1 that Syphax had been captured, that they had been driven out of Spain, driven out of Italy, and all this accomplished by the courage and strategy of Scipio alone, they dreaded him as a predestined commander, born to work their destruction.
XXIX. By this time Hannibal had reached Hadrumetum.2
[2]
From there, after he had spent a few days that his soldiers might recuperate from sea-sickness, he was called away by alarming news brought by men who reported that all the country round Carthage was occupied by armed forces, and he hastened3 to Zama by forced marches. Zama4 [p. 471]is distant five day's marches
[3]
from Carthage. Scouts5 who had been sent in advance from that position were captured and brought before Scipio by their
[4]
Roman guards. Thereupon he turned them over to a tribune of the soldiers, and bidding them go and see everything without fear, he ordered them to be led about the camp wherever they wished to go; and after questioning them as to whether they had examined everything quite at their leisure, he sent them back to Hannibal, furnishing men to
[5]
escort them.6 Hannibal did not indeed hear with joy any of the reports of his scouts, for they reported that Masinissa had also arrived that very day, as it happened, with six thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry. But he was particularly dismayed by the enemy's confidence, which surely seemed to be not
[6]
without foundation. Consequently, although he was himself at once the cause of the war and by his coming the breaker of a truce already arranged and of a prospective treaty as well, nevertheless, thinking that fairer terms could be obtained if he should sue for peace while his army was intact, rather than after defeat, he sent a messenger to Scipio, requesting that he grant the privilege of a conference
[7]
with him. Whether he did so on his own responsibility or that of the state, I have no means of deciding either this way
[8]
or that. Valerius Antias7 relates [p. 473]that he was defeated by Scipio in their first engagement,8 in which twelve thousand soldiers were slain in battle and seventeen hundred captured; and that as an envoy with ten other envoys Hannibal came to Scipio in his camp.
[9]
To resume, once Scipio had assented to the conference, both generals by agreement advanced the position of their camps, so that their meeting might be at a short distance. Scipio established himself not far from the city of Naraggara,9 in a situation otherwise favourable, but particularly because water was to be had within the range
[10]
of a javelin. Hannibal occupied a hill four miles away, safe and convenient otherwise, except that one had to go far for water. Half-way between them a spot was chosen which was visible from all sides, that there might be no ambuscades.
1 29. xxxiv. 8-17. The surprise attack on two camps (v. 7 —vi. 9) made no use of an acies.
2 A Tyrian colony and the most important town in the region, now Sousse, 20 miles north-west of Leptis Minor (Lemta), where Hannibal had landed. But he immediately established his winter camp at Hadrumetum. Polybius cannot have failed to give the time and place of Hannibal's landing in lost chapters from the beginning of Book XV.; for he is in Africa already at iii. 5, if not at i. 10 f. It was now autumn, 203 B.C. He would not have risked a winter passage. Cf. De Sanctis 545 ff., 586 f.; Scullard 326 f.
3 If we could follow Livy here we should place the final battle within an incredibly short time after Hannibal's landing. That this was the case no one can believe after comparing the passage Livy must have had before him, or tried to recall, as he wrote our sentence. For Polybius' “after a few days” (v. 3) makes no connection with the landing, but merely with the receipt of an urgent message from Carthage. That may have come to him many months —even a year —after disembarkation. Hannibal would be the last to shorten the long preparation indispensable to the making of an army out of his heterogeneous forces.
4 Probably Zama Regia, ca. 90 m.p. due west of Hadrumetum (Sousse). An old Numidian city, it is now Seba Biar, on the edge of a plain just west of the long dorsal ridge extending from Cap Bon south-west some distance beyond Kasserine and Tebessa. Lying north of Maktar this city was a residence of Jugurtha (Sallust 56-61); strongly fortified by King Juba I.; Bell. Afr. 91 f., 97 (Caesar leaves Sallust there as proconsul); Vitruvius VIII. iii. 24. Captured by Sextius in 41 B.C. (Dio Cass. XLVIII. xxiii. 4), it long lay desolate (Strabo XVII. iii. 9, 12). Absence of ruins from the Empire shows that the city was not rebuilt. Polybius plainly indicates that the battle was considerably farther inland than Hannibal's first position at Zama (v. 14; vi. 2). Cf. p. 472, n. 1. For modern works and the controverted questions see Appendix.
5 B.C. 202
6 The story of the scouts is from Polybius XV. v. 4-7, as also the following figures for Masinissa's forces (§ 12).
7 Cf. xix. 11.
8 B.C. 202
9 Polybius' name for the place is Margaron, occurring nowhere else. It is accordingly altered by his editors to correspond with the better class of Livy MSS. —a bold correction, it must be admitted. The site of Naraggara is thought to be occupied by Sidi Youssef, on the boundary between Tunisia and Algeria. It was ca. 52 Roman miles west of Zama Regia. Cf. Appendix, esp. p. 547.
Livy. Books XXVIII-XXX With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1949: no copyright notice.
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