, includes also an anecdote consistent with the hagiography of the hero, in which allegedly Scipio confronts M. Caecilius Metellus, who, together with others, is planning to leave Italy altogether, believing the situation to be hopeless, and forces him and his followers, at sword point, to take an oath to Jupiter invoking their personal destruction should they abandon Rome (22:54). The incident is suspect as a further fiction to enhance the growing legend. Scullard (1930) argues that “this story is probably a late invention, otherwise Polybius would hardly have omitted it.”
It is interesting to note that the Romans disdained those who allowed themselves to be captured at Cannae, whom they branded as cowards, and refused to ransom them; as a consequence they were sold into slavery. Disdain was only slightly less for those who had survived the battle by escaping, and they were also disgraced and labeled cowards, since to save themselves they had fled the battlefield rather than dying with honor (Livy 22:49-60). They were punished by being forced to serve indefinitely in Sicily without pay. On the other hand, escape from the Roman camp to avoid capture, rather than from the battlefield, was not similarly stigmatized. Naturally, if Scipio was at Cannae, as Livy implies, had he survived by escaping from the battlefield, by Roman standards he should also have been regarded as a coward and his reputation tainted accordingly—but no mention is made of it. If he was in the camp and did not see action other than escaping in the middle of the night, there was also no glory in that alternative. Similarly, Ridley (1975) argues that “if, as seems likely, Scipio actually fought at Cannae, then here indeed is a hitherto neglected, albeit negative, element in the Scipionic legend: the studious avoidance of any direct statement by any of our sources to this effect. The dramatic contrast of Scipio’s presence at Rome’s greatest humiliation at Hannibal’s hands with his ultimate turning of the tables at Zama, would seem to have been appealing […] Scipio’s part in [the battle of Cannae], apparently undistinguished, has been expunged from history.”
It is clear that Scipio’s involvement in the three Roman defeats at which he was probably present—Ticinus, Trebia, Cannae—was undistinguished at best. However, there is little doubt that he carefully studied Hannibal’s tactics, and that he was a good student, as demonstrated by his Iberian campaign, where his victories against less competent Carthaginian commanders were made possible by tactical maneuvers derived from Hannibal.
The brazen attack on Cartagena in 209 BCE, while the Punic armies were away, was successful largely due to luck and Scipio’s discovery of the shallowness of the ebbing waters protecting one side of the city (Livy 26:41-51). As Polybius (10:2) reports, he tried to exploit the situation to convince his soldiers that he was under divine protection and had a special connection to the gods, especially Neptune. There is no doubt that he was a shrewd and clever manipulator of people, and in this and other instances did not hesitate to use the opportunity to build up his own image. He later allowed himself to be seen as a mystic and a favorite of Jupiter, fomenting the growth of his own legend.
Although as a politician he may have approached greatness—at least in a Machiavellian sense—as a military commander he was competent but not brilliant, certainly not a genius of the caliber of Alexander or Hannibal, Liddell Hart (1927) to the contrary. His main victories in Spain—at Baecula in 208 and Ilipa in 206 BCE—reflect his adoption of Hannibalic tactics, especially the withdrawn center, which is not to say that his maneuvers showed a complete lack of originality.
The battle of Baecula, despite being hailed as a great victory by pro-Roman historians, was actually a disaster, if the intention was to block Hasdrubal, Hannibal’s brother, from continuing north to cross the Alps and join the latter’s forces in Italy. Scipio failed, and although he “won” the battle, Hasdrubal was able to escape with most of his army intact and proceed north for his rendezvous with destiny (Polybius 10:38; Livy 27:18). This failure could have cost the Romans the war, for had Hasdrubal succeeded in reinforcing Hannibal in Italy, the combined Punic forces under the command of the undefeated Carthaginian maverick would in all likelihood have proven unstoppable. Hasdrubal’s defeat at the Metaurus before he could reach his brother saved the city on the Tiber from certain disaster, an event which owed nothing to Scipio and a lot to luck: the interception of Hasdrubal’s messengers attempting to reach Hannibal to arrange for the meeting of the two Carthaginian armies (Livy 27:43).
Nevertheless, since the following battle, at Ilipa (206 BCE), effectively ended Carthaginian control of Spain, Scipio returned to Rome a hero, was elected consul in 205, and became proconsul the following year, retaining his command in Sicily. Hannibal, although remaining undefeated after 14 years of war, by 204 was limited in his operations to Bruttium, the tip of the Italian peninsula. The Fabians (one of the main families of the Roman nobility, the others being the Cornelians and the Claudians) in the Roman senate urged action, including the venerable Fabius Maximus, who had exhibited the wisdom of not engaging Hannibal after the Roman debacle at Lake Trasimene in 217 BCE, waging instead a war of attrition, a tactic which, when discontinued after the conclusion of his term in office, led to Cannae. With Hannibal’s weary and much diminished army hemmed in at the tip of the peninsula, Scipio was urged to lead the Roman legions on a final battle to defeat the Carthaginian general once and for all (Livy 28:38-45). Scipio refused, insisting instead on taking the war to Carthage, and the invasion of Africa started in 204 BCE.
Although he would have to face Carthaginian armies on their own land, where they could be resupplied without difficulties and would outnumber him, Scipio knew that they did not have another Hannibal among them, and judging from his experience with the less than gifted Carthaginian commanders in Spain he expected to have a better chance of success than facing the remnants of the army of the formidable Hannibal in Italy. Moreover, if he were to achieve success in Africa, he might accomplish the recall of Hannibal from Italy to defend his home city, in which case the great Barcid would arrive without a substantial part of his current forces, especially his much-feared cavalry, due to Roman control of the Mediterranean impeding easy transport of supplies and reinforcements by the enemy. Dodge (1891) perceptively comments: “Scipio did no more for Italy than Marcellus [conqueror of Syracuse], less than Nero [victor at the Metaurus], but he has descended into history as a greater character than either. Less able in many respects, his work was supplemented by opportunities not awarded them, and what he did bore fruit which all men could see. Scipio never hid his light under a bushel. Had Scipio faced Hannibal when Marcellus or Nero was called on to do so, he would probably have failed. Fortune saved him for Zama, when Hannibal had no longer an army and he himself had inherited the best of its size Rome had put into the field.”
Scipio had another reason to avoid fighting Hannibal in Italy, in addition to fear of suffering a crushing defeat at the hands of the master. He had been courting Massinissa, a Numidian prince and master of the horse, son of Gaia, king of the Maessylii, whose help and cavalry would be available to him in Africa, but not in Italy. Earlier, Syphax, Numidian king of the Masaessylii, had been persuaded by Scipio’s father and uncle to join the Roman cause, while the brothers were commanding the Roman forces in Spain. His defection hurt Carthaginian efforts, dependent as they were on Numidian cavalry. Hasdrubal, Hannibal’s brother, had combined his forces with those of King Gaia, under the command of Massinissa, who had remained loyal to Carthage, and inflicted two crushing defeats on Syphax. Massinissa was also cavalry commander for the Carthaginian army that in 211 BCE defeated the army of Scipio’s father, Publius Cornelius Scipio the Elder, who was killed in the engagement (Polybius 9:22; Livy 25:32-34).
After Baecula, in 208 BCE, Massinissa, still loyal to the Carthaginians, retreated south toward Gades. Scipio had crossed to Africa to visit the court of King Syphax and negotiate his continued support of Rome, and apparently charmed the king with his eloquence, despite the presence of the enemy Carthaginian general, Hasdrubal Gisgo. Back in Gades, he wooed Massinissa, who, as de Beer (1969) puts it, “also fell under the spell of Scipio’s charm” and signed a treaty with him (Livy 28:35). This act of Massinissa, amounting to a betrayal of his loyalty to Hannibal and Carthage, would have a momentous effect on the outcome of the war. Clearly, Scipio’s skill as politician surpassed his talent as battlefield commander.
While Massinissa was still in Spain, his father died, and the succession to the throne of the Maessylii resulted in conflict and civil war, with Mazaetullus usurping power and marrying the Carthaginian widow of the dead king in order to ally himself with Carthage. Massinissa returned to Africa and fought successfully to regain his kingdom, but this put him at odds with Syphax, the king of the Masaessylii, who had supported his rivals for the throne. This time Massinissa was defeated in battle, but managed to escape and hide in the mountains to avoid capture and death. He was able to raise a new army from his supporters, but was defeated once more by his enemy. Massinissa was expecting Scipio’s arrival in Africa, planning to use the opportunity to defeat his adversary, but Scipio’s delays with the invasion cost him dearly (Livy 29).
To seal Syphax’s support of Carthage, Hasdrubal Gisgo gave the aging king, in marriage, his beautiful daughter Sophonisba, who had also been courted by Massinissa, upon which Syphax sent Scipio a message warning him not to invade Africa, for the king would now be on the Carthaginian side.
Scipio proceeded with the invasion anyway, and landed at Cape Farina, near Utica, in the spring of 204 (Livy 29:27, 5-12), with an army of at least 30,000 men. He was joined there by the Numidian horse under Massinissa, who defeated a small cavalry force under Hanno that had been sent from Carthage to meet the invaders, Hanno himself being killed in the engagement.
Scipio laid siege to Utica (Ityke), but was unable to take it. Meanwhile, Hasdrubal Gisgo, together with his ally Syphax, assembled an army and marched against Scipio’s position. It is important to note that Carthage, unlike Rome, had no confederation of allies, and that there was no standing army at the Punic city. As de Beer (1969) suggests, the hastily assembled force of Hasdrubal Gisgo and Syphax, although large in number, was probably “only a rabble of miserable quality” that would be “quite unable to stand up to veteran Roman legionnaires,” and even more importantly, had no Hannibal to lead them.
Scipio discontinued the siege of Utica and prepared a defensive camp on the peninsula, in what later became known as the Castra Cornelia, going into winter quarters. Probably still hopeful of being able once again to charm Syphax with his silver tongue, he sent many envoys to the Numidian camp, as well as to the Carthaginian, to offer a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Believing the overture to be in good faith, Hasdrubal Gisgo and Syphax started negotiations with Scipio aimed at ending the conflict. It was obvious that the Carthaginians wanted the long war to end, and for peace to be achieved. The Roman commander, who had no desire for a peaceful resolution of the conflict, since it would have deprived him of glory and the spoils of victory, pretended to go along, and skillfully gave the impression that he was in agreement with the proposals of his reluctant opponents, and that peace would be reached as soon as he received confirmation and approval from Rome. The peace proposal he was offered was not frivolous; it was an agreement stipulating that the Carthaginian forces would withdraw from Italy and the Romans from Africa, and that for the territories between Africa and Italy the status quo would prevail (Livy 30:3-4).
Having deceived the Carthaginians with the false negotiations—Scipio had not asked for any verification from Rome, it was all a sham—he engaged next in one of the most treacherous attacks recorded in human history. Since his delegates had repeatedly visited the Punic camps and had secretly mapped them in close detail, once he had the Carthaginians convinced that an agreement and peace were imminent, he launched a sneak attack in the middle of the night. Massinissa and Laelius were in charge of setting fire to the Numidian quarters, while Scipio himself supervised the torching of the Carthaginian camp (Polybius 14:2; Livy 30:5-6). The temporary structures housing Hasdrubal’s and Syphax’s men went up in flames, and the soldiers, thinking the fire accidental, emerged without their weapons to put out the blaze, and were cut down without mercy. So much for good faith and “Roman fides.” Through fire and sword, the unarmed and defenseless Numidians and Carthaginians were slaughtered by the thousands. No honor could be attached to such treachery, but Roman historiography tries to justify the actions of their hero by stating that he feared some Punic trick, and that he had indicated that the negotiations were off prior to the sneak attack, both highly unlikely. Hasdrubal Gisgo and Syphax were able to flee from the macabre scene, the former returning to Carthage and the latter going to Abba (Livy 30:7).
The Carthaginian senators were horrified and demanded action. Hasdrubal was able to persuade Syphax to continue the struggle, and the forces of the Numidian king and the Carthaginians, mostly raw recruits rather than soldiers, congregated at the Great Plains to give battle. Livy characterizes the army of Hasdrubal Gisgo at the Great Plains as an “irregular army suddenly raised from a half-armed mob of rustics” (30:28, 3). Not surprisingly, they were defeated by Scipio, with the help of the Numidian cavalry under Massinissa. Hasdrubal fled to Carthage and Syphax to his capital, Cirta, with Massinissa and Laelius in hot pursuit.
Syphax was defeated and captured. In the same day, Massinissa married Sophonisba, the wife of the captured monarch. The well-known anecdote that follows throws some light on the characters of both Massinissa and Scipio. The latter regarded all prisoners as Roman property, and was outraged at Massinissa, demanding that he surrender Sophonisba to be sent in chains to Rome. Massinissa failed to stand up to Scipio, although he had the leverage of being commander of the Numidian cavalry, without which Scipio’s previous victories in Africa might not have happened, and whose help would be essential to face Hannibal when, as was inevitable, he was recalled from Italy. Despite professing ardent love for the beautiful Carthaginian princess, he could think of nothing better to offer her than a cup of poison. Scipio had seduced him with a promise of recognition as Numidian king, and clearly greed trumped love. She accepted her wedding “gift,” and her suicide at least spared her the indignity and humiliation of being paraded through the streets of Rome, as Syphax himself later was, prior to his incarceration and death at Tibur in 201 (Livy 30:13-15).
Scipio offered Carthage peace conditions as follows: unconditional return of war prisoners and deserters, withdrawal of all forces from Italy, concession of Spain to Rome, withdrawal from all Mediterranean islands between Italy and Africa, surrender of all but 20 Carthaginian warships, payment of 5,000 silver talents, delivery of citizens to serve as hostages, and the supply of a huge amount of grain to feed the Roman army (Livy 30:16). Carthage accepted and sent delegates, both to Rome, to sign the agreement, and to Scipio, to achieve the cessation of hostilities.
The request for a truce was granted by the Roman commander, but in Rome the Carthaginian delegates were vilified and mistreated. According to Livy, ”Marcus Valerius Laevinus, who had twice been consul, contended that spies, not envoys, had come to them, and that they should be ordered to depart from Italy and guards sent with them all the way to their ships, and that a written order should be sent to Scipio not to relax effort in the war […] a larger number [of senators] voted for Laevinus’s motion. The envoys were sent away without securing peace and almost without an answer” (30:23, 2-8).
Hannibal, who was still undefeated in Bruttium, at the southern tip of the Italian peninsula, as well as his youngest brother, Mago (who had suffered a reverse of fortune in his invasion of northern Italy, after an aborted attempt to move south hoping to eventually join his brother), received orders to return to Carthage to defend the motherland, and both complied, although Mago died from his wounds on the way back (Livy 30:18-20). Hannibal, who had fought for 15 years in Italy, must have realized that the war no longer made sense and could not be won, and that all the Carthaginians could hope for at this point was a reasonable peace. He sailed to return to Africa, probably in the fall of 203.
During the armistice, 200 transports carrying supplies for the Roman forces in Africa, escorted by 30 warships, were severely damaged by a storm, within sight of Carthage, where the population was suffering starvation. While the warships managed to survive the tempest and reach the Promontory of Apollo, a number of the scattered and damaged Roman ships were towed to Carthage by Carthaginian vessels (Livy 30:10). Scipio reacted with outrage, claiming that the hope for peace and the sanctity of the truce had been violated. His delegates, sent to Carthage to protest, were threatened by a mob, but managed to escape unharmed. Scipio prepared to continue the armed conflict. The Roman historians, of course, neglect to mention that the Carthaginian envoys to Rome had also been mistreated, and that the Roman senate had failed to ratify the peace treaty (Livy 30:25, 10), so that the responsibility for the renewal of hostilities did not lie only with the Carthaginians—Rome had also acted in bad faith.
Meanwhile, Hannibal disembarked at Leptis (Livy 30:25, 10) late in 203 and moved to Hadrumetum (Livy 30:29). “From there, after he had spent a few days that his soldiers might recuperate from sea-sickness, he was called away by alarming news brought by men who reported that all the country round Carthage was occupied by armed forces, and he hastened to Zama by forced marches” (Livy 30:29, 1-3). Polybius, whom Livy probably follows in the above, writes: “The Carthaginians, when they saw their towns being sacked, sent to Hannibal begging him not to delay, but to approach the enemy and decide matters in a battle. After listening to the messengers he bade them in reply pay attention to other matters and be at their ease about this; for he himself would judge when it was time. After a few days he shifted his camp from the neighborhood of [Hadrumetum] and advancing encamped near Zama. This is a town lying five day’s journey to the west of Carthage” (15:5, 10).
The exact location of Zama remains the subject of research and speculation. It probably was not Zama Regia, about 90 miles west of Hadrumetum, as some have suggested, or Naragarra, favored by others. Even the classical record lacks unanimity. While Nepos gives Zama as the name of the place, Polybius refers to it as Margaron, Livy as Naragarra, and Appian as Killa. As we will see in the following article, this lack of specificity has important implications.
The military potential of Hannibal and Scipio at “Zama” was similar—each commanded about 40,000, but Scipio, with the arrival of Massinissa at the head of a contingent of 4,000 Numidian riders, was vastly superior in cavalry. When we add to this the fact that over two thirds of Hannibal’s forces were unseasoned, the illusion of apparent equality promptly dissolves. And yet, the Carthaginian side counted with the genius of Hannibal, which practically tipped the scales.
Before Zama, Hannibal and Scipio had never met directly, either in battle or in a face to face encounter. Roman historiography has constructed an anecdote suggesting that Hannibal asked Scipio for a personal conference prior to the battle, and Polybius as well as Livy pretend to transcribe in detail what was said, although neither was there. The exchanges reported may be largely or totally imaginary—at least some parts are patently absurd, as we will see below.
According to the Polybian account, as the generals meet, Hannibal speaks first, offering terms of peace, and counseling Scipio not to give in to arrogance and thus reject an offer made in good faith. This is plausible, although the words put in Hannibal’s mouth at the start of his alleged statement are unlikely: “In the first place we went to war with each other for the possession of Sicily and next for that of Spain” (Polybius 25:6, 6). He might have said instead something like this: “We went to war initially when Rome intruded in the Carthaginian province of Sicily, and at the end of that conflict, when we were putting down a terrible rebellion of mercenaries, you, Romans, used the opportunity to steal Corsica and Sardinia from us; next we went to Spain, to be able to secure the means with which to pay the unreasonable tribute you demanded from us, but you imposed the Ebro as a limit beyond which we were not allowed to pass, and yet you made a treaty with Saguntum, a city south of the Ebro and thus within our agreed territory, a city which, with your encouragement, persecuted and massacred citizens loyal to Carthage, which forced me to lay siege to it and take it by force. Upon this, it was you, Romans, who used this as an excuse to declare war….” The matter of the guilt for the start of the Second Punic War has been debated for many years (e.g., Rudat, 2006; Hockert, 2005; Reutter, 2003; Barcelo, 2000; Hoyos, 1998; Kolbe, 1934), but the preceding would, in all likelihood, have been the position embraced by the Carthaginians, and is supported by most of the scholars listed above.
Scipio’s reply is not only arrogant, but absurd, and certainly would not have been left unanswered by Hannibal. According to Polybius, Scipio states that “neither for the war about Sicily, nor for that about Spain, were the Romans responsible, but the Carthaginians were evidently the authors of both, as Hannibal himself was well aware [my italics—Hannibal would have had a hard time not laughing aloud at this bit of Roman propaganda, which obviously Scipio could not have believed himself]. The gods, too, had testified to this by bestowing victory not on the unjust aggressors but on those who had taken arms to defend themselves” (15:8). A most unlikely statement, for surely Scipio would have realized that in that case the gods must have favored Hannibal, who until then had emerged victorious every single time, not to mention that the gods must have been asleep in 211 BCE, when both Scipio’s father and his uncle were killed in battle in Spain (Livy 25: 34-35).
Next, Polybius reports that Scipio supposedly went on to claim that the Carthaginians had broken the previous peace agreement: “We jointly sent envoys to Rome to submit [the terms] to the senate […] The senate agreed and the people also gave their consent. The Carthaginians, after their request [for peace] had been granted, most treacherously violated the peace” (15:8, 8-10), which, if we follow the later account by Livy, given above, was not the case at all. Scipio, allegedly, ends by demanding unconditional surrender: “Either put yourselves and your country at our mercy or fight and conquer us” (15:8, 14).
These are the preliminaries to the battle of Zama in the classical record, a mélange of inconsistencies and contradictions. But what did really transpire in the battle that followed? As we will see in the next article, the descriptions of the engagement contain highly unlikely elements, and some recent evidence has even led to questioning whether the battle itself actually took place!
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© Yozan Mosig, 2012
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