History or story relates that a personal interview between Scipio and Hannibal took place before the battle. Each stood in awe and admiration of the other: each felt mutually the charm of bravery, integrity, excellence; as men they were friends, as leaders of hostile armies, they were enemies. The interview proved futile. After a proudly lingering farewell they parted with dignity; and riding back to their respective armies prepared for immediate battle.
When the fight was fiercest and success seemed to favor the Carthaginians, suddenly the sun ceased to shine and darkness enveloped the contending hosts. It was an eclipse of the sun for which the Romans were, in great measure, prepared; the Carthaginians, wholly unprepared. Panic fear and superstitious terror seized upon Hannibal’s veterans; they who had crossed the Alps, and stood knee deep in blood at Lake Trasymene and at Cannæ, yet quailed in this midday darkness.
With the slow and ghastly return of the light of the sun, Rome’s bull-dogs were again ferociously at slaughter; but the Semitic heart had been smitten with awe of the unknown God; he would pray, not fight; he would fall prone in adoration of the awful Deity of darkness and of light. In vain did Hannibal strive to rouse his terror-stricken legions, in vain did he himself perform prodigies of valor: the hour of conquering Rome had come and on her way to world-conquest lay Zama. The Juggernaut of destiny rolled on, and Zama-Carthage fell to rise no more.
And After.
“It is not in the storm or in the strife
We feel benumbed and wish to be no more;
But in the after silence on the shore—
When all is lost except a little life.”—Byron.
Hannibal was only forty-five when he lost Zama. That flame of hatred toward Rome, kindled at the altar of Baal when he was a boy of only nine years, still raged within him inextinguishably. He had lost his right eye in the Roman campaign. His brave brothers, Mago, hero of Trebia, and Hasdrubal, hero of Metaurus, had fallen in battle. The second Punic War, the war of Rome against Hannibal, or rather of Hannibal against Rome, had after phenomenal successes, ended in the disastrous defeat at Zama and in the most humiliating conditions of peace imposed upon Carthage by world-conquering Rome. All, indeed, seemed lost except a little life; yet in this dull defeat-peace, this wearily sullen after-storm, the old hate fires insatiably raged.