Battle of Zama

The last great battle of the Second Punic War was fought in 202 BC near Zama, in what is now Tunisia. A Roman army under Publius Cornelius Scipio, supported by the Numidian prince Masinissa, destroyed the Carthaginian army led by Hannibal. Left without an army, Carthage accepted a harsh peace that ended its standing as a great power, and Rome became the dominant state in the western Mediterranean.

The war had begun in 218 BC, when Hannibal crossed the Alps and invaded Italy, where he inflicted crushing defeats on the Romans at the Trebia, Lake Trasimene and Cannae. He went on to campaign in Italy for years without being able to force Rome to terms. Meanwhile Scipio, who took command in Iberia in 210 BC, drove the Carthaginians out of the peninsula by 206 BC. Elected consul the following year, he trained an army in Sicily and in 204 BC landed in North Africa near Utica.

Over the next year Scipio defeated the Carthaginians and their Numidian allies in a night attack on their camps and again at the Great Plains. His ally Masinissa captured the rival Numidian king Syphax and took over much of his kingdom. Carthage opened peace talks and recalled its armies from Italy. The Roman Senate approved a draft treaty, but once Hannibal had landed with his veterans, Carthage rejected it, and Hannibal marched inland to meet Scipio.

Neither army's size is known precisely. Polybius, the main ancient source, implies a Carthaginian force of about 40,000, while Appian gives 50,000, a figure many modern historians doubt. Hannibal had only about 4,000 cavalry, because he had been unable to ship his horses from Italy, but he had 80 war elephants. Modern estimates usually put Scipio's army at around 29,000 to 30,000, including more than 6,000 cavalry, many of them Masinissa's Numidians. Hannibal deployed his infantry in three separate lines: mercenaries in front, newly raised Carthaginian and African troops in the second, and his veterans from Italy held back in the third.

Scipio arranged his infantry so that clear lanes ran through his ranks. When the elephants charged, Roman trumpets and showers of javelins panicked many of them. Several bolted back into the Carthaginian cavalry on the wings, and most of the rest ran down the open lanes, where they were cut off and killed, although some did cause heavy losses among the front Roman ranks. The Roman and Numidian horsemen seized the moment, routed Hannibal's cavalry and chased it off the field.

The infantry then engaged. The Romans broke the first Carthaginian line, but the second fought hard and pushed back the leading Roman ranks until Scipio committed his second line. Scipio recalled the troops who were pursuing the beaten Carthaginians and reformed his infantry into a single long line facing Hannibal's fresh veterans. The two lines fought on evenly for some time, until the Roman and Numidian cavalry returned and charged the Carthaginians from behind. Hannibal's army collapsed. Polybius reports 20,000 Carthaginians killed and as many captured, against about 1,500 Romans killed; these ancient figures cannot be checked but are generally taken to show a near-total defeat. Hannibal escaped to Hadrumetum.

With too few troops left to continue, Hannibal urged Carthage to seek terms. The treaty, accepted in 201 BC, stripped Carthage of its overseas lands and some territory in Africa, imposed an indemnity of 10,000 silver talents over 50 years, banned its war elephants, limited its fleet to ten warships, and forbade it to make war without Roman permission. Scipio received a triumph and the surname Africanus.

Carthage was now clearly subordinate to the Roman Republic. Masinissa used the ban on Carthaginian warfare to raid its lands, and when Carthage finally struck back in 149 BC, Rome launched a third war that ended in 146 BC with the destruction of the city. The Punic Wars had made Rome master of the western Mediterranean.

Our 200 BCE map shows the western Mediterranean just after Zama, with Carthage reduced to its African territory. The battlefield lies in modern Tunisia.