Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life (42 page)

Scipio was reportedly furious at both the loss of his much-needed supplies and at the threat to his truce. His position in Rome may have been at the forefront of his reaction, for a failed peace would only weaken his proconsular role in Africa. The Carthaginians received three envoys who arrived by sea from Scipio’s camp north of the city. The envoys were there to discuss the transport supplies and were given an audience by the Carthaginian Senate. They were then presented to the people of Carthage. Scipio’s envoys spoke to the Carthaginians in ‘insulting and overbearing’ terms and told them that since the Romans had accepted the peace terms they had broken their word by attacking the supply ships. The population of Carthage were in no mood to listen and were so incensed by what the envoys had to say, and their tone,
that they physically attacked them (Livy 30.24.5–25.8). However, Polybius (15.2.1) claims that the envoys left the city unharmed and were escorted by representatives of the Senate.

There was an emphatic rejection of any peace terms. The presence of Hannibal and his army remained in the background while the truce fell apart but must have been in the forefront of the minds of both sides as the events played out. The envoys departed Carthage in their quinquereme and once they crossed the mouth of the Bagradas river delta heading north back to Scipio’s camp they were left by their escort ships. At that moment, from a Carthaginian fleet anchored near Utica, three triremes attacked the Roman envoys’ ship and ran it aground before they could safely reach their camp.
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The men on board the ship were killed but the envoys survived (Polyb. 15.2.12).
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The provocation by the Carthaginian fleet meant that the war now turned to bitterness as a resentful Scipio took his forces and pillaged town after town in the Carthaginian heartland. He sold the population into slavery and destroyed everything and everyone he came across. Either Scipio was trying to force a surrender or, more likely, provoke the Carthaginians into another battle. He must have had Hannibal in mind as he taunted the Carthaginians into coming out and fighting one more time. Through all these events, as far as we know, Hannibal remained on the coast at Hadrumentum with his army, perhaps wary of both Carthage and Scipio.
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Scipio was rampaging through the countryside when the Carthaginians sent messages to Hannibal ‘imploring him not to delay’ and to engage the enemy in battle. Hannibal does not seem to have been enthusiastic about confronting the Roman general given his army’s distinct lack of cavalry (ruing the thousands of horses he had left behind in Italy) and his lack of substantial allies in Africa. He would have been under great pressure to respond to Scipio’s provocations. By gathering together some of the fringe Numidian royalty, who had been part of the earlier battles with Masinissa, Hannibal added two thousand horse to his forces. His new ally was a king, hitherto unknown, called Tychaeus, who was related to Syphax (Polyb. 15.3.5–7).
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Hannibal waited for a few days and then reluctantly shifted his camp from Hadrumentum to Zama, a few days’ journey west of the coast.
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He then sent out scouts to reconnoitre the Roman positions and troops. The scouts, three men, were caught and brought before Scipio, who treated them magnanimously, showed them around the camp and then sent them back to Hannibal.

Scipio was obviously feeling confident and wanted to be seen to be in control, unthreatened by having Hannibal and his army in the vicinity. The
two strategists were perhaps trying to out-think each other. By releasing the captured scouts Scipio may have been playing mind games with Hannibal and, more importantly, Hannibal’s allies. For Scipio was the known entitity in Africa among the Numidian allies and Hannibal was rather the unknown. Not only had Hannibal spent very little time in the countryside in which he was now operating, he had never fought an engagement there. Intrigued by Scipio’s behaviour towards his scouts, Hannibal was overwhelmed by a ‘strong desire’ to meet Scipio in person and ‘converse with him’ (Polyb. 15.5.8). He sent a messenger to his Roman opposite, requesting a meeting where they could ‘discuss the whole situation’. Scipio replied positively, saying that he would set a ‘place and hour’ for the rendezvous.

Scipio, whilst he had been pillaging and looting the cities around Carthage, had also ‘constantly’ sent messages to Masinissa ‘begging’ him to join the Romans as soon as possible.
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For the previous few months Masinissa had been busy shoring up his ancestral kingdom and incorporating the newly conquered lands of the Masaesylians, with the help of ten cohorts of Roman cavalry and infantry (Polyb. 15.4.3–4). Finally Masinissa arrived at Scipio’s camp with a force of ‘six thousand foot and four thousand horse’ (15.5.12–13). Only then, Polybius claims, did Scipio move his army towards Hannibal’s position and when he reached a town called Naraggara he set up camp and sent a messenger. He informed Hannibal that he was now ready for a meeting.
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Hannibal received Scipio’s messenger and then moved his army westward towards the Roman position, at a distance of not more than 30 stades (approx
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5 kilometres). He set up his camp on a hill, ‘rather too far away from water’ but otherwise ‘convenient’ for his needs (Polyb. 15.6.1–2). Scipio held the stronger position of the two. Hannibal’s original plan may have been to intercept Scipio as he made his way south-west along the Bagradas valley. If Hannibal had been able to catch Scipio before he met up with Masinissa, or vice versa, he might have had a chance to divide and conquer. His reconnaissance mission, the captured scouts, would have reported to him that the Numidians were not, as yet, in the Roman camp.
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The timing of the arrival of the crack troops – the Numidian cavalry and their fearsome leader Masinissa – is key to understanding Hannibal and Scipio’s motives for this encounter. Polybius makes it very clear that it was only after Masinissa’s arrival that Scipio felt comfortable agreeing to a meeting with Hannibal.
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The two sides then prepared for a battle that might resolve the situation for their respective cities. As Polybius notes, ‘consequently not only all the inhabitants of Italy and Africa, but those of Iberia, Sicily and Sardinia likewise
were held in suspense and distracted, awaiting the result’ (15.3.4). Hannibal and Scipio held their much-anticipated meeting when both men felt their armies were in place. They rode out from their positions, accompanied by a few horsemen each. Eventually they left their ‘escorts behind and met each other alone’ and face to face the two greatest generals of their generation looked each other in the eye.

The meeting of the two men took place the day before the battle of Zama. Hannibal and Scipio each brought an interpreter to the meeting even though both were fluent Greek speakers and could easily have held discussions in a common language.
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The symbolic intent of the interpreter was power. Scipio would have insisted on speaking Latin, the language of the Roman Republic.
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Equally, Hannibal would have insisted on speaking Punic, leaving the translation to someone of lesser status. Neither man wanted to be the first to concede to the other but Hannibal spoke first and saluted Scipio from the position of the elder, wiser, more experienced man.

If we can believe the words as recorded, Hannibal lamented the wars fought between the two sides. He implored Scipio to let go of his pride and to negotiate a fair peace so that both Carthage and Rome could retain their dominions. ‘Today you are just what I was at Trasimeno and at Cannae,’ Hannibal said to Scipio (Livy 30.30.11). Carthage, Hannibal claimed, would give up all interests in Sicily, Iberia, Sardinia and all the islands between but he asked for an honourable peace. Scipio in turn refused. He blamed the Carthaginians for both wars and all the trouble that had been heaped on the people in their lands. He even claimed he had reluctantly invaded Africa and now that he, Scipio, held dominion over all the lands, was unlikely to accede to such a deal. Scipio demanded that the Carthaginians ‘either put themselves and their country at Roman mercy or fight and conquer us’ (Polyb. 15.6.4–15.8.14).
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At daybreak the following morning the two sides led out their armies. In the Roman sources we sense that Hannibal was far from eager for this battle. It was the autumn of 202
BCE
, probably the month of October.
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Hannibal may have had up to 40,000 troops under his command but the numbers, as always, are very difficult to ascertain, especially at Zama for which Livy does not even provide figures. Polybius only gives us the numbers of fatalities for Hannibal’s army and does not include any totals for Scipio’s forces. Estimates put the number of Scipio’s troops at slightly less than Hannibal’s, perhaps 38,000 soldiers. Hannibal may have had more infantry but was outnumbered in the all-important cavalry. There is little evidence that the Romans, once Masinissa had joined them, felt vulnerable. They were the superior fighting force and were not likely to have been significantly outnumbered.
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Hannibal drew his army up in three lines. In the first line were the remnants of Mago’s army, the mercenaries who had made their way to Africa from Cisapline Gaul. They included Ligurians, Celts and Balearic Islanders. Skirmishers were placed in front of this line along with eighty elephants. Significantly, elephants in any meaningful number had not played a part in Hannibal’s armed tactics since his first major battle in Italy. The second line comprised Libyans and Carthaginians and the third line consisted of the troops that Hannibal had brought back from Italy with him. These were his loyal and most seasoned soldiers. The cavalry were placed on the wings with Numidians and Carthaginians on the left and right respectively (Polyb. 15.11.1–4). Hannibal’s tactics were adapted to fit the Roman armies he had fought over the years, with his key infantry troops kept slightly back from the main line. His previous great victories had relied on superior cavalry whereas at Zama he was disadvantaged by inferior numbers and quality of horsemen.
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Scipio’s troops were also drawn up in three lines but he placed his units of infantry directly behind one another, leaving spaces in between. The cavalry on the wings were commanded by Laelius on the left and Masinissa on the right. The formation, with gaps between his units, had been adapted to deal with the large number of elephants in Hannibal’s army (Polyb. 15.9.6–10). Scipio’s army was lined up to absorb the Carthaginian strengths and to take full advantage of his superior cavalry. When Scipio spoke to his troops he encouraged them: ‘overcome your enemies for not only will you be unquestioned masters of Africa but you will gain for yourselves and your country the undisputed command and sovereignty of the rest of the world’ (Polyb. 15.10.2).

Hannibal, more unusually, had each of the commanders of his different ethnic forces address their own troops. He wished them victory and said that they could ‘rely on his own presence and that of the forces that he had brought back with him’ to back them up. To his Carthaginian troops he had his commanders ‘set before their eyes all the suffering that would befall their wives and children’ should they fail. Then to his own loyal forces he recounted their great adventures in Italy, at Trasimeno and at Cannae. He bade them ‘remember their comradeships of seventeen years’ (Polyb. 15.10–11). Hannibal had never addressed sections of his army separately, to our knowledge, before this battle. Polybius is either making a rhetorical point about the disjointed nature of Hannibal’s army or Hannibal did not consider the army he commanded at Zama to be his own.
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Nonetheless, Hannibal understood how to instill confidence in his troops and although he must have known they were unlikely to win, his very presence could still inspire courage as the soldiers entered battle.
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After the armies had been lined up the commanders were ready. A few hours had passed and the Numidian cavalry skirmished on the flanks. There was eagerness to begin the fight. Hannibal first ordered his elephant drivers to charge. Some of the elephants were startled by the noise of trumpets and bugles, which caused them to turn back on their own side and Masinissa attacked at the same time. This left the Carthaginian left wing exposed. The elephants were largely ineffective. The gaps Scipio had left in his formation allowed them to pass right through his line without inflicting great damage. Laelius with the Roman cavalry attacked the Carthaginian horsemen and put them to flight. Then the two main bodies of troops clashed in a shower of noise: with ‘war-cry and clashing their shields and their spears’, the Romans fell on their foes, whose multilingual shouts added to the mayhem (Polyb. 15.12.9).

The battle was hand-to-hand combat with ferocious fighting. Hannibal’s mercenaries at first got the better of the Romans. But the Roman troops continued to push and push, keeping their formation, holding their line. At this crucial point Polybius claims the Carthaginian troops behind the mercenaries did not come to the aid of the front line, which eventually collapsed and turned back under the Roman pressure. The mercenary troops then turned on the Carthaginian forces behind them and they began to fight among themselves and the Romans. It was carnage and the Roman troops cut through them. Hannibal commanded his core troops to hold the line and not allow the retreating fighters to join them. They were forced out to the flanks and the ground became soaked in blood and covered in ‘slippery corpses … fallen in heaps’. Scipio regrouped and advanced over the dead towards Hannibal’s crack troops: here ‘they were nearly equal in numbers as well as in spirit and bravery’. This fierce fighting was relieved only when Masinissa and Laelius, who had returned from their pursuit of the opposing cavalry, fell on Hannibal’s troops from behind, surrounded and cut them down. It was a rout and Polybius claims that 20,000 of Hannibal’s army were killed and many more again were captured (Polyb. 15.13–14).