Battle of Zama

The Battle of Zama, generally accepted to have been fought on or around October 19 of 202 BC, was the final and decisive battle of the Second Punic War. A Roman army led by Scipio Africanus defeated a Carthaginian force led by Hannibal Barca. Soon after this defeat on their home ground, the Carthaginian senate sued for peace, ending the 17-year war.

Prelude

Despite nearly two decades of constant defeats, much of it on Italian soil, the Carthaginian commander Hannibal Barca was still in Italia although confined to the south of the peninsula. A decisive victory by Gaius Claudius Nero in the brief Metaurus campaign killed Hannibal's brother Hasdrubal Barca and permanently severed Hannibal from all hope of reinforcements. Hannibal was now stranded, and forced to sustain a scorched earth policy throughout Southern Italy. Hannibal had entered Italy as a victorious conqueror. He humiliated the Romans at Ticinus, Trebia, Lake Trasimeno, and finally Cannae where the cream of the Roman army was slaughtered. Hannibal had anticipated using these victories to convince the Italian city-states to mutiny. Instead, they only produced a growing resolve in the Italian states to rally to Roman leadership.

After destroying the Carthaginian presence in Spain, Scipio Africanus proposed ending the war by invading Carthage's home territories, an area now roughly comprising modern-day Tunisia. Despite the cautious Senate's opposition to this plan, the Roman people gave Scipio the requisite authority to attempt the invasion. At first Scipio operated cautiously, acting mostly to reinforce his army with local defectors. After Massinissa replaced the pro-Carthage Syphax as chieftain of the Numidians, Scipio felt able to risk a decisive battle and began menacing the city of Carthage itself. The Carthaginian senate recalled Hannibal from Italy and he met Scipio on the plains of Zama leading a ragtag army composed of local citizens and veterans from his Italian campaigns.

The two men are said to have met face-to-face before the battle. Hannibal reminded Scipio of fate's role in the war, and how lenient Hannibal was to Rome when it was on the brink of destruction. Scipio replied that chance played a role in every decision every day, and would not give peace without battle.

Battle

Zama marked a reversal from typical battles of the Second Punic War in that the Romans had less infantry, while the Carthaginians — by the defection of the Numidians — were outnumbered 6,000 to 3,000 in cavalry. Hannibal amassed some 50,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry, while Scipio had a total of 34,000 infantry and 8,700 cavalry at his disposal. Placing his inexperienced cavalry on the flanks, Hannibal aligned his troops in three phalangial lines behind eighty war elephants. The first line consisted of mixed infantry of Gauls, Ligurians, and Balerians. In his second line he placed the Carthaginian and Libyan levies while his veterans from Italy were placed in the third line. Hannibal intentionally held back his third infantry line, in order to thwart Scipio's tendency to pin the Carthaginian center and envelop his opponent's lines, as he had previously done at the Battle of Ilipa.

Hannibal hoped that the combination of the war elephants and the depth of the first two lines would weaken and disorganize the Roman advance, whereupon he would complete a victory with his reserves in the third line and overlap Scipio's lines. Though this formation was indeed well-conceived, it failed to produce a victory for the aging Hannibal, who was, by some claims, suffering from mental exhaustion after his campaigns in Italy.

At the outset of the battle, the superior Roman cavalry swept aside their Carthaginian counterparts and pursued them off the field— depriving Hannibal of his entire body of cavalry (though it is believed that Hannibal had intended his cavalry to lure their opponents away from the battlefield, in effect eliminating the advantage the Romans enjoyed in this arm). Likewise, Hannibal’s first two lines, unable to cope against the well-trained and confident Roman soldiers, were disposed of soon thereafter. For years, Hannibal had won victories with his experienced army, but now he faced the best of the Roman army, while he commanded a makeshift army, who fared poorly against the Romans. As Livy states “...the Romans immediately drove back the lineof their opponents; then pushing their elbows and the bosses of their shields, and pressing forward into the places which they had pushed them, they advanced at a considerable pace, as if there had been no one there to resist them...” [10.

Moreover, Scipio came up with an inventive method of neutralizing Hannibal's elephants. Hannibal lost all of his original elephant troops (who crossed the Alps with him) by the battle of Cannae, but they were replenished in Africa. First of all, Scipio knew that elephants could be ordered to charge forward, but they could only continue their charge in a straight line. So rather than lining his Roman forces in the traditional manipular lines, which put the velites, principes, and triarii in succeeding lines of 500 men groups, Scipio instead put the maniples in a checker pattern, with his elite heavy infantry in diagonals. Scipio realized that intentionally opening gaps in his troops meant that the elephants would continue between them, without harming a soul. He did this, and after the elephants passed through his troops harmlessly and were picked off on the other side (many of them were so distraught, in fact, they charged back into their own Carthaginian lines). Scipio's troops then fell back into formation and continued marching.

Despite these setbacks, the battle remained a closely contested engagement. When the Roman infantry confronted the Carthaginian third line, the resulting clash was fierce and bloody, with neither side achieving local superiority. In fact, at one point during the battle, it seemed that Hannibal was on the verge of victory. However, Scipio was able to rally his men, and his cavalry, after pursuing the Carthaginian cavalry, returned in time to deliver a devastating blow in Hannibal's rear. This two-pronged attack caused the Carthaginian formation to disintegrate and collapse. Unable to cope against the well-trained and confident Roman soldiers with his own indifferent troops after losing his notorious advantage, Hannibal experienced a crushing defeat that put an end to all resistance on the part of Carthage. In total, as many as 31,000 men of Hannibal’s army were mercilessly killed at Zama, while 15,000 were taken as prisoners. The Romans on the other hand, lost as few as 1,500 dead and 4,000 wounded.

Aftermath

Soon after Scipio's victory at Zama, the war ended with the Carthaginian senate suing for peace. Unlike the treaty that ended the First Punic War, and which amounted merely to an extended armistice, the terms Carthage acceded to were so punishing that it was never able to challenge Rome for supremacy of the Mediterranean again. When Rome waged a third war on Carthage 50 years later, the Carthaginians were far from having the power to invade Italy, because the Romans had tricked them into completely disarming beforehand. Unarmed, they could only organize a defense of their home city, which, after an extended siege, was captured and utterly destroyed.

References

Hans Delbrück; Warfare in Antiquity; 1920; ISBN 0-8032-9199-X
Robert F. Pennel; Ancient Rome from the earliest times down to 476 A.D; 1890
Theodore Ayrault Dodge; Hannibal: A History of the Art of War among the Carthaginians and Romans down to the Battle of Pydna, 168 B.C., with a Detailed Account of the Second Punic War; 1891; ISBN 0-306-81362-9
In fiction, Dante's Divine Comedy, poem, Inferno XXXI.97-132, 115-124

External links

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Battle of Zama (202 BC) detailed map of the battle site.
The Battle of Zama (202 BC) order-of-battle diagram.

202 BC | Battles of the Second Punic War | History of Numidia | History of Tunisia

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Prelude

Battle

Aftermath

References

External links