Scipio Africanus Invades Africa
Scipio landed in Africa in 204 BC and forced Carthage to recall Hannibal from Italy. The strategy was his and the senate did not want it. Rome had spent fourteen years failing to beat Hannibal in Italy, and the orthodox view was that the army should stay there. Scipio argued that Hannibal could not be defeated where he stood and would have to be summoned home, and that Africa was where to do it. Fabius Maximus opposed him at length. The senate compromised by giving him Sicily and permission to cross if he judged it in the public interest, without allocating him a proper army — he took volunteers and the disgraced survivors of Cannae, who had been left in Sicily for years as a punishment. He had already taken Spain in five years, capturing New Carthage by a surprise assault through a lagoon. In Africa his decisive stroke came before any battle. He opened negotiations with the Carthaginian and Numidian camps, sent officers disguised as slaves to reconnoitre them during the talks, and then burned both by night, killing perhaps tens of thousands as men ran out of tents thinking the fires accidental. He beat the reconstituted armies at the Great Plains, and detached Masinissa's Numidian cavalry from Carthage permanently. Carthage recalled Hannibal, who had been in Italy for fifteen years and left it undefeated. They met at Zama in 202 BC. Scipio's Numidian horse, the arm Hannibal had always been stronger in, decided it. Rome had learned that the way to beat an unbeatable general was to threaten something he had to go home for.
- Category: Military
