Masaesyli

The western Numidian kingdom, and the one whose change of sides nearly decided the Second Punic War twice. North Africa west of Carthage was held by two Berber confederations - the Masaesyli in the west, roughly modern western Algeria, and the Massylii in the east - and both supplied the light cavalry that every Mediterranean power wanted. Syphax ruled the Masaesyli and was the stronger of the two kings. Both Rome and Carthage sent embassies to him during the war in Spain, and he received Scipio and the Carthaginian commander Hasdrubal at his court on the same evening, which is the kind of detail Livy preserves and historians distrust. He chose Carthage, and the reason was a marriage: Hasdrubal gave him his daughter Sophonisba, who had been promised to Masinissa of the Massylii. Syphax then drove Masinissa out of his own kingdom, and Masinissa went over to Rome with what was left of his cavalry. That decided Zama. Scipio landed in Africa in 204, burned the combined camps at night, and destroyed Syphax at the Great Plains; Syphax was captured, paraded in a Roman triumph and died in Italy. Sophonisba took poison rather than be displayed. Masinissa was given both kingdoms and united them as Numidia in 202, and his cavalry on Scipio's right wing at Zama is what broke Hannibal. The kingdom's real legacy is cavalry. Numidian horsemen rode without saddle or bridle, guiding their mounts by weight and a neck strap, and fought as skirmishers who could not be caught and would not close - the arm that Hannibal used to devastating effect at Cannae and that Rome then used against him. Both Punic wars were partly decided by which of the two Numidian kingdoms each side had bought, which is why the embassies to Syphax mattered as much as the legions did. Sophonisba became a subject for European tragedy: at least thirty plays and operas have been written about her.

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