The Romans Strike Back!

Hannibal’s allies in Italy.

Publius Cornelius Scipio’s military campaign in Africa (204–203 B.C.)

Scipio was in no hurry. In all probability he did not even
arrive in Sicily until the late spring of 205, and would not push off to Africa
for another year.

There certainly would have been pressure to make his move
sooner. Up north, Mago Barca had already crossed over to Liguria with an army
and would soon stir up sufficient trouble that the authorities in Carthage
would send him reinforcements and Rome would bolster their blocking force in
Etruria with more troops and the reliable M. Livius Salinator. However, this
probably didn’t satisfy nervous souls along the Tiber. Meanwhile, in North
Africa, Masinissa, in the midst of fighting and losing a civil war with Syphax
over his father’s kingdom, grumbled about the delay in the Roman invasion. Yet
Scipio’s only concession was to send his trusted wingman, Laelius, off on a
raid of the African coast, which provided nothing more tangible than a spate of
panic in Carthage, some booty, and contact with Masinissa, who met him with a
few horsemen and many complaints.

Scipio’s consulship lasted only a year, as did technically
his African imperium. Still, Scipio seems to have understood that his support
was sufficient to extend his imperium indefinitely (though not without
controversy, as we shall see). The New Carthage raid in Spain had removed all
doubt that he could move quickly if the situation demanded it. However, he did
not move swiftly against Africa. It seems he had his own internal clock, in
this case paced by the need to lay his plans carefully, to ensure logistical
support for what promised to be a vast operation, and above all to build a
winning army out of what amounted to scraps.

Livy (29.1.1–11) opens his description of Scipio’s sojourn
in Sicily with an anecdote that may or may not be apocryphal but certainly
exemplifies Scipio’s ingenuity in putting together a fighting force. Upon
arriving with his volunteers, who apparently were just in the process of being
divided into centuries, he withheld three hundred of the most strapping young
men, who were neither armed nor assigned to units, and were probably pretty
puzzled. He then conscripted an equivalent number of Sicilian horsemen, all of
them from the local nobility and none too willing to serve on what was likely
to be a long and dangerous expedition. When a nobleman, appropriately coaxed,
expressed his reservations, Scipio posed an alternative: house, feed, train,
mount, and arm one of the unassigned youths; a proposition all of the remaining
Sicilians jumped at, thereby creating an enthusiastic nucleus for his cavalry
out of a recalcitrant pack, what amounted to something out of nothing. True or
untrue, Scipio was about to attempt something comparable on a much larger
scale.

Upon inspecting the troops stationed in Sicily he had
inherited, Livy tells us, Scipio selected the men with the longest service
records, particularly those who had served under Marcellus and who were skilled
in siege and assault operations. Plainly, Livy was referring to the legiones
Cannenses—now called the 5th and 6th legions, made up of the survivors of
Cannae and the two battles of Herdonea. Scipio did not have any reservations
about their record, for he understood, Livy adds, that “the defeat at Cannae
had not been due to their cowardice, and that there were no other equally experienced
soldiers in the Roman army.”

Yet at this point the military disaster was eleven years in
the past, and many would have reached the age of marginal military utility;
hence Scipio inspected the men individually, replacing those he thought unfit
with the volunteers he had brought from Italy. This process generated two
exceptionally large legions, which Livy sizes at sixty-two hundred foot
soldiers and three hundred horse apiece—a figure that is open to debate by
modern historians but that probably reflected the general’s innovative approach
and the danger he faced. It also left him with units that would have been to
some degree heterogeneous, and certainly unacquainted with his tactical
innovations. In all probability, then, he began training them early, and this
process consumed much of the time it took to get ready for the invasion.

Livy also adds that upon selecting the veterans “he then
billeted his troops in various towns,” which was significant, since earlier the
Cannenses—when they’d been joined by the survivors of the First Battle of
Herdonea—had been burdened by the senate with the additional indignity of not
being allowed to winter in any settled area. In countermanding this
prohibition, Scipio not only thumbed his nose at the establishment along the
Tiber, but demonstrated yet again his keen understanding of how to build
loyalty. Livy describes the Cannenses ready to depart for Africa as “sure under
Scipio and no other general, they would be able … to put an end to their
ignominious condition.” For these men understood what they would be up against
with Hannibal—had already been served a bitter draft of his trickery—and
therefore must have seen Scipio and his new model for fighting as their vehicle
to revenge and rehabilitation. Unexpectedly, though, they would have the
opportunity of returning the favor, of saving their commander from disgrace,
long before they had the chance to confront their Carthaginian tormentor.

It all began with a target of opportunity. Late in 205 a
group of prisoners in Scipio’s camp, a group from Locri—deep in Bruttium on
Italy’s toe and one of the last cities loyal to Hannibal—offered to betray its
citadel to the Romans. Scipio jumped at the opportunity, sending a force of
three thousand from nearby Rhegium under two military tribunes, with one
Quintus Pleminius acting as legate and overall commander. After some
complications, Locri was taken, with the physical abuse and looting proceeding
in a particularly brutal fashion, including even the plunder of the famous
shrine of Persephone. But that was just the beginning. The Roman garrison
formed two rival gangs, one loyal to the tribunes and the other to Pleminius,
and began openly fighting over booty. As a result, Pleminius had the tribunes
flogged—highly unusual for men of their rank—and was in turn beaten nearly to
death by the other side.

When Scipio got wind of the situation, he hopped a galley to
the mainland and sought to slap a tourniquet on what at this point was merely a
distraction, acquitting Pleminius and having the tribunes arrested. He’d made a
bad choice. After the general returned to Sicily, Pleminius had both tribunes
tortured and then executed, and did the same thing to the Locrian nobles who
had complained to Scipio in the first place.

Word of these outrages reached the senate in early 204, and
Scipio’s enemies, led by Fabius Maximus, leapt at the chance to exploit the
situation. Compounding matters, the senate had been primed by a string of
scandalous rumors pertaining to Scipio’s conduct, the source being the quaestor
in Sicily, Marcus Porcius Cato, destined to become Scipio’s lifelong enemy.
Cato is known to history as a stern embodiment of austere Roman virtues and as
an inveterate hater of things Greek, and of Carthage and Carthaginians.
According to Cato, Scipio had been cavorting in Syracuse like a Hellenistic
dandy—dressed in effete cloaks and sandals, spending way too much time in the
gym, and lavishing money on his soldiers, who were using it to wallow in
corrupting activities.

In his denunciation of Scipio, Fabius fastened onto this
last aspect. Reminding his colleagues of the mutiny in Spain, which he
maintained had cost Rome more troops than had been killed in battle, Fabius
argued that Scipio “was born for the corruption of military discipline” and therefore
should be relieved of his command forthwith. Pleminius and the situation in
Locri were bad enough, but claiming the discipline of the entire expeditionary
force had been undermined by indulgence, when that force was largely made up of
suspect Cannenses, would not be overlooked. Scipio’s ally Metellus did what he
could in the way of damage limitation, but in the end the senate took a very
senatorial tack, sending a commission of ten to Sicily to judge Scipio’s
culpability and, more to the point, to examine the readiness of his forces.
Ready or not, now was the time for the ghosts to step into the limelight.

They did not disappoint. After settling matters in Locri,
the commissioners crossed over to Syracuse, where Scipio had assembled his
entire army and fleet in a state of readiness sufficient to conduct an
immediate amphibious operation. The commission was then treated to a rigorous
series of maneuvers, not simply parades but actual tactical evolutions and even
a mock sea battle in the harbor. After a further inspection of war materiel,
the commissioners were convinced that if Scipio and his army could not defeat
Carthage, then nobody could. They left in a mood more reflective of victory
than simply of good preparations—a view they impressed upon the senate, which
promptly authorized the invasion at the earliest opportunity using whatever
troops in Sicily the general desired. The Cannenses had vindicated their
commander and were at least partway down the road to redemption.

Probably sometime in the late spring of 204 the invasion
force assembled at Lilybaeum on the western tip of Sicily approximately 140
miles across open water from Carthage. Livy’s (29.25.1–2) estimates of the
force’s size range widely from around twelve thousand men up to thirty-five thousand,
so it’s impossible to say with any precision how big the army really was. But
two legions of six thousand, plus two alae of equal size, along with cavalry
numbering around 2400—basically a pumped-up consular army totaling
approximately 26,400—is a ballpark figure. With considerable ceremony—suitable
sacrifices, speechifying, and throngs of spectators lining the harbor—the army,
along with forty-five days’ worth of food and water, were stuffed into four
hundred transports guarded by only forty war galleys. (Scipio may have been
short of oarsmen. Besides, the Carthaginian navy had not proved much of a
threat.) Then the fleet headed out to sea in the general direction of Africa.

Without navigational equipment, such a voyage was always
something of a leap of faith, but after a foggy night, land was sighted early
the next day. Scipio’s pilot declared the spot to be the Promontory of Mercury
(modern Cape Bon). But rather than head for what Livy says was his original
destination—the Emporia, a rich area far to the south—Scipio allowed the wind
to take him forty miles west to the “Cape of the Beautiful One” (modern Cape
Farina), where he landed. This put him in the vicinity of the city of Utica and
about twenty-five miles north of Carthage, which lay at the base of the
semicircular Gulf of Tunis bounded by the two capes. It was a good location,
close enough to throw a scare into the Carthaginians but far enough off to
allow the Romans some breathing room to get unpacked. It worked.

The sight of the Romans, who set up camp on some nearby
hills, panicked the entire countryside, sending a stream of inhabitants and
their livestock back toward the safety of fortified places, particularly
Carthage. Livy tells us that a thrill of dread spread through the city, which spent
a night without sleep and prepared for an immediate siege. The next morning a
force of five hundred cavalry under Hanno, a young nobleman, was sent up the
coast to reconnoiter and if possible disrupt the Romans before they could fully
establish themselves.

They arrived too late. Scipio had already posted cavalry
pickets, who easily repelled the Carthaginians, killing a good many in the
ensuing pursuit, including Hanno himself. Meanwhile, Roman marauders were
already abroad gathering up who and what had not managed to flee. This was a
substantial haul, including eight thousand captives, which the savvy Scipio
promptly shipped back to Sicily as the first fruits of war paying for war.

More good news for the Romans appeared shortly in the form
of Masinissa, who arrived, Livy says, with either two thousand or two hundred
horsemen. It was probably the latter, since the Numidian prince was basically
on the lam from Syphax, but Scipio understood that when it came to Masinissa,
numbers meant nothing; he was a veritable “army of one.”

Back in Carthage, plans to resist were plainly in disarray.
Hasdrubal Gisgo, the city’s most experienced available soldier, had been sent
elsewhere. He’d belatedly been charged with putting together an army, and was
camped about twenty-five miles inland with his hastily formed force, waiting to
be joined by Syphax’s Numidians before attempting to engage the Romans. In his
absence, the Carthaginians almost reflexively threw together another cavalry
force under yet another Hanno—this force composed of a core of Punic nobility
and apparently just about any local tribesman who could ride a horse and was
available for hire—for a total of around four thousand men.

It was summer, and when Scipio heard the cavalry were
quartered in a town rather than camped out in the countryside, he marked them
as a bunch of potential victims and planned accordingly. Masinissa would act as
the bait, riding up to the gates of the place—Livy calls it Salaeca, about
fifteen miles from the Roman position—to draw the Punic riders out with his
small detachment. Masinissa would then gradually lure them into a chase, which
would end with the main body of Scipio’s cavalry advancing under the cover of
hills to cut them off. As it turned out, the enemy was so sluggish that
Masinissa had to ride up to the place repeatedly before they would even come
out, and he spent additional time in mock resistance and retreat before they
took up the pursuit toward the line of hills where the Romans were hiding. But
in the end the Punic riders went for it and were surrounded by the Romans and
Masinissa’s men for their troubles, losing Hanno plus nearly a thousand men in
the initial engagement, and another two thousand in the ensuing thirty-mile
chase, two hundred of the Punic nobles being among the victims. Another bad day
for Carthage.

It would be hard to maintain that the city reacted promptly
or well to the crisis. They must have known it was coming; many Carthaginians
remained in Sicily, and Lilybaeum was reputedly swarming with spies. Nevertheless,
there seems to have been no attempt by the Carthaginian navy to intercept the
Roman armada or contest its landing, nor, Livy tells us, had an army of any
strength been prepared in advance.

This is hard to explain, and the explaining is not made
easier by history having been written by friends of Rome. Carthage’s
fortifications were formidable—Scipio would not even attempt a siege—so it is
possible to argue this as a source of negligence and overconfidence. But the
invasions of Agathocles and Regulus had already shown just how vulnerable the
surrounding areas were, and how much of a danger this vulnerability was to the
entire city. Nor does Carthage’s presumed overconfidence explain the obvious
terror of the city’s population once Scipio arrived. Arguably the Carthaginians
were never very good at war, only persistent, and this could help account for
their lack of planning.

A lack of support for this particular war would have been
more telling. The political environment within Carthage during the Second Punic
War is impossible to reconstruct, but we know from the statements of Hanno the
Great that there was opposition to the conflict. Also, a Punic peace delegation
would later lay the blame for the war at the feet of Hannibal and his faction.
Whether true, partially true, or not true at all, the Romans were not about to
accept such excuses from Carthage. Like the proverbial accomplice to the crime,
perpetrators or not, the Carthaginians were now caught in the clutches of blame
and would suffer the penalty for their weakness.

But they were far from finished. Winter found Scipio cut off
from his supply base in Sicily and camped around his beached fleet on a barren
promontory (castra Cornelia) about two miles east of Utica, which he had
earlier tried and failed to take. Parked in front of him about seven miles away
in two separate encampments were the armies of Syphax and Hasdrubal Gisgo,
which both Polybius (who is back in another fragment) and Livy maintain totaled
eighty thousand infantry and thirteen thousand cavalry—numbers most modern
sources reject as too large to feed in the winter, but still probably exceeding
those of the Romans.

Other commanders might have been depressed; Scipio took to
scheming. First, Scipio plotted to win over Syphax, whom he hoped might be
weaned from the Carthaginians once he had tired of Sophonisba, Hasdrubal
Gisgo’s daughter, to whom he was now wed. But the spell she had cast over the
Massaesylian king proved stronger than merely the pleasures of the flesh; so
the Roman commander began playing a deeper and, as it turned out, more infernal
game.

He deceitfully accepted Syphax’s good offices in negotiating
a peace treaty. Then he sent centurions disguised as servants in his
delegations to the enemy camps, and the centurions accordingly scouted the
camps’ configuration. The Numidians, Scipio’s spies reported back, were housed
in huts made of nothing more than reeds, while the Carthaginians’ were not much
better, being put together with branches and available pieces of wood. Like the
first two of the Three Little Pigs, they were fatally vulnerable. The talks
intensified, framed around the basic principle of mutual withdrawals—the
Carthaginians from Italy and the Romans from Africa—and Scipio’s agents
continued piling up details on the camps, especially the entrances. Scipio even
made it look as though any military plans he had were related to renewing the
siege of Utica. For their part, the Numidians and Carthaginians increasingly
let their guard down around their camps as the negotiations seemed to mature.
Finally, and tellingly in terms of Punic motivation, Syphax was able to send a
message that the Carthaginians had accepted terms. Scipio played for time and
set about preparing for his real intention—a night attack on the two camps.

It was a barn burner of an operation. Scipio divided his
force in halves, and marched them over a carefully surveyed route, timing it so
they reached their targets around midnight. The first group, under Laelius and
Masinissa, hit the Numidian encampment first, breaking in and torching the reed
huts so that within minutes the whole place was engulfed in flames. Many of the
men were incinerated in their beds, others were trampled at the gates, and
those who managed to get out were cut down by waiting Romans. For the horribly
burned, death must have been a form of mercy.

When the Carthaginians saw the conflagration in the other
camp, a number concluded it was an accident and rushed out unarmed to help the
Numidians—only to fall prey to the other half of Scipio’s legionaries, already
lurking in the shadows. The Romans then forced their way into the Carthaginian
camp and set fire to the place, which burned just as furiously and with the
same deadly consequences. Both Hasdrubal and Syphax managed to escape, the
former with around four hundred horse and two thousand foot soldiers, but we
can be sure that fire and sword took a terrible toll on those who remained.
Livy puts the dead at forty thousand, but this is based on his exaggerated
estimation of the size of the force. Polybius provides no numbers, but does say
of the attack that “it exceed[ed] in horror all previous events.” But then,
putting aside the morality of broiling thousands of human beings in their
sleep, Polybius adds, “of all the brilliant exploits performed by Scipio this
seems to me the most splendid and most adventurous.” It certainly was a trick
worthy of the master; if nothing else, it demonstrated that he was ready for
Hannibal.

Back in Carthage, news of the disaster was greeted with
dismay and dejection. Many citizens, including a number of notables, had been
killed, and there was a general fear that Scipio would immediately lay siege to
the city. When the suffetes called the council of elders into session, three
positions emerged. There were those who wanted to treat for peace with Scipio
immediately (probably a nonstarter, given the results of recent negotiations).
The second position was held by those who were for recalling Hannibal to “save
his country.” (This could be interpreted as an intermediate position, since it
would not only help Carthage defend itself, but might also mollify Rome by
removing him and presumably Mago from Italy.) And then there were those who
wanted to rebuild the army and continue the war. (Livy tells us that Hasdrubal
Gisgo, who was back in the city, plus the whole of the Barcid faction, combined
to push this proposition, which “showed a Roman steadfastness.” Hasdrubal
retained overall command and took to recruiting Carthaginians, whose enthusiasm
probably increased when Scipio failed to show up but instead seemed intent on
taking Utica. Meanwhile, envoys were sent to Syphax, who was inland at a place
called Abba, to encourage him to stay the course.

But another Carthaginian already had the Massaesylian king
well in hand, stiffening, this time, his resolve. Sophonisba had delivered such
a passionate plea not to desert her father and the city of her birth that
Syphax was now fully in tune with the Punic program and was busy arming every
Numidian peasant he could round up. Almost simultaneously further good tidings
arrived in the form of four thousand newly enlisted Celtiberian mercenaries,
whose presence was something of a trenchant commentary on Scipio’s lack of
thoroughness in subduing Spain. Syphax soon marched with these forces to join
Hasdrubal’s, so that within thirty days (late April to early May 203) there
gathered an army of around thirty thousand at a place known as “Great
Plains”—likely the modern Souk el Kremis.

When Scipio heard of this concentration—good intelligence
was another advantage of having Masinissa on your side—he reacted immediately.
Leaving his fleet and part of his army to maintain the impression that the
siege of Utica continued as his primary objective, he headed inland with the
remainder of his force—all the cavalry and perhaps most of his infantry, though
he may have brought along only the legiones Cannenses, since allied contingents
are not specifically mentioned. Traveling light, they arrived at the Great
Plains after a march of five days.

Scipio’s objective was clear, to nip this new threat in the
bud—to engage posthaste what was obviously an inexperienced and disjointed
force, and obliterate it. This should have been equally apparent to his
adversaries. The Romans were deep inland, far from their base of supply,
without visible means of support. The Punic strategy should have been
avoidance, harassment, and then, when Scipio was forced to withdraw,
attrition.35 Instead, within four days they allowed themselves to be drawn into
a set-piece battle. The outcome was never in doubt.

Hasdrubal Gisgo placed his best troops, the Celtiberians, in
the center, with the Carthaginian infantry (those salvaged from the camp fire,
plus new recruits) flanked by the Punic cavalry on the right, and Syphax’s
Numidians—infantry, then cavalry—positioned on the left. The Romans lined up
their own legionaries in the center—possibly but not necessarily covered on
each side by an ala—with the Italian cavalry occupying the right wing and
Masinissa’s Numidian horse on the extreme left.

According to both Polybius and Livy the battle was over
almost as soon as it began, the first charge of each of Scipio’s cavalry wings
scattering the Carthaginians and Syphax’s troops, horse and foot soldiers
alike.36 It has been argued that Scipio’s cavalry, which would have numbered
fewer than four thousand, was simply not numerous enough to break up such a
large body of men (around twenty-six thousand) and that there must have been an
intervening infantry engagement. Nevertheless, Livy is pretty clear that both
the Carthaginian and Numidian components of the Punic force were largely
untrained and that it was Scipio’s cavalry specifically that drove them from
the field, so this intermediate stage may not have been necessary. At any rate,
nobody disputes the result—the Celtiberians were left very much alone.

Even if it was only the legiones Cannenses facing them, the
Celtiberians would have been decisively outnumbered. However, they had no
choice but to fight. Africa was alien territory if they ran, and they could
expect no mercy from Scipio if they surrendered, since he undoubtedly
remembered it was Celtiberian desertions that had led to the death of his
father and uncle, not to mention their joining the Punic cause after he had
supposedly pacified Spain.

The Celtiberians would have been roughly equal in number to
the two legions’ worth of hastati facing them. But rather than feeding the
remaining elements of the triplex acies directly ahead, Scipio resorted to his
now-characteristic maneuver, turning the principes and triarii into columns and
marching them right and left out from behind the front line to attack the
Celtiberians on the flanks. Pinned by the forces ahead, and beset on each side,
the Spaniards met death obstinately. In the end, Livy tells us, the butchery
lasted longer than the fighting. The ghosts of Cannae, on the other hand, were
very much alive, and, having exacted a measure of revenge for their commander,
they were plainly ready for more.

Yet, the sacrifice of the Celtiberians, by keeping the
Romans preoccupied until nightfall, had allowed the escape of Hasdrubal Gisgo,
who eventually made it back to Carthage with some survivors and Syphax, who
headed inland with his cavalry. Determined to retain the initiative, Scipio
called a war council the next day and explained his plan. He would keep the
main body of the army and work his way back from the Great Plains toward the
coast, plundering and sowing rebellion among Carthage’s subject communities as
he went, while he sent Laelius and Masinissa with the cavalry and velites after
Syphax.

Both Polybius (14.9.6–11) and Livy (20.9.3–9) provide
similar but internally contradictory descriptions of Carthage’s reaction to the
defeat. On the one hand, they say the news was greeted with utter panic and
loss of confidence; but then go on to describe the citizenry’s determined
preparation for a siege, plans for manning and equipping the fleet for a naval
offensive against Scipio’s armada gathered around Utica, and the recall of
Hannibal as the only general capable of defending the city. As always, we can
catch only glimpses of the true nature of Punic politics. One possible
explanation for Carthage’s apparently contradictory reactions is that the
intermediate position of the three courses cited above was now dominant. Livy
states clearly that “peace was seldom mentioned,” and it is also probable that
the Barcid faction (not to mention the general himself) did not want Hannibal
(and presumably Mago) brought back, since it was tantamount to admitting that
their great scheme had failed. In the interim, the Punic mainstream seems to
have fallen back on the city’s traditional naval shield of war galleys as a way
out of their troubles.

It was certainly an audacious scheme, with the fleet and the
delegation to Hannibal being launched simultaneously the day after the
resolution passed. Scipio, now less than thirteen miles away, having just taken
over the abandoned town of Tunis, observed the launch with horror. For he
understood that the descent of the Carthaginian flotilla would come as an utter
surprise to the Romans at Utica. He also understood that his warships, burdened
with all manner of siege equipment, were in no condition to maneuver in a naval
engagement. The offensive would have worked had not the Punic battle squadron,
which likely was manned mostly by inexperienced oarsmen, dawdled, taking most
of the day to arrive and then anchoring for the night before forming up to
attack at dawn.

This gave Scipio at least some time to prepare, and as usual
he responded ingeniously to what could have been a very bad situation. Rather
than have his warships protect his transports, he did the reverse. Polybius
tells us just before his narrative breaks off that Scipio abandoned any idea of
advancing into battle, drew the ships together near shore, and girded the whole
mass with three or four layers of merchant vessels, lashed together with their
masts and yards to form a wooden coat of armor.

The next morning the Punic force waited in vain for the
Romans to come out, only belatedly moving in to attack Scipio’s transport-encrusted
force. What followed bore no resemblance to a sea fight, Livy says, but instead
“looked like ships attacking walls,” since the transports’ much greater
freeboard enabled the thousand or so picked fighters Scipio had stationed on
board to cast their ample supply of javelins directly down at the low-slung
Punic galleys, effectively stymieing the attack. It was only when the
Carthaginians began using grappling hooks that they achieved a measure of
success. They managed to haul away sixty transports, which were greeted back
home with more joy than the episode deserved—a small ray of sun shining through
an unmitigated series of setbacks. Meanwhile, Scipio’s fleet was saved, and he
would soon receive news from the hinterlands that would send Carthage reeling
to the brink of surrender.

After a fifteen-day march Laelius and Masinissa were in the
heart of Numidia, reaching first the eastern kingdom of Massylia, where the
natives joyfully accepted the young prince as their ruler. But there was still
the matter of Syphax, who had withdrawn to the home territory of Massaesylia
and was again busy reconstituting his army. Yet again he managed to cobble
together a force basically as large as its predecessors, but with each
iteration the quality had dropped, now to the point where the army consisted of
little more than the rawest of recruits. Nonetheless, he brought them forward
to confront the advancing Romans in what turned out to be a ragged cavalry
engagement, which was eventually decided when the velites stabilized their line
to the point where Syphax’s men refused to advance and instead began to flee.
Either to shame them or out of desperation, the king charged the Romans,
whereupon his horse was wounded and he was captured—and was now very much a
sinner in the hands of an angry Masinissa.

But also a shrewd one. Masinissa told Laelius that if he
would let him ride ahead with Syphax to Cirta, the eastern capital of the
Massaesylians, the psychological impact might cause a complete collapse. It
did. Upon arriving, Masinissa arranged a conclave with the city fathers, who
remained adamant until he dragged Syphax before them in chains, at which point
they opened the gates.

Once inside, Masinissa headed for the palace. Here Livy
turns cinematic, staging one of the more romantic, though not necessarily
implausible, confrontations in all of historical literature. For at the
threshold, “in the full flower of her youthful beauty” and with the mind of a
true temptress, was Sophonisba. She clasped Masinissa’s knees, congratulated
him on having better luck than Syphax, and told him she had really only one
request: “choose my fate as your heart may prompt you, but whatever you do,
even if it means my death, don’t surrender me to the arrogant and brutal whim
of any Roman…. What a woman of Carthage—what the daughter of Hasdrubal—has to
fear from a Roman is all too clear.” As she spoke, Livy adds perhaps
unnecessarily, “her words were now more nearly those of a charmer than of a
suppliant.”

Masinissa was a goner—probably after the first sentence—and
upon further reflection, doubtless from within a cloud of lust, a solution came
to mind—marriage … marriage so fast that it would become a fait accompli.
(“That’s no Punic subverter of Rome’s allies; that’s my wife!”)

Predictably, the Romans didn’t buy it. When Laelius arrived
at the palace, he was ready to drag her out of her marriage bed and send her
back immediately to Scipio with Syphax and the other prisoners. Masinissa
prevailed upon him to leave her in Cirta while the two of them conducted
mopping-up operations. This would give Scipio more time to decide what to do
with this veritable man magnet.

Sophonisba’s future was probably a foregone conclusion, but
Syphax may have sealed her fate. When Syphax was delivered back to castra Cornelia,
Scipio asked his former guest-friend what had possessed him to refuse that
amity and instead wage war. It’s not surprising that Syphax fell back on the
femme fatale defense. Sophonisba was the venom in his blood, the avenging Fury,
who with her plying words and caresses had addled his mind. He then turned the
knife by adding that his sole consolation was that this monster of treachery
was now his worst enemy’s wife.

When Laelius and Masinissa returned from the hinterlands,
Scipio took the latter aside and, recalling his own forbearance in the face of
the beauteous captive back in New Carthage, made it clear that political
expediency demanded that the young man give up his new wife, either as a
prisoner or … He left the alternative unsaid. Masinissa extemporized and had a
slave bring Sophonisba a cup of poison as his means of delivering her from the
Romans. She drank without flinching, remarking that if this was the best he
could do in the way of a wedding present, she would accept it, but she also instructed
the slave to tell her wannabe widower that she would have died a better death
had she not married him in the first place.

So perished Sophonisba, still another in a long line of
aristocratic Punic suicides. Yet she likely had done more in bed to keep her
city safe than Hannibal had accomplished on the battlefield. Nor is this meant
as a backhanded compliment. Because of her, Syphax had given Scipio far more
trouble than he’d bargained for, and a marriage alliance with Masinissa had
held out the promise of neutralizing an adversary who would later prove highly
instrumental in the city’s ultimate destruction. The match had probably been
doomed from the beginning, and she paid for it with her life. But it is hard to
deny she died a hero’s death.

Back in Carthage, this sort of resolve was fast becoming a
diminishing quantity. The narratives of both Polybius and Livy make it pretty
clear that Carthaginian resistance had become increasingly dependent on
Numidian support, and news of Syphax’s capture had tilted the political
balance, at least in the council of elders, in the direction of the anti-Barcid
proprietors of the vast inland food factory, who were sick of seeing their
properties ravaged by Romans and now wanted peace.

Sometime in late 203 the inner council of thirty key elders
was dispatched to Scipio’s camp to negotiate an end to the war. As Livy tells
it, the elders’ inclination was immediately betrayed by their prostrating
themselves. Essentially, they begged Rome for mercy, blaming Hannibal and the
Barcid party as the instigators of the war. This was plainly self-serving, but
it was also likely to have been true.

As it happened, Scipio was ready to deal. He could see the
strength of Carthage’s fortifications, and understood that an unacceptably protracted
and costly siege was the only option if he wanted to continue fighting. He was
also well aware of Rome’s war-weariness and desire to end this terrible
conflict. Finally, he must have been aware that there were those back home who
wanted his command, so victory on his watch must have had its attractions.

The terms he offered were not unreasonable but were certainly calculated to remove Carthage permanently as a military competitor with Rome. According to Livy, Scipio proposed that the Punic side hand over all war prisoners, deserters, and runaway slaves; withdraw the armies of both Hannibal and Mago; cease interfering in Spain; evacuate all the islands between Italy and Africa; supply large quantities of grain to feed his army and animals; and surrender all but twenty of their warships. As far as a war indemnity, the historian tells us that his sources differed, some saying five thousand talents, others five thousand pounds of silver, and still others double pay for Scipio’s troops. Appian also adds several clauses that, if true, make the terms considerably harsher (e.g., forbidding Carthaginians from hiring mercenaries, restricting their territory to the so-called “Phoenician trenches”—an area inland roughly between the east coast of modern Tunisia and its border with Algeria—and giving Masinissa dominion over his home kingdom and all he could take of Syphax’s). Finally, Scipio gave the Carthaginians three days to accept, whereupon a truce would take hold while they sent envoys to Rome for final negotiations. The council of elders agreed, and envoys were dispatched, but Livy maintains it was all a ruse to give Hannibal time to return to Africa. This is debatable.

MASTERING THE WEST

Rome and Carthage at War

Dexter Hoyos