Who won the Battle of Zama?
Rome under Scipio, later called Africanus, won a decisive victory at Zama in 202 BC, defeating Hannibal himself in North Africa and ending the Second Punic War. It was the first and last time the two greatest commanders of the age met in battle, and it broke the power of Carthage for good.
In 202 BC, on the plains of North Africa, the Second Punic War came to its end1. The Roman general Scipio, later called Africanus, defeated Hannibal himself at Zama. It was the first and last time the two greatest commanders of the age faced each other, and it broke the power of Carthage for good.
Carrying the war to Carthage
For sixteen years Hannibal had ranged across Italy, winning victory after victory yet never taking Rome. Scipio changed the war by refusing to fight him there. He invaded Africa instead, threatening Carthage directly, and the city recalled Hannibal home to defend it2.
The elephants pass
Hannibal opened with a charge of war elephants.3 Scipio had prepared for it: instead of a solid line he left lanes through his ranks3, and the beasts thundered harmlessly down them or were turned back into their own side. On the wings, the Roman cavalry under Laelius and the Numidian horse under Masinissa drove the Carthaginian horse from the field.
The lines close
The infantry met in a long and even struggle3, Hannibal's veterans against the hardened legions. Then the Roman and Numidian cavalry, having scattered their opponents, returned and struck Hannibal's army in the rear. Caught between the legions and the horsemen, the Carthaginian line collapsed.3
What the day decided
Carthage sued for peace and accepted harsh terms, giving up its empire and its fleet. Rome stood unrivalled in the western Mediterranean, and the road to its dominance of the ancient world lay open. Hannibal, undefeated for so long, had lost the one battle that mattered most.
The end of Carthage as a great power
Zama did not just end a battle, it ended an era. The peace Rome imposed in 201 BC stripped Carthage of its war fleet3, forced a crushing fifty-year indemnity3, and forbade it to wage war outside Africa at all, or inside Africa without Rome's consent. A city that had contested the western Mediterranean for a century was reduced to a client that survived only on Roman sufferance. Scipio took the honorific Africanus for the victory4, and Rome emerged as the unrivalled power of the western sea. The resentment left behind festered until Rome found a pretext to finish the job, razing Carthage completely in the Third Punic War of 146 BC5.
