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Updated: April 30, 2025
A Carthaginian fleet cruising off the coast of Italy falls in with Proteus, who takes the opportunity of prophesying the course of the war. Hannibal at Zama pursues a phantom of Scipio, which flies before him and disappears like that of Aeneas before Turnus. Such was the degradation to which the noble epic machinery had now sunk.
Polybius states that Hannibal was never defeated before the battle of Zama; and in another passage he mentions that after the defeats which Hannibal inflicted on the Romans in the early years of the war, they no longer dared face his army in a pitched battle on a fair field, and yet they resolutely maintained the war.
Gracchus, though disapproving of the violence of Africanus, liberated Lucius from imprisonment. Africanus himself was now summoned before the people by the tribune M. Nævius; but instead of answering the charges he reminded the people that it was the anniversary of his victory at Zama, and bade them rather thank the gods for such citizens as he.
Hannibal had never yet suffered a defeat. He was now to experience a crushing one. With a new army, largely made up of raw levies, he met the veteran troops of Scipio on the plains of Zama.
But the most considerable among the eastern inland towns, Zama, opposed to the Romans a serious resistance, which the king energetically supported. He was even successful in surprising the Roman camp; and the Romans found themselves at last compelled to abandon the siege and to go into winter quarters.
Thus Sextius gained possession of nearly everything without trouble, and subdued Zama, which held out longest, by famine. Thereafter he governed both the provinces again until such time as Lepidus was sent. Against him he made no demonstration, either because he thought the step had the approval of Antony, or because he was far inferior to him in troops.
Scipio at Zama trampled in the dust the power of Carthage, but that power had been already irreparably shattered in another field, where neither Scipio nor Hannibal commanded.
The senate, which voted its thanks to its political enemy, Varro, after his disastrous defeat, 'because he had not despaired of the commonwealth, and which disdained either to solicit, or to reprove, or to threaten, or in any way to notice the twelve colonies which had refused their customary supplies of men for the army, is far more to be honoured than the conqueror of Zama.
The night soon fell and brought with it, not merely the close of the day's work, but the end of the siege of Zama. Metellus saw that neither of his objects could be fulfilled. The town could not be taken nor would Jugurtha permit himself to be brought to the test of a regular battle. The fighting season was now drawing to its close and he must think of winter quarters for his army.
This not only terminated the struggle, but annihilated the Phoenician army; the same soldiers, who fourteen years before had given way at Cannae, had retaliated on their conquerors at Zama. With a handful of men Hannibal arrived, a fugitive, at Hadrumetum. Peace After this day folly alone could counsel a continuance of the war on the part of Carthage.
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