| Battle of Zama |
| Part of the Second Punic War |
The Battle of Zama by Cornelis Cort, 1567 |
|
|
| Combatants |
| Carthage |
Roman Republic
Massyli (East Numidia) |
| Commanders |
| Hannibal |
Scipio Africanus
Masinissa |
| Strength |
Almost 50,000 infantry
4,000 cavalry
80 war elephants |
34,000 Roman infantry,
3,000 Roman cavalry,
6,000 Numidian cavalry |
| Casualties |
20,000 killed,
11,000 wounded,
15,000 captured |
1,500 killed,
4,000 wounded |
|
|
|
The Battle of Zama, fought around October 19 of 202
BC, marked the final and decisive end of the Second Punic War. A
Roman army led by Publius Cornelius Scipio
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
Meeting of Hannibal and Scipio at Zama.
Despite nearly two decades of constant victories, much of it on Italian soil, the Carthaginian commander Hannibal Barca was
still in Italy, although confined to the south of the peninsula. A decisive victory by Gaius Claudius Nero in the brief Metaurus campaign
ended with the death of 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 Trasimene, and finally
Cannae where the cream of the Roman army was slaughtered. Hannibal had anticipated
using these victories to persuade the Italian city-states to mutiny and ally themselves with him. Instead, they only produced a
growing resolve in the Italian states to rally to Roman leadership.
Following his decisive, victorious campaign in Spain, Scipio 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 panicked Carthaginians offered peace with Scipio, who, having the authority, granted it with modest terms. Carthage
could keep its African territory, but would lose its overseas empire, a fait-accompli. Masinissa was to be allowed to
expand Numidia into parts of Africa. Also, Carthage was to reduce its fleet and pay a war indemnity. The Roman senators had
ratified the agreement, but during the intervening period, Carthage captured a stranded Roman fleet in the Gulf of
Tunes and stripped it of supplies. Meanwhile Hannibal, recalled from Italy by the Carthaginian
senate, had returned with his army. Fortified by both Hannibal and the supplies, the Carthaginians no longer believed a treaty
advantageous, and rebuffed it amidst much Roman protest.
As a result, the war renewed. Scipio met Hannibal on the plain of Zama, with Hannibal leading an army composed of local
citizens and veterans from his Italian campaigns and Scipio leading the already present Roman army, along with a body of defected
Numidian cavalry. The two men are said to have met face-to-face before the battle. Hannibal said that fate played a role in the
war to bring them here, and Scipio said that because of the Carthaginan treachery at the Gulf of Tunes, he would no longer agree
to peace without battle.
Battle
Zama was a reversal from typical battles of the Second Punic War, since the Romans had fewer infantry, while the
Carthaginians—by the defection of the Numidians—were outnumbered almost 2 to 1 in cavalry. Hannibal gathered about 50,000
infantry and 4,000 cavalry, while Scipio had a total of 34,000 infantry and 8,700 cavalry. Putting his inexperienced cavalry on
the flanks, Hannibal aligned his troops in three straight lines behind eighty war elephants. The first line consisted of mixed
infantry from Gaul, Liguria, and Baleria. 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 Hannibal.
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 sometimes claimed 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 with the well-trained and confident Roman soldiers, were dispersed 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 hastily assembled army, which fared poorly against the Romans. As Livy states “...the Romans immediately drove back the line[s]
of 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 had lost all of his original
elephant troops (who had crossed the Alps with him) after the battle of the Trebia, 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 arranging the maniples in the traditional checker pattern manipular formation, Scipio instead put the velites,
principes, and triarii in succeeding lines of 500-man groups.
Scipio predicted that intentionally opening gaps in his troops would result in the elephants simply continuing between them,
without harming any of his soldiers. The elephants indeed harmlessly passed through his troops 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 to Hannibal's forces, 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 advantage, Hannibal experienced a
major defeat that put an end to all resistance on the part of Carthage. In total, as many as 20,000 men of Hannibal’s army were
killed at Zama, while 11,000 were wounded and 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, 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 Punic War on Carthage 70 years later, the Carthaginians had little power, and
could not even defeat Massinissa in Africa. They could, however, organize a defense of their home city, which, after an extended
siege, was captured and completely destroyed. Only 55,000 survived.
References
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