Battle of Zama (202 BC): Scipio Africanus Defeats Hannibal

The Battle of Zama, fought in the autumn of 202 BC in North Africa, was the final battle of the Second Punic War. Publius Cornelius Scipio, with the Numidian cavalry of King Masinissa, defeated Hannibal in his only major defeat in open battle, after Hannibal’s war elephants failed and Roman and Numidian cavalry struck his infantry from behind. Carthage then accepted a peace that ended its position as a great power and made Rome the dominant state of the western Mediterranean.

Background

For fifteen years after Hannibal crossed the Alps, the Second Punic War had been fought mainly in Italy and Spain. Hannibal won famous victories, above all at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC, but he could not break Rome’s will or its alliance system. By 206 BC Scipio had driven the Carthaginians out of Spain after his victory at the Battle of Ilipa, and Hannibal was confined to Bruttium in the far south of Italy.

Scipio, elected consul for 205 BC, argued that the way to end the war was to attack Carthage at home. The elderly Fabius Maximus and others opposed the plan as too risky, but Scipio was allowed to take Sicily as his province and to cross to Africa if he judged it right, largely with volunteers and the disgraced survivors of Cannae who had been stationed on the island.

Scipio in Africa

Scipio landed near Utica, north-west of Carthage, in 204 BC. Carthage’s ally Syphax, king of the western Numidians, joined the Carthaginian general Hasdrubal son of Gisco against him, while Masinissa, a rival Numidian prince who had lost his kingdom to Syphax, fought for Rome.

In 203 BC Scipio launched a night attack that set fire to the enemy’s camps, made of wood and reeds, and destroyed much of their army. He then won the Battle of the Great Plains. His lieutenant Gaius Laelius and Masinissa pursued Syphax and captured him, and Masinissa took over much of Numidia.

Alarmed, Carthage recalled Hannibal and his brother Mago from Italy. Mago died of wounds on the voyage. Hannibal sailed from Croton in 203 BC with the veterans of his Italian army and landed at Leptis Minor, wintering near Hadrumetum (Sousse).

A broken truce

Meanwhile Carthage agreed a truce with Scipio and sent envoys to Rome to discuss peace. In the spring of 202 BC, however, a Roman supply convoy was driven ashore near Carthage by a storm and the Carthaginians seized the ships. When Scipio sent envoys to protest, their ship was attacked on the way back. Scipio regarded the truce as broken and began to ravage the towns of the Bagradas valley.

Hannibal moved inland to meet him. Before the battle, Polybius and Livy say, the two commanders met between their armies and talked, Hannibal proposing peace and Scipio rejecting his terms. The speeches given by ancient writers are literary reconstructions, and some historians doubt whether the meeting took place at all.

The armies

Polybius says Hannibal had more than 80 elephants, the largest number he ever used. Modern estimates usually give him about 36,000 to 40,000 infantry and some 4,000 cavalry, but many of his troops were raw recruits, and he had lost the Numidian horsemen who had won his earlier battles.

Scipio’s army is usually estimated at about 29,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry. Masinissa had joined him just before the battle with, according to Polybius, 6,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry, giving the Romans a decisive advantage in horsemen for the first time in the war.

The battle

Hannibal drew up his infantry in three lines. The first was made up of mercenaries, including Ligurians, Gauls, Balearic slingers and Moors. The second contained the African and Carthaginian levies. The third, held back some distance behind, was made up of the veterans he had brought from Italy. The elephants stood in front, with Carthaginian cavalry on the right and his Numidian allies on the left.

Scipio arranged his infantry in the usual three Roman lines, but instead of staggering the units in a chequerboard he placed each one directly behind the one in front, leaving clear lanes through the army filled only by light troops. Laelius commanded the Italian cavalry on the left and Masinissa the Numidian cavalry on the right.

The battle began with the elephant charge. The Romans blew trumpets and horns, and many elephants panicked. Some turned back into Hannibal’s Numidians on his left, and Masinissa used the confusion to charge and rout them. Others ran down the lanes in the Roman lines, where the light troops attacked them, or veered off towards Hannibal’s right, where Laelius charged and drove the Carthaginian cavalry from the field. Both Roman cavalry wings then rode off in pursuit.

The infantry lines met. The Roman front line, the hastati, pushed back Hannibal’s mercenaries. Polybius says the second line refused to let the retreating mercenaries through, so the two fought each other as well as the Romans, and both were eventually broken. Hannibal’s veterans in the third line levelled their spears to stop the fugitives from disordering their ranks.

Scipio now paused. He brought back his hastati, moved his second and third lines, the principes and triarii, out to the wings and formed a single long line across a field strewn with bodies and weapons. The two armies of veterans then met in a hard, evenly matched struggle. It was decided when Laelius and Masinissa returned from their pursuit and attacked Hannibal’s rear. His army was surrounded and largely destroyed.

Casualties

Livy gives broadly similar figures. Modern historians accept that Hannibal’s army was effectively destroyed, though the exact numbers cannot be checked.

The peace of 201 BC

Hannibal escaped with a few horsemen to Hadrumetum and advised the Carthaginian government to accept peace. Under the treaty concluded in 201 BC, Carthage kept its territory in Africa but had to surrender all its warships except ten triremes, hand over all its elephants, pay an indemnity of 10,000 talents of silver over 50 years and give 100 hostages. It was forbidden to make war outside Africa and could fight within Africa only with Rome’s consent. Masinissa was recognised as king of Numidia and received the lands of his ancestors.

Scipio returned to Rome, celebrated a triumph and took the honorary name Africanus, “the African”, becoming the first Roman general known to be named after a land he had conquered.

Key people

• Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (236–183 BC): Roman commander who conquered Spain and defeated Hannibal at Zama.
• Hannibal Barca: Carthaginian general, here defeated in a major battle for the first time.
• Masinissa: Numidian prince and later king, whose cavalry was decisive at Zama.
• Gaius Laelius: Scipio’s friend and lieutenant, commander of the Roman and Italian cavalry.

Aftermath and legacy

Carthage recovered economically with surprising speed. Hannibal, elected one of its chief magistrates (suffetes) in 196 BC, reformed its finances, but his enemies accused him to Rome and he fled in 195 BC to the court of Antiochus III. He advised the Seleucid king in his war against Rome, which ended in defeat at the Battle of Magnesia in 190 BC, and died in exile in Bithynia around 183 to 181 BC, taking poison to avoid being handed over to the Romans. Scipio, increasingly attacked by political rivals in Rome, died around the same time.

The treaty left Carthage at the mercy of Masinissa, who steadily took Carthaginian land knowing that Carthage could not fight back without Rome’s permission. When Carthage finally did so in 150 BC, Rome declared war the following year, and the Third Punic War ended with the destruction of the city in 146 BC.

Zama has often been seen as a battle between two great commanders using the same ideas: Scipio had learned from Hannibal how to use cavalry and flexible infantry to win. Livy repeats a famous but doubtful story that the two men later met at Ephesus, where Hannibal ranked himself among the greatest generals of history.

Timeline

• 205 BC: Scipio is consul and prepares in Sicily for the invasion of Africa.
• 204 BC: Scipio lands near Utica.
• 203 BC: Scipio burns the enemy camps and wins the Battle of the Great Plains; Syphax is captured.
• 203 BC: Hannibal is recalled from Italy and lands in Africa.
• 202 BC, spring: The truce breaks down after the seizure of Roman supply ships.
• 202 BC, autumn (traditionally 19 October): Battle of Zama.
• 201 BC: Peace treaty between Rome and Carthage; Scipio’s triumph.
• 146 BC: Destruction of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War.

Why it matters

Zama ended the Second Punic War and with it Carthage’s challenge to Rome. From 201 BC Rome was the unrivalled power of the western Mediterranean, and within a few decades it would turn east against the Hellenistic kingdoms. For Hannibal, the general who had come closest to destroying Rome, it was the defeat that decided his country’s fate.