Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: April 30, 2025
The hilly country through which he had just conducted his legions, was that which lay between the great towns of Sicca and Zama. The possession of both these places was absolutely essential if the southern district which he had terrified and garrisoned was to be kept permanently from the king.
He who grieves over the battle of Zama should carry on his thoughts to a period thirty years later, when Hannibal must in the course of nature have been dead, and consider how the isolated Phoenician city of Carthage was fitted to receive and to consolidate the civilization of Greece, or by its laws and institutions to bind together barbarians of every race and language into an organized empire, and prepare them for becoming, when that empire was dissolved, the free members of the commonwealth of Christian Europe."
The friendly city would have proved a hornets' nest, had not Marius bent all his efforts to thrusting a passage through Jugurtha's men and getting clear of the dangerous walls. In the more open ground the fighting was sharp but short. A few Numidians fell, the rest vanished from the field, and Marius came in safety to Zama, where he found Metellus contemplating his attack.
According to information given me by the Indians of the Pareka nation, it is considerably wider toward the east. The summits of Encaramada form the northernmost link of a group of mountains which border the right bank of the Orinoco, between the latitudes of 5 degrees and 7 degrees 30 minutes from the mouth of the Rio Zama to that of the Cabullare.
In the interior, where the constant encroachments of Massinissa had more and more narrowed the Carthaginian dominions and Bulla, Zama, and Aquae already belonged to the kings, the Numidians retained what they possessed.
The theatre of his campaign was probably to be the territory about the plateau of Vaga and the Great Plains, its ultimate prizes perhaps were to be the important Numidian towns of Sicca Veneria and Zama Regia to the south.
Hannibal had by this time arrived at Adrumetum, from which place, after employing a few days there in refreshing his soldiers, who had suffered from the motion by sea, he proceeded by forced marches to Zama, roused by the alarming statements of messengers who brought word that all the country around Carthage was filled with armed troops. Zama is distant from Carthage a five days' journey.
The conqueror of Zama had been selected at Rome to conduct the war on the Asiatic continent; he practically exercised the supreme command for the nominal commander-in-chief, his brother Lucius Scipio, whose intellect was insignificant, and who had no military capacity.
May we not also admit, that it is a mixture of carbon and hydrogen, an extractive vegetable matter, that colours the black rivers, the Atabapo, the Zama, the Mataveni, and the Guainia? The frequency of the equatorial rains contributes no doubt to this coloration by filtration through a thick mass of grasses. I suggest these ideas only in the form of a doubt.
Jugurtha's object was being fulfilled as long as he could remain in the field to effect this type of diversion and draw off considerable forces from the walls of Zama. But his ingenious efforts attracted the attention of the besieged as well as of the besiegers.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking