[203-202 B.C.]
Great was the joy at Rome when the news came that their dire enemy had been at length compelled to leave the shores of Italy. A public thanksgiving was decreed; sacrifices offered to all the great gods of Rome, and the Roman games, which had been vowed by Marcellus in his last consulship, were now at length performed. It was at this moment of triumph that the Carthaginian ambassadors arrived. The senate received them (inauspicious omen!) in the Temple of Bellona. Lævinus moved that they should be at once dismissed, and that orders should be sent to Scipio to push on the war with vigour. After some debate, his proposition was adopted. The close of the year 203 B.C. therefore rendered it certain that the war must be decided by a trial of strength between the two great generals, who, each triumphant in his own career, had never yet encountered each other in arms. About the same time old Fabius died in extreme old age. He has the merit of first successfully opposing Hannibal; but his somewhat narrow mind, and the jealous obstinacy which often accompanies increasing years, prevented him from seeing that there is a time for all things; that his own policy was excellent for retrieving the fortunes of the republic, but that the weakness of Hannibal left the field open for the bolder measures of Scipio.
Hannibal landed at Leptis, to the south of Carthage, with his veterans; and thence marching northwards, took up his position on the plain of Zama, within five days’ march of Carthage. Scipio, early in the year (202 B.C.), advanced from Tunis to meet him; and finding that the Carthaginian general had sent spies to ascertain his strength, he ordered them to be led through his camp, and bade them make a full report of what they had seen. Hannibal felt that he had to deal with a superior force, led by a general only second in ability to himself. His own veterans were few in number; the remainder of his army were raw levies or allies little to be trusted; the Numidian horse, his main arm in Italy, were now arrayed against him under the enterprising Masinissa. He therefore proposed a personal conference, in the faint hope that he might effect a treaty with Scipio. But it was too late. The generals parted from their conference with feelings of mutual esteem, and prepared to decide the fate of the civilised world by battle.[b]
THE BATTLE OF ZAMA DESCRIBED BY POLYBIUS
[202 B.C.]
On the following day, as soon as the dawn appeared, they drew out their forces on both sides and prepared to engage; the Carthaginians, for their own safety and the possession of Africa; the Romans, for the sovereignty of the whole, and for universal empire. Is there any one that can forbear to pause at this part of the story or remain unmoved by the relation? Never were there seen more warlike nations; never more able generals, or more completely exercised in all the art and discipline of war; never was a greater prize proposed by fortune than that which was now laid before the combatants. For it was not Africa alone, nor Italy, that waited to award the conquerors, but the entire dominion of the whole known world. And this, indeed, was not long afterwards the event.
Scipio drew up his army in battle in the following manner: He placed in the first line the Hastati, leaving intervals between the cohorts. In the second, the Principes; but posted their cohorts, not, as the Roman custom was, opposite to the intervals, but behind the cohorts of the former line and at a considerable distance from them, on account of the great number of elephants that were in the Carthaginian army. Last of all, in the third line, he drew up the Triarii. Upon the left wing he stationed Caius Lælius, with the cavalry of Italy; and Masinissa and the Numidians upon the right. The intervals of the first line he filled with companies of the light-armed troops, who were ordered to begin the action, and if they should find themselves too violently pressed by the elephants, that the swiftest of them should retire through the strait intervals to the rear of all the army, and the rest, if they should be intercepted on their way, direct their course to the right or left along the open distances that were between the lines. When his disposition was thus completed, he went round to all the troops and harangued them in a few words, but such as the occasion seemed to require.
“Remember,” said he, “your former victories, and show now a courage worthy of yourselves and of your country. Let it ever be present to your view that by gaining the victory in this battle, you not only will become the masters of all Africa, but secure to Rome the undisputed sovereignty of the rest of the world. If, on the other hand, you should be conquered, they who fall bravely in the action will obtain an honour far more glorious than any rights of sepulchre, the honour of dying for their country; while those that shall escape must be condemned to pass the remainder of their lives in the extremity of disgrace and misery. For Africa will afford no place of safety, and if you fall into the hands of the Carthaginians, what your condition must be your own reason will easily instruct you to foresee. But may none of you ever know it by experience. When fortune, then,” continued he, “has offered to us upon either side so noble a prize, universal empire or glorious death, how lost must we be both to honour and to sense, if we should reject these, the greatest of goods, and choose, through a desire of life, the most insupportable of evils. When you advance, therefore, against the enemy, carry that resolution with you into action, which is sure always to surmount the strongest resistance. Be determined either to conquer or to die. Retain not so much as a thought of life. With such sentiments, the victory cannot fail to be your own.”
Such was the harangue of Scipio. Hannibal, on his part, having placed the elephants, more than eighty in number, at the head of all the army, formed his first line of the mercenaries, who were a mixed multitude of Gauls, Ligurians, Balearics, and Maurusians, and amounted together to about twelve thousand men. Behind these were the Carthaginians and the subject Africans. The third line was composed of the troops which he had brought with him from Italy, and was placed at the distance of more than a stadium from the second line. The cavalry was posted upon the wings; that of the Numidian auxiliaries upon the left, and the Carthaginian cavalry upon the right. He ordered the officers who commanded the different bodies of the mercenaries to exhort severally their own soldiers, and to encourage them to be assured of victory, since they were now joined by Hannibal and his veteran forces. The leaders of the Carthaginians were instructed, on the other hand, to lay before their view the fatal consequences of a defeat, and to enumerate all evils to which their wives and children would be exposed. And while these orders were obeyed, he himself, going round to his own troops, addressed them with the greatest earnestness, and in words like these:
“Remember, soldiers, that we have now borne arms together during the course of seventeen years. Remember in how many battles we have been engaged against the Romans. Conquerors in them all, we have not left to the Romans even the smallest hope that they ever should be able to defeat us. But beside the other innumerable actions in which we always obtained the victory, remember also, above all the rest, the battle of Trebia, which we sustained against the father of that very general who now commands the Roman army; the battle of Thrasymene, against Flaminius, and that of Cannæ, against Æmilius. The action in which we are now ready to engage is not to be compared with those great battles, with respect either to the number or the courage of the troops. For, turn now your eyes upon the forces of the enemy. Not only they are fewer; they scarcely make even a diminutive part of the numbers against which we were then engaged. Nor is the difference less with respect to courage. The former were troops whose strength was entire, and who had never been disheartened by any defeat. But these before us are either the children of the former or the wretched remains of those very men whom we subdued in Italy, and who have so often fled before us. Lose not then upon this occasion the glory of your general and your own. Preserve the name which you have acquired, and confirm the opinion which has hitherto prevailed, that you are never to be conquered.”