Battle of Zama
The Battle of Zama in October 202 BCE ended the Second Punic War with a decisive Roman victory. Scipio Africanus, commanding a Roman-Numidian army, faced Hannibal on Carthaginian soil, and for once the tactical advantage that Hannibal had long held in cavalry was reversed: Masinissa's Numidian horsemen matched and then routed the Carthaginian cavalry, while Scipio's disciplined legions absorbed and redirected Hannibal's war-elephant charge by opening lanes in their formations. When the returning Roman and Numidian cavalry struck the Carthaginian rear, the battle became a rout. Hannibal suffered roughly twenty thousand dead and twenty thousand captured. The peace terms stripped Carthage of its fleet, war elephants, Spanish provinces, and overseas ambitions, leaving it a prosperous but militarily neutered city-state. Hannibal would spend his remaining years as a political reformer in Carthage and then a fugitive adviser to eastern kings.
- Category: Military
