Who won the Battle of Zama?
Rome under Scipio, later called Africanus, won a decisive victory at Zama in 202 BC, defeating Hannibal himself in North Africa and ending the Second Punic War. Carthage had to accept a harsh peace and a heavy war indemnity.1
In 202 BC, on the plains of North Africa, the Second Punic War came to its end. The Roman general Scipio, later called Africanus, defeated Hannibal himself at Zama. Carthage lost the war and had to accept a harsh peace and a heavy war indemnity.2
Carrying the war to Carthage
For sixteen years Hannibal had ranged across Italy, winning victory after victory, at the Trebia, at Lake Trasimene and above all at Cannae, yet never taking Rome. Scipio changed the war by refusing to fight him there. Having broken Carthaginian power in Spain at Ilipa in 206 BC, he invaded Africa instead, landing in 204 BC with perhaps 35,000 men and besieging Utica. Early in 203 BC, with the help of the Numidian prince Masinissa, he burned the camps of the Carthaginian general Hasdrubal, son of Gisco, and his Numidian ally Syphax, then smashed a new army at the Great Plains, some five days' march inland from Utica. The city recalled Hannibal and his brother Mago from Italy to defend it.3 › Battle of Cannae, 216 BC
Hannibal crossed to Africa with about 12,000 veterans of his Italian campaigns. Mago, wounded in a lost battle in Liguria, died at sea on the way. A truce had been agreed while Carthaginian envoys went to Rome, but it broke down when the Carthaginians seized Roman supply ships and attacked the ship carrying Scipio's envoys home. From then on, Polybius writes, both sides knew the war would be settled by a battle.4
Where was Zama?
Polybius says Hannibal moved his camp to Zama, a town five days' march west of Carthage. Livy places the Roman camp near the town of Naraggara, with Hannibal on a hill about four miles away. Britannica notes that the name Zama was attached to the battle by the Roman writer Cornelius Nepos about 150 years later, that Livy's Naraggara is today's Sakiet Sidi Youssef in Tunisia, and that the battlefield itself has never been precisely identified. The ancient sources give only the year; the date often quoted, 19 October 202 BC, is a later tradition.5
Two armies
Hannibal gathered about 37,000 men, Britannica estimates, but only his veterans from Italy, perhaps 12,000 to 15,000, were used to fighting Romans. The rest were mercenaries and newly raised Carthaginian and Libyan citizens. He had more than eighty elephants, Polybius says, many of them poorly trained, and few horsemen: unable to ship most of his horses from Italy, he could field only about 4,000 cavalry, many of them Numidians lent by a chieftain named Tychaeus.6
Scipio's numbers were about equal once his allies arrived. The Numidian prince Masinissa, who had gone home to recover his kingdom, brought 6,000 foot and 4,000 horse, and Scipio's cavalry, some 6,100 in all under Masinissa and Gaius Laelius, outclassed Hannibal's. Some of his legionaries were veterans of Cannae, eager to redeem that defeat. Modern estimates of the Roman and Numidian army range from about 29,000 to 40,000 men, and of Hannibal's from about 36,000 to 50,000.7
The meeting before the battle
On the eve of battle the two generals met between the armies. Polybius reports that Hannibal offered Rome Sicily, Sardinia, Spain and the islands in return for peace. Scipio answered that Carthage had broken the truce and must accept harsher terms or fight. Livy has Hannibal tell him: "What I was at Trasimenus, and at Cannae, that you are this day." Neither man moved, and they parted to prepare for the next day.8 › Scipio Africanus
The elephants pass
Scipio drew up his legions in their usual three lines, but instead of the normal checkerboard he placed the maniples one behind another, leaving open lanes through his ranks, which he filled with light skirmishers. Laelius held the left wing with the Italian cavalry, Masinissa the right with the Numidians. Hannibal put his elephants in front, then a first line of about 12,000 mercenaries, Ligurians, Celts, Balearic islanders and Moors, a second line of Carthaginians and Libyans, and, a little way behind, his veterans from Italy.9
Hannibal opened with a charge of about eighty war elephants. Scipio had prepared for it. Trumpets and shouting frightened some of the beasts, which turned back into Hannibal's own Numidian horse on the left. The rest thundered harmlessly down the lanes, where Scipio's skirmishers stepped aside and struck at them, or were turned back toward their own side. On both wings the Roman and Numidian cavalry then charged and drove the Carthaginian horse from the field, chasing it far away.10
The lines close
The infantry met. Hannibal's mercenaries fought hard at first, but the Carthaginian second line hung back instead of supporting them, and the broken mercenaries turned on the men behind them. Pressed by the Romans and by their own fleeing allies, the second line was cut up in turn. Hannibal's veterans lowered their spears and would not let the survivors into their ranks, driving them out to the wings.11
Now came the moment that tested Scipio's army. The ground between the armies was heaped with bodies, weapons and blood, and the Roman front line had lost its order chasing through it. Scipio sounded the recall, carried his wounded to the rear and calmly re-formed: the second and third lines moved out to the flanks to extend the front, and the whole army advanced again against Hannibal's veterans. These were, Livy writes, men equal to the Romans in arms, experience and fame. The fight that followed was long and even.12
Then Laelius and Masinissa, returning from the pursuit, struck the rear of Hannibal's line. Caught between the legions and the horsemen, the veterans were cut down where they stood. Polybius counts more than 1,500 Roman dead against 20,000 Carthaginians killed and nearly as many taken prisoner. Livy gives above 20,000 killed and about as many captured, with 133 military standards and eleven elephants, and puts the Roman loss at about 2,000.13
Hannibal's flight and Polybius's verdict
Hannibal escaped with a few horsemen to Hadrumetum on the coast. Even his enemies admired his conduct of the battle. Polybius wrote that Hannibal did everything a good and experienced general could, placing the elephants to break the Roman ranks, the mercenaries to tire them and his best troops at the back, fresh for the decisive clash; Livy says Scipio himself admitted as much. Against a stronger cavalry and a general who did not panic, it was not enough.14
What the day decided
Carthage sued for peace and accepted harsh terms. The peace Rome imposed in 201 BC let Carthage keep its African territory but stripped it of all but ten of its warships and all its elephants, forced an indemnity of 10,000 talents spread over fifty years, took a hundred hostages, and forbade it to wage war outside Africa at all, or inside Africa without Rome's consent. Spain was lost for good. Hannibal himself urged his fellow citizens to accept.15
A city that had contested the western Mediterranean for a century was reduced to a client that survived only on Roman sufferance. Scipio took the honorific Africanus for the victory, and Rome emerged as the unrivaled power of the western sea. The resentment left behind festered until Rome found a pretext to finish the job, razing Carthage completely at the end of the Third Punic War, in 146 BC.16 › Battle of the Metaurus, 207 BC
Legacy
Hannibal was never again given a command in battle. Britannica notes that Scipio did not demand his punishment, and the Carthaginians soon elected him one of their chief magistrates to help run the defeated state. For Rome the day was transforming: having invaded Africa and beaten its most dangerous enemy on his own ground, the Republic began to think of itself as a Mediterranean power. Britannica calls Zama one of the most important battles of ancient history. The two rivals never met again in the field, and they died in the same year, 183 BC: Scipio in retirement at Liternum in Campania, Hannibal in exile in the East, where he had fled from his Roman-backed enemies in Carthage.17
Militarily, Zama is remembered as the battle in which the master of envelopment was himself enveloped. Scipio built a cavalry arm stronger than his, and kept his infantry steady enough to re-form in the middle of a battle. The duel between the two men has fascinated readers ever since.18 › Hannibal vs Scipio
