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The Battle of Tarentum of 209 BC was a battle in the Second Punic War.The Romans led by Quintus Fabius Maximus recaptured the city of Tarentum, that had betrayed them in the first Battle of Tarentum in 212 BC.This time the commander of the city, Carthalo turned against the Carthaginians, and supported the Romans.

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Battle of Ilipa: Battle of Ilipa, (206 bce), victory of the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio (later called Scipio Africanus) over Carthaginian forces in Spain during the Second Punic War.

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Identify the location, date, the number of soldiers on both sides, the victor, and the winning strategy.

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The Second Punic War (218-202 BCE) began when the Carthaginian general Hannibal attacked the city of Saguntum, a Roman ally, reached its height with the Carthaginian victory at Cannae (216) and ended with the Battle of Zama. At Zama, in North Africa, fifty miles south of the city of Carthage, the Roman general Scipio Africanus met Hannibal's forces and defeated them. Scipio's success as a commander culminated in his win at Zama but began shortly after Cannae. At the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal expertly defeated the Roman legions by tricking them into marching into a trap. At that battle, in which Scipio took part as a twenty-year old, he witnessed first-hand Hannibal's brilliance in strategy on the field, learned from it, and turned those same strategies against the Carthaginian.

Scipio Attacks New Carthage

Shortly after Cannae, Scipio led his troops against the city of New Carthage in Spain. New Carthage was thought to be impregnable owing to its fortifications and the natural defense of a lagoon protecting one whole side of the city. Prior to Cannae, Roman military tactics relied largely on strength of numbers and sheer might of force. Scipio, following Hannibal's lead of a thinking commander, gathered intelligence that the water level of the lagoon dropped a significant amount at night owing to the ebb of the tide. Directing his second-in-command, Gaius Laelius, to mount a naval attack, and sending his infantry against the gates of the city, Scipio seized on this advantage of the lagoon. He led a column through the water at low tide, breached the walls, and captured the city. Scipio would continue on with this same type of strategy in his other engagements with the Carthaginian forces and, most notably, at Zama.

Believing, rightly, that if he struck at Carthage itself Hannibal would be recalled from Italy to defend it, Scipio invaded North Africa in 205 BCE.

Scipio Invades Africa

Believing, rightly, that if he struck at Carthage itself Hannibal would be recalled from Italy to defend it, Scipio invaded North Africa in 205 BCE. After a siege, he took the city of Utica, allied himself with the Numidian King Masinissa, and marched for Carthage. Hannibal, who had been devastating Italy for the past twelve years, was recalled to defend the city.

Both armies numbered about 40,000 when they met on the field. In Italy, Hannibal had been forced to fight without elephants (most of whom had been lost in his crossing of the Alps) but now back in Africa he arranged his elephant corps at the front of his lines followed by a continuous line of mercenaries, then Libyan allies, and finally his Carthaginian veterans from the Italian campaigns. To his left and right he set his cavalry in the wings.

Scipio also arranged his lines but, instead of a continuous, unbroken line across the field, set the soldiers in columns. The gaps in these columns were masked by light infantry toward the front, making it appear as though Scipio had formed his men in the same way as Hannibal had his. To the Roman army 's left wing were the Italian cavalry, commanded by Gaius Laelius, and, to the right, the Numidian cavalry of Masinissa.

Hannibal made the first move, sending his elephants charging toward Scipio's forces. Scipio ordered his men to hold their positions and then, at a given signal, the light infantry masking the front line moved into the columns and, at the same time, Scipio ordered his trumpets to blow and drums beat. The elephants ran harmlessly through the alleys between the columns or, startled by the trumpet blasts and the loud shouts of the Romans, turned around to trample the Carthaginian forces. Hannibal's elephant charge had failed.

The Roman and Numidian cavalry then deployed and attacked the Carthaginian cavalry, driving them from the field. In doing so, the Roman cavalry swung to the left and right around the infantry forces on the field and the two cavalry forces fought behind the Carthaginian lines. Scipio's infantry now advanced, mobilizing from the column formation to continuous lines, and pushed back the mercenary front lines of the Carthaginians.

The lines were so densely packed that the mercenaries fell back into the Libyan forces who could not give way because of the Carthaginians behind them. As the mercenaries were being crushed between the advancing Roman forces and the Libyans, they began to attack the Libyans to break through and escape. At this same time, the combined cavalry of Laelius and Masinissa returned to fall on the Carthaginian forces in the rear.

Hannibal's forces were all but surrounded; 20,000 were killed and many more severely wounded. Hannibal himself escaped back to Carthage where he told the senate that he lost not only the battle, but the war, and suggested they sue for peace.

Rome's Victory

The Battle of Zama not only ended the Second Punic War, it also established the Roman army as the greatest fighting force since the armies of Alexander the Great. At the Battle of Cannae, Rome had relied on traditional tactics using superior numbers to crush an enemy and, from that defeat, Scipio understood that new arts of war were necessary. After Scipio's brilliant reforms to Roman military strategy and tactics, the Romans would go on to conquer the known world. Zama, then, was the end of the Second Punic War and the beginning of Roman conquest.

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The Battle of Zama - The Beginning of Roman Conquest

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The Second Punic War (218-202 BCE) began when the Carthaginian general Hannibal attacked the city of Saguntum, a Roman ally, reached its height with the Carthaginian victory at Cannae (216) and ended with the Battle of Zama. At Zama, in North Africa, fifty miles south of the city of Carthage, the Roman general Scipio Africanus met Hannibal's forces and defeated them.

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Identify the location, date, the number of soldiers on both sides, the victor, and the winning strategy.

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In 216 BCE, Roman military tactics were still in their infancy. Although Rome had won many impressive victories during the First Punic War, they continued to rely on their old tactic of placing a numerically superior force in the field to overwhelm the enemy. The typical Roman formation was to position light infantry toward the front masking the heavy infantry and then coordinating light and heavy cavalry on the back wings. This formation had worked well in Rome's wars with the Greek King Pyrrhus who, although victorious at the Battle of Asculum (279 BCE), lost so many men that his army could not continue on to take the city. Pyrrhus used much the same strategy as the Romans did: he would place a large force in the field and rely on the superior numbers and the charge to break the Roman ranks. At the Battle of Cannae in 216 BCE, however, the Romans would learn an important lesson in military strategy from a general who fought like no other had before him.

Hannibal's Skills & Rome's Response

The Carthaginian general Hannibal started the Second Punic War when he attacked the city of Saguntum, a Roman ally, in southern Spain in 218 BCE. He then invaded northern Italy by marching his army across the Alps from Spain. Once descended onto the plains, he began advancing through Roman territory taking small cities and villages and defeating Roman forces twice; once at Trebia, at the Ticino River, and again at Lake Trasimene. By 217 BCE, Hannibal held all of northern Italy and the Roman senate feared he would march upon Rome. Little was being done, they felt, by the consul Quintus Fabius Maximus, who controlled the army and was following a policy of harassing Hannibal and thwarting his plans through strategic movements rather than full engagement.

"It was a supreme example of generalship, never bettered in history". Durant

In 216 BCE the consul Minucius Rufus was elected to command with Fabius and called for direct confrontation with the invading Carthaginian army. He was swiftly defeated by Hannibal who used tactics which the Roman command could not understand until it was too late. According to the historian Durant, "The Romans could not readily forgive him [Hannibal] for winning battles with his brains rather than with the lives of his men. The tricks he played upon them, the skill of his espionage, the subtlety of his strategy, the surprises of his tactics were beyond their appreciation" (48). With the defeat of Rufus, Rome scrambled to mobilize another force to take the field.

The Battle at Cannae

The two consuls Lucius Aemilius Paulus and Caius Terentius Varro led a force of over 50,000 against Hannibal's less than 40,000 and met him in battle at Cannae. Hannibal disguised his intentions by placing his light infantry of Gauls at the front to mask his heavier infantry whom he positioned in a crescent formation behind them. At a given signal just before battle, the light infantry fell back to form two wings of reserves. Hannibal's light and heavy cavalry were positioned at the extreme wings of the position. The Romans, following their usual understanding of battle in which superior forces would overwhelm by sheer strength, arrayed their forces in traditional formation with light infantry masking the heavier and the cavalry also to the wings.

When the Roman legions began their march toward the Carthaginian lines, the Carthaginian infantry fell back before them. The Romans took this as a positive sign that they were winning and pressed on. The Carthaginian light infantry, who had earlier fallen back, now took up position on either end of the crescent formed by their heavy infantry. At this same time the Carthaginian cavalry charged the Roman cavalry and engaged them. The Roman infantry continued their charge into the enemy's ranks but, precisely because of their traditional formation, could make no use of their superior numbers. Those soldiers toward the back of the ranks merely served to push those before them onward. At the same time, the Carthaginian heavy cavalry drove back the Roman cavalry, opening a breach in the lines to the rear of the infantry. As the cavalry forces engaged, and as the Roman infantry continued its advance, Hannibal signaled for the trap to close. The light infantry which formed the ends of the crescent of the Carthaginian line now moved up to form an alley in which the Roman forces found themselves trapped. The Carthaginian cavalry fell upon the Roman infantry from behind, the light infantry attacked from the flanks, and the heavy infantry engaged from the front. The Romans were surrounded and were almost completely annihilated. Out of the over 50,000 who took the field, 44,000 were killed and 10,000 managed to escape to Canusium. Hannibal lost 6,000 men, mostly the Gauls, who had made up the front lines.

The Aftermath

According to Durant, "It was a supreme example of generalship, never bettered in history. It ended the days of Roman reliance upon infantry and set the lines of military tactics for two thousand years" (51). Among those Romans who escaped Cannae was the twenty-year old Publius Cornelius Scipio. Scipio would remember Hannibal's tactics at Cannae and, further, would study his other successful engagements. Fourteen years later, at the Battle of Zama in 202 BCE, Scipio would use Hannibal's own tricks to defeat him and win the Second Punic War. Roman skill on the battlefield, through which they became masters of the world, can be traced directly back to Scipio Africanus and his adaptations of Hannibal's strategies at Cannae.

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In 216 BCE, Roman military tactics were still in their infancy. Although Rome had won many impressive victories during the First Punic War, they continued to rely on their old tactic of placing a numerically superior force in the field to overwhelm the enemy.

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Identify Saguntum's importance to the beginning of the war.

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Saguntum (modern Sagunto), located near Valencia in Spain, was an Iberian, and then Roman, settlement. The town's most dramatic moment in history came in the late 3rd century BCE when it was attacked by Hannibal, an act which famously sparked off the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage. In the early imperial period, Saguntum prospered once again, expanded and received many Roman architectural improvements. Remains of the Roman forum can be visited within the impressive medieval fortifications of the acropolis, and the restored 1st-century CE theatre still holds regular concert and theatre performances.

Historical Overview

Saguntum, on the coast of southern Spain, was first settled by the Edetani, a local Iberian tribe, in the 6th century BCE, although the area had been populated since the Bronze Age. The small settlement, which was called Arse, was concentrated on the western part of the acropolis, and elements of its wall and some houses still survive. Arse prospered due to its location controlling access to inland trade routes and rich agricultural lands and minted its own bronze and silver coinage, which carried the town's name on the design.

IN THE SECOND PUNIC WAR SAGUNTUM BECAME THE PRETEXT FOR ROME TO RID IBERIA OF THE CARTHAGINIANS.

In the late 3rd century BCE Saguntum became disposed towards Rome, but Carthage was another interested power in the area. The Carthaginians had lost the First Punic War and now desperately needed a new source of income to carry on fighting for control of their empire and trade routes. Spain and its silver was the answer. Hamilcar Barca was dispatched with an army and soon controlled a large area of Iberia. With the Treaty of Ebro (226 BCE), the two powers then agreed on a line of separation between their two spheres of influence, and Saguntum was right on it.

In 219 BCE, matters came to a head when Hannibal besieged the city knowing full well the Romans would be forced to respond, especially after the Saguntians called for Roman help. This they did by demanding Hannibal be handed over for suitable punishment. The Carthaginian government, which had actually backed the siege, understandably declined and Rome declared war in March 218 BCE even though Saguntum was not officially an ally. The town became the pretext for Rome to rid Iberia of the Carthaginians. The Second Punic War (218 - 201 BCE) was underway.

Saguntum resisted the siege valiantly behind its impressive fortifications, even wounding Hannibal with one of their famous spears which they drenched in flaming pitch and hurled down on their attackers. After eight months the citizens finally gave up hope, though, and committed mass suicide by setting fire to the town. Saguntum fell to the Carthaginians. While Hannibal moved off into Italy and won spectacular victories there, Saguntum was retaken by a Roman force led by P. Cornelius Scipio and Gn. Cornelius Scipio Calvus in 212 BCE. Following their deaths in a defeat to Carthaginian forces in the Tader valley in 211 BCE Scipio Africanus the Elder was charged with clearing Spain of the enemy, a feat he achieved by 206 BCE.

Sertorius Quintus occupied Saguntum as part of his conquest of southern Spain during the turbulent in-fighting which beset Rome in the 1st century BCE, but he was removed by Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius and Pompey in 75 BCE. During the reign of Augustus (27 BCE - 14 CE) Saguntum was made a municipium, and a forum was built on the acropolis. Saguntum continued to thrive due to its location on the Via Augusta and as a wine producer. The latter fact is attested by ancient writers' descriptions of local wine cups and surviving stamped amphorae. Consequently, the town spread to cover over 19 hectares and benefitted from a large theatre in the reign of Tiberius (14 CE - 37 CE), an amphitheatre, and a circus.

Even though the port continued to function up to the mid-5th century CE, in the imperial period Saguntum was largely overshadowed by Valencia. Saguntum and the surrounding area then suffered from the successive invasions into southern Europe of the Alans, Vandals, and Visigoths. The fortifications of the acropolis were extended and improved upon in the 11th century CE by the Muslim invaders, again during the Renaissance, and once more during the War of Independence. From the medieval period the town was known as Murviedro, derived from murum veterum ('Old Walls').

Architectural Highlights
Roman Forum
The Roman Forum, completed in the early 1st century CE, is located in the central area of the fortified acropolis. The forum had a temple, a curia (Senate house), a basilica for administrators and to house the tribunal, a large rectangular cistern, and a line of small shops ( tabernae). This area was also the site of the governor's residence in the early Christian period. Today, near the forum, is a small epigraphic museum with examples of Iberian, Latin, and Hebrew inscriptions. Larger finds such as statuary and mosaics are on display in the town's modern archaeological museum.
Roman Theatre
The theatre, built into the northern side of the acropolis (Castle Hill) in the first half of the 1st century CE, originally had a capacity for 4,000 spectators. The stage wall ( scaenae frons) reached the height of the rear seats and had a wooden roof. Unfortunately, much of the theatre's stone blocks were reused for other buildings over the centuries, but some of the top row seats at either side of the stage survive. Restored today, the theatre continues to hold musical concerts.

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Saguntum (modern Sagunto), located near Valencia in Spain, was an Iberian, and then Roman, settlement. The town's most dramatic moment in history came in the late 3rd century BCE when it was attacked by Hannibal, an act which famously sparked off the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage.

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Describe his position, date of death, most famous battle, and his overall contribution to the war effort against Carthage.

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Scipio Africanus the Elder, Latin Scipio Africanus Major, in full Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, (born 236 -died 183 bce, Liternum, Campania [now Patria, Italy]), Roman general noted for his victory over the Carthaginian leader Hannibal in the great Battle of Zama (202 bce), ending the Second Punic War. For his victory he won the surname Africanus (201 bce).

Family background

Publius Cornelius Scipio was born into one of the great patrician families in Rome; his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all been consuls in their day. In 218 bce Scipio's father, also named Publius Cornelius Scipio, held the consulship in one of the most critical years of Rome's history. While with him during an engagement on the Ticinus River, the young Scipio made his first appearance in history. According to the Roman historian Livy, the Roman force was outflanked by Numidian cavalry. Seeing his father wounded, the younger Scipio charged forward, an action that allowed Scipio père to escape with his guard of cavalry officers and his young son. This anecdote was also recounted by the historian Polybius on the authority of Scipio's friend Laelius, and it may well be true.

Nothing is known of Scipio's boyhood or the date of his marriage to Aemilia, daughter of Aemilius Paullus, consul of 216, who fell at Cannae. Scipio had two sons: Publius, who was debarred by ill health from a public career and who adopted the name Scipio Africanus the Younger, and Lucius, who became praetor in 174. Scipio's physical appearance is shown on some coins minted at Carthago Nova (now Cartagena, Spain)-which almost certainly bear his portrait-and also probably on a signet ring found near Naples.

Military career

According to Livy, Scipio served as a young military tribune at the disastrous Battle of Cannae in 216. He escaped after the defeat to Canusium (modern Canosa di Puglia, Italy), where some 4,000 survivors rallied; there he boldly thwarted a plot of some fainthearts to desert Rome. Then in 213 he returned to a civilian career by winning the position of curule ("higher") aedile; the story is told that when the tribunes objected to his candidature because he was under the legal age, he replied, "If all the Roman people want to make me aedile, I am old enough." Soon family and national disaster followed: his father and uncle were defeated and killed in Spain, where the Carthaginians swept forward to the Ebro River (211).

In 210 the Romans decided to send reinforcements to Spain, but it is said that no senior general would undertake the task and that young Scipio offered himself as a candidate; at any rate, the Roman people decided to invest him with a command there, although he was technically a privatus (not a magistrate). This grant of a military command outside Italy by the people to a man who had not been praetor or consul created an important constitutional precedent. Thus, Scipio was given the chance to avenge the deaths of his father and uncle in Spain, where he hoped not merely to hold the Carthaginian armies at bay and prevent their sending reinforcements to Hannibal in Italy but to resume his father's offensive policy, to turn back the tide of war, and to drive the enemy out of the Iberian Peninsula. Such a task must have seemed fantastic in 210, but Scipio had the confidence and ability; it was achieved in the next four years.

From his headquarters at Tarraco ( Tarragona) in 209, Scipio suddenly launched a combined military and naval assault on the enemy's headquarters at Carthago Nova, knowing that all three enemy armies in Spain were at least 10 days distant from the city. Polybius relates that Scipio had heard from Spanish fishermen at Tarraco that the water level around Carthago Nova varied daily and that it was especially low in the afternoon. Helped by a lowering of the water in a lagoon, which exposed the northern wall, he successfully stormed the city. This possibly tidal phenomenon, attributed to the help of Neptune, was perhaps enhanced by an offshore wind; at any rate, it increased the troops' belief in their commander's divine support. In Carthago Nova he gained stores and supplies, Spanish hostages, the local silver mines, a splendid harbour, and a base for an advance farther south.

After training his army in new tactics, Scipio defeated the Carthaginian commander Hasdrubal Barca at Baecula (Bailen) in Baetica (208); whereas normally the two rear ranks of a Roman army closely supported the front line, Scipio in this battle, under a screen of light troops, divided his main forces, which fell upon the enemy's flanks. When Hasdrubal broke away, ultimately to join his brother Hannibal in Italy, Scipio wisely declined the impossible task of trying to stop him and decided rather to accomplish his mission in Spain-the defeat of the other two Carthaginian armies still there. This he brilliantly achieved in 206 at the Battle of Ilipa (Alcalá del Río, near Sevilla). Over several days of posturing and light skirmishing between the arrayed armies, Scipio lulled the Carthaginian commanders- Hasdrubal (son of Gisco) and Mago-into a sense of routine. On the day of the battle, Scipio dramatically altered that routine, arriving in full force at dawn and changing the order of his troops so that where he was strong the Carthaginians were weak. He used his Roman veterans to execute a series of audacious flanking maneuvers while his fickle Spanish allies held the enemy's main forces in place. The Carthaginian armies were destroyed, and Hasdrubal and Mago fled the field. Scipio then secured Gades ( Cádiz), thus making Roman control of Spain complete.

After he was elected consul for 205, Scipio boldly determined to disregard Hannibal-already largely contained in southern Italy-and to strike instead at Africa. Once he had beaten down political opposition in the Senate, he crossed to Sicily with an army consisting partly of volunteers, some of whom had also survived the disaster of Cannae and sought to redeem themselves. While preparing his troops, he boldly snatched Locri Epizephyrii, in the toe of Italy, from Hannibal's grasp, though the subsequent misconduct of Pleminius, the man he left in command of the town, gave Scipio's political opponents cause to criticize him. In 204 he landed with perhaps 35,000 men in Africa, where he besieged Utica. Early in 203, with the help of Rome's new Numidian ally Masinissa, he burned the camps of Hasdrubal (son of Gisgo) and his Numidian ally Syphax. Then, sweeping down on the forces that the enemy was trying to muster at the Great Plains on the upper Bagradas (modern Sūq al Khamīs, on the Majardah in Tunisia), he smashed that army by a double flanking movement.

After Scipio's capture of Tunis, the Carthaginians sought peace terms, but Hannibal's subsequent return to Africa led to their renewing the war in 202. Hannibal was placed in command of an army of many raw recruits and 80 untrained elephants. Scipio advanced southwestward to join Masinissa, who was taking his invaluable cavalry to Scipio's support. Then Scipio turned eastward to face Hannibal at Zama, having secured the better watering holes and the best terrain. In the first phase of the battle, Scipio largely neutralized the feared Carthaginian war elephants by using skirmishers to draw them into corridors between the densely packed heavy infantry, thus minimizing their impact on the battle. The Battle of Zama also demonstrated that Rome held the advantage in cavalry (especially with the addition of Masinissa's Numidians) that Hannibal had previously exploited. Taking advantage of the confusion in the wake of the elephant charge, Scipio's cavalry fell on the Carthaginian horsemen, driving them from the field. At first, Scipio's outflanking tactics failed against the master from whom he had learned them, because Hannibal widened his lines and did not allow his first two ranks of soldiers to back up, instead pushing them forward and out to the sides, with his veterans at the rear. The issue was decided when the Roman and Numidian cavalry, having broken off pursuit of the Punic horsemen, fell on the rear of Hannibal's army. Roman victory was complete, and the long war ended; Scipio granted comparatively lenient terms to Carthage and to Hannibal personally. According to Polybius, this battle marked the first time a Roman could envision a global perspective of future empire. In honour of his victory, Scipio was named Africanus.

Late years

In 199 Scipio was censor and became princeps Senatus (the titular head of the Senate). He held this position until his death, the following two pairs of censors having confirmed him in the position. Though he vigorously supported a philhellenic policy, he argued during his second consulship (194) against a complete Roman evacuation of Greece after the ejection of Philip V of Macedonia, fearing that Antiochus III of Syria would invade it; his fear was premature but not unfounded. In 193 he served on an embassy to Africa and perhaps also to the East. After Antiochus advanced into Greece and was thrown out by a Roman army, Scipio's brother Lucius was given the command against him, with Publius serving as his legate (190); together the brothers crossed to Asia, but Publius was too ill to take a personal part in Lucius's victory over Antiochus at Magnesia (for which Lucius took the name Asiagenus).

Meantime, in Rome, Scipio's political opponents, led by the elder Cato, launched a series of attacks on the Scipios and their friends. Lucius's command was not prolonged; the generous peace terms that Africanus proposed for Antiochus were harshly modified; and the "trials of the Scipios" followed. On the trials the ancient evidence is confusing: in 187 an attack on Lucius for refusing to account for 500 talents received from Antiochus (as war indemnity or personal booty?) was parried, and in 184 Africanus himself may have been accused but not condemned. In any case, his influence was shaken, and he withdrew from Rome to Liternum in Campania, where he lived simply on a villa (country farm) of modest size, cultivating the fields with his own hands; Lucius Annaeus Seneca later contrasted the villa's small and cold bathroom with the luxurious baths of his own day. Scipio had not long to live, however; embittered and ill, he died in 184 or 183, in virtual self-imposed exile from his country and its capital. He is said to have ordered his burial at Liternum and not in the ungrateful city of Rome, where his family tomb lay outside, on the Appian Way.

The legend of Scipio

Such was Scipio's impact upon the Romans that even during his lifetime, legends began to cluster around him; he was regarded as favoured by Fortune or even divinely inspired. Many believed not only that he had received a promise of help from Neptune in a dream on the night before his assault on Carthago Nova but also that he had a close connection with Jupiter. He used to visit Jupiter's temple on the Capitol at night to commune with the god, and later the story circulated that he was even a son of the god, who supposedly had appeared in his mother's bed in the form of a snake.

Polybius thought that this popular view of Scipio was mistaken and argued that Scipio always acted only as the result of reasoned foresight and worked on men's superstitions in a calculating manner. But Polybius himself was a rationalist and probably underestimated a streak of religious confidence, if not mysticism, in Scipio's character that impressed so many of his contemporaries with its magnanimity and generosity. Thus, although Polybius had an intense admiration for Scipio, whom he called "almost the most famous man of all time," the existence of the legend, a unique phenomenon in Rome's history, may indicate that Polybius's portrait is too one-sided.

Significance and influence

A man of wide sympathies, cultured and magnanimous, Scipio easily won the friendship of such men as Philip V, king of Macedonia, and the native princes of Spain and Africa while he secured the devotion of his own troops. Though he was essentially a man of good planning and practical action, he may also have been something of a mystic in whom contemporary legend, at any rate, saw a favourite of Jupiter as well as a spiritual descendant of Alexander the Great. Scipio was one of the greatest soldiers of the ancient world; by his tactical reforms and strategic insight, he created a new army that defeated even Hannibal and asserted Rome's supremacy in Spain, Africa, and the Hellenistic East. He had a great appreciation of Greek culture and enjoyed relaxing in the congenial atmosphere of the Greek cities of Sicily, conduct that provoked the anger of old-fashioned Romans such as Cato. Indeed, he was outstanding among those Roman nobles of the day who welcomed the civilizing influences of Greek culture that were beginning to permeate Roman society. His Greek sympathies led him to champion Rome's mission in the world as protector of Greek culture; he preferred to establish Roman protection rather than direct conquest and annexation. For 10 years (210-201) he commanded a devoted army at the people's wish. His position might seem almost kingly; he had been hailed as king by Spanish tribes, and he may have been the first Roman general to be acclaimed as imperator (emperor) by his troops. But, though he was convinced of his own powers, he offered no challenge to the dominance of the Roman nobility ensconced in the Senate except by normal political methods (in which he showed no outstanding ability). Reaction against his generous foreign policy-with possible clemency to Hannibal after Zama-and against his encouragement of Greek culture in Roman life led to his downfall amid personal and political rivalries. His career, however, had shown that Rome's destiny was to be a Mediterranean, not merely an Italian, power.

Scipio's influence outlived the Roman world. Great interest was shown in his life during the early Renaissance, and it helped the early humanists to build a bridge between the classical world and Christendom. He became an idealized perfect hero who was seen to have served the ends of Providence. Petrarch glorified him in a Latin epic, the , which secured his own coronation as poet laureate in 1341 on the Capitol, where, some 1,500 years earlier, the historical Scipio used to commune in the temple of Jupiter.
Howard Hayes Scullard Patrick Hunt The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Scipio Africanus the Elder | Roman general

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Scipio Africanus the Elder: Scipio Africanus the Elder, Roman general noted for his victory over the Carthaginian leader Hannibal in the great Battle of Zama (202 bce), ending the Second Punic War. For his victory he won the surname Africanus (201 bce).

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Describe his position, date of death, most famous battle, and his overall contribution to the war effort against Carthage.

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Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, byname Cunctator, (died 203 bce), Roman military commander and statesman whose cautious delaying tactics (whence the nickname "Cunctator," meaning "delayer," which was not his official cognomen) during the early stages of the Second Punic War (218-201 bce) gave Rome time to recover its strength. When Rome resumed the offensive against the invading Carthaginian army of Hannibal, Fabius waged a war of slow attrition, avoiding direct engagement whenever possible. Fabianism or Fabian strategy has come to mean a gradual or cautious policy.

Fabius was consul in 233 and 228 as well as censor in 230. After Hannibal's victory over the Romans at Lake Trasimene (217), Fabius was elected dictator; he then initiated his strategy of attrition against the invaders. Maneuvering among the hills, where Hannibal's cavalry was useless, Fabius cut off his enemy's supplies and harassed Hannibal's raiding parties regularly. Fabius's tactics aroused controversy in Rome, and incessant public criticism from his immediate subordinate, Minucius Rufus, his master of horse ( magister equitum), led to a command divided between Minucius and Fabius. True to his strategy of fostering exhaustion, Fabius allowed Hannibal to roam Campania almost at will.

These actions led to perhaps the most famous encounter between Fabius and Hannibal, at the hill boundary of the Falernian Plain in Campania. During the summer of 217, Hannibal raided farms and took thousands of cattle to bolster his supplies for the coming winter. When Fabius blocked Hannibal's exit from the valley at the hills near Callicula, the Roman general believed that he might have finally gained the better of his enemy. The main Roman army went into camp because the tight pass could be defended by a relatively small force. Hannibal had his men gather dry firewood and tinder and then fashion torches that were affixed to the horns of some of the captured cattle, In the middle of the night, Hannibal ordered the firebrands lit, and a group of his men drove some 2,000 "torch-wielding" cattle over a nearby hill in full view of the Romans. The Roman sentries, thinking the torches represented Hannibal's whole army, moved in that direction, where they were met by Hannibal's cattle-prodding skirmishers. The bulk of Hannibal's army, well experienced at maneuvering at night, quickly moved through the now unguarded pass and escaped with almost no losses. Hannibal later dispatched a cavalry detachment to collect his skirmishers and most of the cattle before wintering in Apulia. Although Hannibal respected Fabius as the one Roman who understood how to stymie him with an avoidance strategy, he had also correctly guessed that Fabius's conservative nature would root the commander and the bulk of his forces in camp until daybreak. Thus, a great Roman opportunity was lost to Hannibal's wily tactics.

After the end of Fabius's dictatorship, the Romans again attempted to annihilate the invaders. The result was a disastrous Roman defeat at Cannae (216) and the reintroduction of Fabian strategy. Elected consul for a third and fourth time (215 and 214), Fabius commanded troops in Campania and Samnium. In his fifth consulship (209) he captured Tarentum (modern Taranto, Italy), which Hannibal had held for three years. In the process, Fabius was made princeps senatus, the first to speak during debates in the Senate. Fabius strenuously but unsuccessfully opposed Publius Cornelius Scipio's preparations for an invasion of Africa (205). By the time of his death, Fabius had been a pontifex for 12 years and an augur for 62, a combination unique until the time of Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Julius Caesar in the late republic.

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Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus | Roman statesman and commander

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Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus: Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, Roman military commander and statesman whose cautious delaying tactics (whence the nickname "Cunctator," meaning "delayer," which was not his official cognomen) during the early stages of the Second Punic War (218-201 bce) gave Rome time to recover its strength.

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Describe how power in the Mediterranean changed from the 1st to the 2nd Punic War.

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Rome: The Punic Wars - The Second Punic War Begins - Extra History - #2