Transcript of 642. Rome’s Greatest Enemy: Bloodbath in Africa (Part 3)

It is impossible to withhold our admiration for Hannibal's leadership, his courage, and his ability in the field when we consider the duration of his campaigns. And take note of the major and minor battles, the seages, the defections of cities from one side to the other, the difficulties he encountered at various times, and in short, the whole scope of his design and its execution. For 16 years, he waged ceaseless war against the Romans in Italy, and the whole while, like a good pilot, he kept the love and loyalty of his forces. He had with him Africans, Iberians, Gauls, Carthaginians, Italians, and Greeks, men who had nothing naturally in common, neither in their laws, their customs, their language, nor in any other respect. Nonetheless, the skill of their commander was such that he could impose the authority of a single voice and a single will, even upon men of such totally diverse origins. If only he'd subdued other parts of the world first and finished with the Romans, not one of his projects would have eluded him. But as it was, since he turned his attention first to those whom he should have dealt with last, his career began and ended with them.

So that was the Greek historian Polybius. It's one of those passages that seems written precisely to torment 16-year-old school boys and schoolgirls in British schools in the 1940s or something, slogging their way through his torturous prose. Polybius, like him or loathe him, he's our best source for the Punic Wars. Here in this thrilling passage, he is singing the praises of the great Carthaginian general, Hannibal. Now, in today's episode, we are coming to the great showdown of the Punic Wars, one of the most Titanic clashes in all history. This is the showdown between the Romans and the Carthaginians at the Battle of Zama. We'll come to this in a little while. But first, let's have a little chat about Polybius himself, because Tom, he knew Rome well, and he knew the subject very well. He had interviewed leading figures in the war against Hannibal, hadn't he? He admired the Roman system of government, and actually, he was quite a fan of the Roman imperium more broadly.

Yes, even though he was a Greek. I'm slightly disappointed that you didn't follow up your brilliant impression of Livy in our last episode by doing a Greek accent for Polybius.

I did think about it, but I didn't do it. But you ducked it.

Yeah, so Polybius, for reasons that we will come to, he knows Rome very, very well indeed. He's particularly close to the family of the Scipios. They are the family that, as we heard in the previous episode, they played the leading role in the great Rome's great death struggle with Hannibal. When it comes to the Punic Wars, Polybius is pretty clearly team Rome. But even so, as we heard in that opening passage, he can't help but admire Hannibal. The reasons are self-evident. Hannibal is the man who has led a great army over the Alps into Italy. He's killed 100,000 Roman, perhaps, in three terrible and tactically brilliant battles, and who, as Polybius noted in that passage, had kept a force made up of many disparate peoples in the field for a decade and more in a foreign land, separated by the seas from Carthage, his native city. An unbelievable achievement. Now, the Romans, unlike Polybius, were not generally in the habit of praising Hannibal. The reason for that is that they feared and hated him too much. But I think with the Romans, if you have their hatred and their fear, they are paying you a compliment.

Of course.

They know the man they are facing. I mean, they know that they are facing one of the greatest generals of all time. Now, that said, by 204 BC, Hannibal's fortunes, this guy who at one point It had seemed on the verge of destroying Roman power for good. His fortunes are much, much diminished. By 204 BC, he's been in Italy for 14 years. That is four times the length of the First World War. That gives you some sense of what an ordeal this has been.

It's been a marathon, not a sprint.

It really has. The problem for Hannibal is that, as we heard in the previous episode, the Romans have conquered Spain, which was essentially the place where was relying on for reinforcements and for supplies and for money and all kinds of things. That's terrible. His allies in Italy have fallen away, and he is now essentially cornered in Brutium, which is the heel of Italy. But Even now, the Romans are incredibly reluctant to engage him in battle. They just think, If we go and fight him, he will defeat us. That is the hudu that he has over them. Their plan now is to just bypass him altogether. They're going to do this by invading Africa. This strategy had been articulated the year before by the man who has been mandated by the Roman Republic to execute it. To quote him, I I will draw Hannibal after me. I shall force him to fight on his native soil, and the prize of victory will be not some run-down forts in Brutium, Carthage itself. The man who is speaking these words, he He's only 30. But he has already established himself as the greatest military hero in Rome's history.

This is the young, long-haired, smoothly shaved Publius Cornelius Scipio.

In the last episode, we heard how over the previous four years, Scipio had destroyed Carthage's power base in Spain. By doing that, he had eliminated the manpower and the mineral wealth that had sustained Hannibal's war effort and on which Hannibal had been relying for reinforcements to finish his own war effort in Italy. Scipio had gone back to Rome, hadn't he? We discussed this at the end of the last episode. He'd gone back to Rome as the great hero of the air, the hero of the Roman people, the darling of the masses. He had won the consulship. He had been appointed to the command in Sicily, and he had explicitly been given license to invade North Africa, if he judged it to be in the interests of the Republic. Tom, you entered the last episode by saying, We will discover if he does. Obviously, the implication is that he will, and he does. He does think it's in the interests of the Republic, even though there are people in the Senate who are a little bit more cautious, aren't there?

Yes. Regular listeners to this series will not be surprised that the guy who takes the lead in opposing this strategy is Fabius Maximus Coctato, the Delair, the guy who, back in the wake of late Trasimine had been appointed dictator, so put in supreme control of the Roman State for six months. He had adopted this strategy of shadowing Hannibal, of never engaging him in battle, which then provided the template for Roman strategy in the wake of Canai, and which is still being adopted in 204 BC. He's now, I mean, unbelievably old. He's about 130. He is a figure of enormous status. He has the official title, Prinkep Sonatas. He's the Chief Senator. Fabius had directly accused Scipio in the debate about whether he should be given permission to invade Africa. He accused Scipio of endangering Rome's security by leading Heading in expedition to Africa while Hannibal was still current and present in Italy with his own army. So Fabius had directly accused Scipio, essentially, of glory hunting. 'Your glory matters less to me, ' he told Scipio, 'than the welfare bearer of our city. If you really want to destroy Hannibal, then go to Brutium and fight him there, which is a very stinging rebuke.

I think it's clearly animated by a personal animus as well as anxiety about strategy. I think it portrays what right from the beginning of Scipio's career has been an anxiety on the part of conservative elements in the Senate about his character.

Yeah, part of this is his youth, right? And his glamor and his eye for, as it were, a Roman photo opportunity. It's about his hair and his shiny cheeks.

His claims to have been born from a serpent, all of that stuff.

His general sense of un-Roman of Greekness, even. And of course, we mentioned in the previous episode that while he had been in Spain, some of the Iberian warlords had hailed him as a king, a word that for the Romans is the most shocking and and toxic label that there could possibly be. Everything about him just seems wrong, doesn't it? It just seems un-Roman.

It's not just that he's been hailed king, but that he is incredibly popular, both with his troops and with the mass of the Roman people. In Spain, in the wake of his great victories, his soldiers had taken to hailing him as impérator, which is a word that means general, but which in the long run will become the title that Augustus claims and which gives us our title of Emperor. So it doesn't have that connotation at this point. But nevertheless, it's a straw in the wind. I mean, no one has been hailed in this way before. And so senators back in Rome are anxious about this. And they're also anxious about the fact that he's become council when he's only 30 and you're meant to be 40. Essentially, he's been swept to power on a great wave of popular enthusiasm. And so there's a nervous as what will he do with this power, I think. But Scipio, he's not having any of this. He throws Fabius' criticisms back in his face. He says that, If you block my intention to invade Africa, then I am going to turn to the people and I will get them to force this strategy through.

Crikey. You, Fabius, and all your conservative allies in the Senate, you will be publicly humiliated. And so Fabius essentially steps down and the Conservatives, very reluctantly, give him the green light.

So the summer of 204, Scipio's expedition set sail from Sicily. He has his troops ships, his troop transports, and they are escorted by 40 warships. Scipio and his brother Lucius are commanding the right wing, as it were, of the fleet, 20 ships. And the 20 ships on the left wing are commanded by his friend Lelius, who we talked about last time, and by a young paymaster called Marcus Porteus Cato. And Cato, a name that will recur in Roman history. He is a young man with redish hair and gray eyes. He is in his early 30s, as Scipio is. But his political identity is very different, isn't it? So Cato is the most traditional of the traditionalists, the most conservative of the Conservatives. He is a big admirer of Fabius Maximus. And he's an impressive man, but he is by no means a natural ally of somebody like Scipio.

No, he's followed all the rules. He has this post, the Paymaster. He's a quister, it's called. He's responsible for keeping an eye on Scipio's spending. That is absolutely the role that someone of his age should have. He's not swanning around like a console with long hair and talking about snakes. He is performatively conservative. That means that he's absolutely not a Scipio soulmate. But of course, waiting for Scipio in Africa is a guy who absolutely is a Scipio soulmate, and that is his old mate, Massinissa. We met him in the previous episode. He's a Numidian king who had fought in Spain, first of all for the Carthaginians, and had then changed sides and become a big ally of Scipio and Rome. Massanissa has every reason to welcome Scipio's arrival with open arms, because just as Rome is engaged in a death struggle with Carthage, Massanissa is engaged in a death struggle of his own. Because people who listened to our last episode may remember, he is not the only Numidian king. There is another king who leads his own federation of Numidian tribes, and this is a guy called Sifax. Massanissa has been fighting him all his life.

As a teenager, he had had the beating of Sifax, and that was what had then enabled him to travel to Spain and fight for the Carthaginians. But he's now come back, and Sifax is still on the scene and still causing all kinds of trouble. The fact that Massanissa has come back to Africa as an ally of the Romans means that Sifax, who previously had been an ally of the Romans, has now obviously swung round and become an ally of the Carthaginians.

That's the way diplomacy works.

It is.

But there's another element, isn't there? So there's one thing that in this story, this story has had everything, of course, except one element. There's one element that's been missing. And it's brilliant to be able to unveil that element now in the third episode of this series. And that element is a woman.

I know. Absolute scenes.

And this woman is called Sofanisba. Brilliant name and exciting person. Tell us all about Sofa Nizba.

She is the daughter of a Carthaginian general whose name it will stun listeners to learn is Hasdrabel. But of course. Basically, Unless you're called Hannibal or Mago, your name is Hasdrabel. He had been serving in Spain alongside Hasdrabel Barker. He was in command of one of those three armies camped out in what was going to become Lisbon when Scipio captured New Carthage. He's gone back to Carthage and he's become the leading figure in the Carthaginian Senate. Now that Hasdrabel and Mago are both dead, he's basically the best general the Carthaginians have, with the exception of Hannibal. This He wasn't really to say much. So Fabius Maximus, I mean, very bitchy, described him as a general who best displayed his speed in retreat. So not promising. Anyway, Hasdrabel has this daughter, Soffin Isba. And Sofan Isba is very smart, very beautiful, very patriotic. And Hasdrabel says to Sofan Isba, Look, it is your duty to go and marry Sifax and to get a meeting out of your hand and to make sure that he remains as a loyal ally of Carthage. And so Sofan Isba does her duty. She goes off, she marries Sifax, and Sifax thinks she's absolutely great.

He adores her. So this really cements the alliance, which is obviously bad news for Massanissa, because in Africa, if Sifax, with his Numidian horsemen and the mass weight of the Carthageanians in Africa, in Carthage, if they combine, Massanissa is in real trouble. He's desperate for Scipio to arrive and provide him with the backing of the legions. When Scipio does land in Africa, Massanissa is thrilled and he feels it's payback time. Sure enough, neither Hasdrabel nor Sifax prove any match for Scipio. It turns out, in fact, that Scipio is prepared to play very, very dirty against Sifax and Hasdra Bull indeed.

Oh, no, that's poor for Scipio. What does Scipio do that's so dirty?

Well, so a few months after his arrival, he's in winter quarters, so there's no campaigning. Scipio arranges a truce with Sifax, the Némidian king, and his goal is to try and win him back to the Roman cause because Scipio and Sifax had actually met before Scipio had gone as an ambassador to him. And they got on well enough. Sifax said, No, I'm not interested. I love Carthage now, and I've got this gorgeous wife. I'm not betraying her. Scipio then goes on a makes a personal visit to Sifax, tries to press his case again. Again, Sifax rebuffs him. But Scipio notices something interesting about Sifax's camp, and that is that all his quarters are made of reeds. So not made out of Earth or mud or whatever, but reeds. Then his spies come back from Hasdrabel's camp, which isn't far from Sifax's, and they say, Well, Hasdrabel's camp, their winter quarters aren't made of mud or Earth either. They are made of wood. Scipio ponders this, and then he intimates to Hasdrabel that he might be interested in opening negotiations with him. He floats the possibility that perhaps a peace treaty could be arrived at, whereby the Romans would keep what they have in Italy, and the Carthaginians could keep what they have in Africa, and maybe that would be the basis for a settlement.

That sounds promising. That's nice.

Hasdrabel is He's interested in this. And so negotiations start opening between his camp and the Roman camp, and Sifax gets involved as well. And so the Romans, when they send their ambassadorial teams to these two camps, are really able to scope it out. And they work out the best way to set Sifax's camp, which is made of reeds, and Hasdable's camp, which is made of wood, on fire.

Oh, dear.

And so Scipio, with this information, he sends Lelius and Massanissa to torch Sifax's camp, which duly goes up, is incinerated, and large numbers of Sifax's men with them. Then he sends out another squad to set fire to the Carthaginian camp. All the Carthaginians come rushing out That Scipio's men are on hand to slaughter them. Polybius, he thinks this whole wheeze is absolutely brilliant. To quote him, Of all Scipio's many brilliant exploits, this, it seems to me, was the most splendid and inventive. But it's blatant treachery country. He's meant to be negotiating. He's broken all kinds of oaths. It's, I think, very, very rich, considering that the Romans are endlessly going on about what they call punica fides, so punic faith, the sense that the Carthaginians are uniquely treacherous.

But Can't the Romans take the view that basically it's war, so the ideal thing is to kill your enemies and to win?

Actually, the Romans are very anxious, as we will see, to present themselves as being on the sides of right and of the gods. I think Scipio is playing very, very dirty There's a good story there. Anyway, it works for him because he's wiped out large numbers of Carthaginian and Numidian troops. Even though Sifax and Hasdrabul managed to escape the inferno, there's a sense now, I think, that Scipio clearly has the beating of them. It proves because the moment spring arrives, he moves in for the kill. First, he meets with what remains to Sifax and Hasdrupal, so their combined army, in a battle that has the brilliantly Custer-esque name of the Great Plains, so the Battle of the Great Plains. Scipio displays tactical mastery yet again, wipes them out. Sifax and Hasdrupal again managed to escape, but 30,000 are left as food for the vultures on the Great Plains. Scipio's cavalry, commanded by Massinissa and Lailius, pursues Sifax. They take him prisoner, and also they take prisoner, his queen, the beautiful and patriotic daughter of Hasdribal, Soffernisba. She knows her duty. We're told that she's actually very like Cleopatra, that she was so charming that merely to see her, merely to hear her talk, was at once to be utterly smitten.

She knows that in this situation with Sifax knocked out, she has to marry Massanissa and try and persuade him to jump ship. Massanissa is completely swept away by her. I mean, she's clearly absolutely gorgeous. He immediately marries her, and he goes to Scipio and says, Look, I've got this great new wife. Isn't she tremendous? Scipio is appalled because he's very understandably anxious that Sofa Nisba will try and win Massanissa round to the Carthaginian cause. Also, it has to be said, he's not very keen on women. This is something that is often said about him, that women are introduced into his camp and he won't have anything to do with them.

Like a Royal Navy officer in the 18th century who won't have women on board ship, that thing.

Very much that vibe, I think. He marries. I don't think he's a great one for ladies hanging around with him in his camp. He essentially tells Massanissa, Well, you have to choose between your wife or me. And Massanissa isn't an idiot. And so he chooses Scipio. And soffin Isba, who is composed and dignified to the end, prepares a cup of poison, drinks it, and as she's dying, she berates Massanissa for being absolutely useless. So that's the end of her.

And is that the end of women in this series?

Well, basically, until they all end up being enslaved at the very end of our series. So Okay.

Female listeners can look forward to that. All right. So Carthage is now staring down the barrel, right?

Completely.

Sifax is gone. Hasdrabel is out. They are staring into the abyss, basically. And this Carthage Indian Senate have no choice now other than to open negotiations with the Romans. That must have been utterly galling for them.

Yeah. So they send 30 ambassadors to Scipio, and Scipio's terms are predictably harsh. So he tells them that Carthage will have to withdraw all her troops from lands beyond Africa. The city will be allowed 20 warships, no more than that. The Carthage Indians will have to provision Scipio's army while people are sent back to Rome to find out whether the Senate agrees to these terms, and they will have to pay another Versailles Treaty type indemnity in the way that they'd had to do at the end of the previous Punic War. The Senate is very reluctant to agree to these terms because they can see that it effectively spells the end of their city as a great power, but they feel they haven't really got any choice. So they say, yeah, okay, the terms are taken to Rome and the treaty is there ratified by the Roman Senate. Simultaneously, however, they haven't completely given up the fight because, of course, back in Italy, in Brutium, the hill of Italy, Hannibal and his army are still there.

I was wondering what has happened to Hannibal during all this. He's just been hanging around in Southern Italy.

They say, Listen, you're completely wasting your time there. Come back to Africa. We really need you. They send him a transport fleet. Hannibal, he's guttied, absolutely guttied. He spent all this time there, and now essentially he's got to recognize that it's been wasted. He boards the transport ships with his army, and they head back to Africa, and they disembark at a place called Leptis Minor, which is a port about 100 miles to the south of Carthage. He is aware that the peace negotiations are going on, so he doesn't want to interrupt them. But equally, he wants to prepare for the worst. I mean, suppose the peace negotiations break down. And so he maintains his army and he drills it very hard all that summer. And summer turns to autumn, and autumn turns to winter. By this point, the peace treaty has been ratified in Rome by the Senate, and it is sent back to Carthage, where the Carthaginian Senate have to ratify it themselves. And at this point, faced with the prospect not just of losing the war, but of losing their status as the capital of a great empire, essentially accepting that from this point on, they're going to be a provincial second division power.

Lots of leading figures in the Carthaginian Senate get cold feet. They also know, of course, that they have Hannibal back on African soil, and Hannibal is the greatest general of his day.

If they're facing relegation, why not roll the dice and go for it one last time.

Absolutely. As winter turns to spring and the 16th campaigning season of the war begins, it becomes evident that the peace is not going to hold. And this is massive for fans of great generals, because it's clear that Hannibal and Scipio, both of the men who have never in their entire careers lost a battle, the greatest commanders in the entire history of their respective cities, that these two colossi are going to be going head to head after all. It's It's a massive sport.

It's Napoleon and Wellington, isn't it? It's very exciting. I mean, there's proper tension. The World Cup final is coming.

Pre-match tension.

Yeah. Pre-match tension. So Scipio is inland. He's moved inland from his coastal base, and he is hoovering up towns. But obviously, the risk for him is, as he's hoovering up towns, he might be cut off from the sea. Hannibal, he needs manpower. Troops is his thing. And he is spending the summer drilling his recruits, raising troops as many as he can. He's got some elephants, right?

Eighty. Eighty war elephants. The one thing he doesn't have is cavalry, which is ironic because cavalry had always been his strongest arm, but he does have these Eighty war elephants. He has a serious force, and it takes him all summer, essentially, to raise an army that he feels is large enough to take on Scipio in his legions. Finally, with the coming of autumn, he's ready. At the head of his troops, he marches inland, making for the town near which Scipio has his base. And this town, Dominic, is called Xarma. So Hannibal is approaching Xarma. Scipio is in it to you, these two commanders drawing near to each other. They've never met before, but it becomes evident the nearer they come, that actually they're really keen to meet with the other one. Peace feelers have gone out. And And the justification for this is that they're going to have one last attempt at negotiation. But I think basically, they both know that this is very unlikely to result in a peace treaty. They just want to meet each other.

There are terms on the table, though, aren't there? So Hannibal, for example, offers Scipio a deal, and he says, We can preserve the status quo, effectively. The Romans, you can keep Sicily, you can keep Spain. I mean, that's the Carthage Union is giving up on two massive prizes. Carthage, however, will keep her possessions in North Africa, and we won't have to pay a big indemnity. There'll be no reparations, and we won't have a limit on the size of our navy. And Scipio, he is not taking that because his terms are very simple. They are unconditional surrender.

Yeah. I mean, he He had already offered terms that didn't involve unconditional surrender. But now the Carthaginian is carrying on the fight. He feels, well, it's surrender or nothing. And clearly, Hannibal's terms are unacceptable to Scipio, and Scipio's terms are unacceptable to Hannibal. And so the interview comes to an end. There will be no more negotiations. Consequentially, battle is now inevitable. This means that the two greatest commanders of the age are about to meet in the ultimate clash of Titans.

Well, we love a clash of the Titans on the rest of history. Come back after the break and the battle of Zama begins.

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Welcome back, everybody, to The Rest is History. Now, we promised you the Titanic showdown between Hannibal and Scipio. This is the moment towards which not just this series, but our previous series about Rome and Carthage have been building. Tom, we don't have all day, so let's just get into the highlights take us through the highlights of this Titanic clash.

Okay, so as we said, Hannibal for the first time is weak in cavalry, so he's therefore weak on his wings. Scipio, by contrast, has excellent cavalry. He has his own. We've mentioned them before, the best trained cavalry the Romans have ever had. And of course, he has Massanissa's Numidians, even though they almost miss the battle because Massanissa turns up very late. Lailius is in command of the Roman cavalry, Massanissa is in command of his Numidians, and they meet with the Carthaginian cavalry, route them, and chase them from the battlefield. Now, Hannibal's strength, as we've said, is in his war Elephants, and he places them in the front line, 80 of them. Terrifying sight. The Roman front lines, they're quaking in their sandals. But Scipio has prepared for this onslaught. Again, remember, the infantry, like the cavalry, are very, very well drilled, much better drilled than any Roman army before them in history. When the elephants charge them, they essentially step aside and open up corridors down which the elephants just go rampaging, and they burst out the other side and they can be easily tracked down and eliminated that way. That's Hannibal's strongest card played, and it hasn't worked.

What now happens is that it comes down to the infantry, these great rival blocks of men on foot, and they advance and they smash into each other. To quote Polybius, many fell on both sides, fighting with fierce determination where they stood. But at length, the squadrons of Massanissa and of Lailius returned from their pursuit of the Indian cavalry and arrived by a stroke of fortune at the crucial moment. The result, Dominic, listeners, is that Scipio is able to inflict on Hannibal the wipeout that he had so often inflicted on the Romans.

The irony of it.

Yeah, the irony. Hannibal himself takes horse. He manages to flee the disaster. But according to Polybius, 20,000 of Hannibal's men are left dead on the battlefield, and the same number are taken prisoner. The Romans, by contrast, lost only 1,500 men. Again, to quote Polybius, this was the result of the final battle between these two commanders, and it decided the war.

Crikey. So what a turnaround from the battles of late Trasimene or Canai. And a question for you. Is there a world in which the Battle of Zama goes differently, or do the Roman institutional advantages at this point? Do they outweigh the Carthaginian strong points so heavily that there's basically no way Hannibal can win this battle? I mean, anything can happen in a battle, right?

Against a less competent commander and against less well-trained troops, you can imagine Hannibal winning. But it's clear that the effects of the fighting over these decade and more has been to hone the Roman army into a much more lethal killing machine than been at the start of the war. They're much better drilled. They have the gladius now, this stabbing sword that they've borrowed from the Spaniards. It makes their infantry superb. But the other factor, I think, which dooms Hannibal in this battle is, as we said, he doesn't have cavalry. Hannibal's great genius has always been for coordinating infantry and cavalry, and it just doesn't work. The one card he really had, his Elephants, the Romans know how to deal with them. They're frightening, but they know how to cope with them.

How How much do those factors, so the extraordinary preparedness and proficiency of the Roman Infantry, but also the Carthagean lack of cavalry, how much do they reflect deeper issue, which is Rome's institutional resources compared with Carthage's economic resources, manpower, and so on.

I mean, absolutely, because Rome's great strength throughout has been her manpower, and Carthage has always opted to rely on mercenaries.

So it's that classic thing where basically you can lose and lose and lose, but one day, if you win, you win the whole thing.

Yeah, if you're the bigger power. Essentially. And by this point, Rome is indisputable with bigger power because over the course of the war, she has occupied the whole of Sicily.

And Spain, of course.

Yeah. And she's in the process of conquering the road that joins Spain to Italy, which will become the provincia or Provence, as it's still called to this day. So Southern France, Southern Gaul.

So the Carthaginians have rolled the dice. Hannibal has gambled and he has lost. And the result of this, they probably thought, Well, we have nothing to lose. But they do. But now they discovered precisely what they do have to lose because Scipio's terms, when they return to the negotiating table, are that much harsher, precisely because the Carthaginians didn't agree immediately. So the indemnity is going to be even bigger.

And what is more, it's going to be paid over 50 years. So that is a deliberate policy of tying the Carthage Indians down, crippling their economy for half a century. They cannot go to war without explicit Roman permission. So that essentially means that the Romans have now taken over Carthage's foreign policy. And previously, they'd been permitted 20 warships. Now, they can only have 10. But the guy who is laughing, I mean, the guy who's really come out well from this, of course, is Massanissa, the Némidian king. And Scipio confirms him as king, not just over his own tribal federation, but over Sifax's Némidians as well. And I think even more fatefully, and whether this was a deliberate policy to create trouble or not, it's unclear. But I mean, it definitely will create trouble. The peace terms imposed on the Carthaginians obliged them, and I quote, to restore to Massanissa all the houses, territory, cities, and other property which had belonged to him or to his ancestors. So effectively, this is to leave Carthage with its own hinterland. But what the borders are between that hinterland and Numedia is very unclear. Massanissa will obviously have one point, the Carthage will have another.

Massanissa is an ally of Rome. The Carthaginians are not allowed to go to war without Roman permission. You can see that this is going to be a sea of troubles for the Carthaginians.

Yeah, and it will give Massanissa all kinds of opportunities, won't it, for bad behavior in the future. So there are lots of Carthaginians, presumably, when these terms come in, even now after their defeat at Zama, they must still be thinking, God, is there anything we can do to avoid signing up to this? I mean, the obvious comparison is Germany at the end of the first World War, right? I mean, that's the shadow that's hanging over this whole story.

Or Hitler in the bunker.

Could you go down in flames?

Yeah, it's that bad. There is actually a Carthaginian senator called Gisgo, who stands up and makes this case to a public assembly. But Hannibal hears him, and he is infuriated, and he He physically hauls Gisgo down from the rostrum where he's standing with his own hands. This is not acceptable behavior at all. So everyone is very cross with him. Hannibal apologizes very gracefully, and he says, Look, I haven't been in the city since I was nine or whatever. I've been living in an army camp all these decades. My manners are very rough and ready, so I do apologize. However, he then goes on to say, Gisgo is mad if he thinks that these terms from Scipio are bad. They could have been much, much worse. And he says, We will still be governing ourselves. There will not be a Roman garrison planted in the middle of our city. We still have our Our Hinterland, and that Hinterland is very rich and prosperous and fertile. He says he makes an appeal to the Carthaginian people. I beg you not even to debate the matter. Instead, pray with one single voice that the Roman people will ratify Scipio's terms.

Of course, Hannibal is the great enemy of Rome. He is the man who, year after year after year, has been in the front line, fighting the Romans. For him now to say, We have to make peace, means that there can really be no arguing with the case that he's making.

Yeah, of course. If the guy who's the hero of the Carthaginian cause is saying, Let's do a deal, they're clearly going to do a deal. In the long run, they do. The Carthaginians agree. Scipio in Rome gets approval from the Senate for his treaty. At last, this great war, I mean, capital G, capital W, a war that has gone on for almost 20 years, it is over. Actually, this is the end for both Hannibal and Scipio as well, because their time in the sun, the opportunity to shine has now been taken away.

It's certainly the end of their military careers. Neither of them will command armies ever again. But Hannibal, he remains the dominating figure in the Carthage Indian state. He actually proves very impressive as a civilian leader. He streamlines the finances in Carthage. There's endless fraud, embezelment, and so on. He appreciates that Carthage is going to need every last bit of coin that it can scrounge together. He also democratizes the Carthage Indian government. He is essentially a populist. He's not popular with his fellow Carthageanian aristocrats, but he's very popular with the mass of the Carthageanian people. He introduces reforms that are designed to weaken the hold of the Carthaginian aristocracy on the justice system. Simon Hornblower, a great ancient historian, author of a brilliant dual biography of Hannibal and Scipio, describes him as an energetic left-wing innovator.

Left-wing innovator.

The Tony Ben of Carthaginian history. Obviously, this means that loads of his fellow senators have even more reason now to loathe him. I mean, not only are they jealous of him, but they're resentful of him that he's trying to undermine their power. But he remains massively popular with the Carthaginian people. For now, Hannibal seems safe enough.

Something quite American about Hannibal, I think. The Americans love electing generals as presidents. And he has returned from the war. Okay, he hasn't won. So he's an American general who's been serving in Vietnam. But he has returned with his luster undimmed, I guess, for the ordinary Catholic Indians. And what about Scipio? So Scipio surely must now glitter as the greatest here in the Roman Pantheon.

He's trailing clouds of glory, and he is given a stupifying succession of honors. So he's given a triumph. Interesting that he doesn't insist that Hannibal walks in that triumph. It reflects the fact that Scipio continues to respect Hannibal and that treating Hannibal with respect in a way burnishes his own glory. Because if you humiliate Hannibal, then in a sense, you're downgrading him as an enemy. I think that's probably what's been going on in Scipio's mind. Anyway, he has this triumph. He's awarded, Fabius, by this point, is dead. So the title of Prinkep Sonatas, Chief Senator, is vacant. So Scipio takes it, and he's given the title of Africanus. So Scipio, the African, meaning that he has essentially defeated the Africans. And Livy notes that he was the first general in Rome to be celebrated by the name of the people he had conquered. So Scipio Africanus, he's clearly a massive, dominating, glamorous, prestigious, prestigious figure. But it's interesting that he seems to have adjusted less successfully to civilian life than Hannibal. And we've been comparing him on and off throughout this episode in the previous to the Duke of Wellington, who fought a war in Spain and then met with the greatest enemy of his country and defeated him in a climatic battle that ended that enemy's career.

You could think of Zahmer as the Waterloo of the Punic Wars. Then like the Duke of Wellington, who became Prime Minister and was a terrible Prime Minister, Scipio finds it hard to take the Senate with him. There's this brilliant thing, isn't there, of the Duke of Wellington has his first cabinet meeting and is outraged. He says, I gave them their orders, but they wanted to stay behind and discuss them. I think there's a similar feeling with Scipio. He's got his long hair, he's very glamorous, he's son of a snake. He can't be bothered with senators sitting on their dignity.

Talking about drainage.

Talking about, well, I mean, probably moaning about him. I think the very range of honors that he's got, his titles, princeps, imperator, they generate jealousy, I think. There is one person in particular who really detests him. This is a guy we met traveling with the Roman fleet to Africa from Sicily. This is the erstwhile Quaista, the paymaster in Scipio's army, M. Porcius Cato, this man who was Scipio's opposite in every way. To quote one of his later biographers. As Scipio's Quaista during the war in Africa, Cato was appalled by Scipio's habitual extravagance and how ready he was to lavish money on his soldiers. He's appalled both because it's a waste of money, which Cato doesn't approve of, but also because I think, the sense that perhaps Scipio is buying the favor of his soldiers. And again, Cato is very, very disapproving of this.

We talked about his slightly performative, but no doubt deep-seated and heartfelt conservatism. So when they return in the years after the Battle of Zama, Cato turns himself, doesn't he, into the champion of the Conservatives. He doesn't take bribes. He lives very austerely. He, for example, sets his heart against legislation that would allow women to wear jewelry in public.

Yeah, so it's good to have women back on the show, isn't it?

Yeah, brilliant for them. Plutarch tells us that Cato despised philosophy, and as a patriot, was thoroughly contempluous of Greek culture and lifestyle, so he doesn't even use doctors.

No, because doctors are Greek, and both his wife and his children then die, but Cato is unapologetic. He'd rather have them dead than use a Greek doctor.

Right, exactly. I guess we compared Scipio with Alexander. That aspect of Scipio's personality, the populism, the showiness, the charisma, is precisely what Kato despises as un-Roman. When Kato is campaigning, he shares the rations of the men, he wears the fatigues, he carries his own armor. He is very different from the glamor boy style that Scipio incarnates. Actually, their enmity is going to become one of the great drivers of Roman politics in this period.

Scipio has been in charge of a campaign in Spain where he's been doing all this, carrying his own armor and stuff. It's very successful. When he returns to Rome in 1194, he is awarded a triumph. I think that he feels, Well, I've made my name now, and he's ready to bring his enmity with Scipio out into the open. This means that Scipio now has a rival who can provide a counterweight to Scipio's prestige in the Senate. Something else that is slightly putting Scipio's luster into shade is developments in the Eastern Mediterranean, which we have not yet talked about in this series, but there, very dramatic developments that have taken place. Because as we've already mentioned, Rome has finished the great war against Hannibal with what is probably the most lethal and battle-hardened fighting force in the whole of history. If you have the most lethal and battle-hardened fighting force in history, very tempting to use it. Why let it go to waste?

Yeah, of course.

Carthage obviously remains Rome's the chief object of her vigilance. But she is not in any mood to take insubordination from other famous powers either. In Massodon, on the other side of the Adriatic, what's now Northern Greece, there is a king there who sits on what had once been the throne of Alexander the Great. This is a guy who's been a Massodonian king for many decades, Philip IV. In the course of the Punic War, he had made a terrible mistake Because he had assumed in the immediate wake of the Battle of Canai that Rome was bound to lose. And so he had signed up to an alliance with Hannibal. Didn't actually go anywhere. But the Romans, in their best Mafia style, do not forget this show of disrespect. And so in the year 200, so very shortly after the Battle of Zama, a Roman task force crosses the Adriatic, begins a war against Massodon. In 197, the legions meet with Philip's great phalanx, this great bristling porcupine of spears at a battle at a place called Kinocephali. The Romans cut the Macedonian phalanx to pieces. The guy who has won that victory, a man called Flaminius, the following year, he goes to the Isthmian games, which are held in Korent, the city on the join point between Northern Greece and the Peloponese.

And there he proclaims the freedom of the Greeks in flamboyant language. At the same time, with a completely unembarrassed hypocrisy, which will become very, very typical of Roman behavior over the succeeding decades. He also replaces the Macedonian garrisons that had been occupying various strongholds in Greece, and which were colloquially known as the fetters of Greece, with Roman garrisons. So even as he is claiming the fact that, I've defeated I've freed Greece for a Macedonian tyranny, Greece is now free. He is replacing those Macedonian garrisons with Roman garrisons. It means that Greece is now effectively, within less than a decade of the Battle of Zama, it's become a Roman protectorate.

Listeners may be wondering, so much of this story has been about the Western Mediterranean. What's been going on in the Eastern Mediterranean? The answer is in the previous 120 years or so, Alexander the Great Empire, covering some of the richest parts of the classical world, had broken up into different competing Kingdoms ruled by the so-called successors, so the descendants of his captains and lieutenants. You can almost think of them as lots of different Greek run or Macedonian run Kingdoms. There are other Macedonian Kingdoms. Obviously, Tolemaic Egypt is one.

Yeah, so there are basically three. There's Massaden, which governs Greece, but have now been defeated by the Romans. There's the Tolemies in Egypt, as you say. Then there's the largest of the lot.

Salukid Empire.

Salukid Empire, which at this point is ruled by Antiochus III, who is the heir of Salukus, who had been one of Alexander's generals. Under Antiochus, who comes to be known as Antiochus the Great, the Salukid Empire reaches its furthest extent. It ends up stretching from the Aegean all the way to the frontiers of India. Antiochus understandably feels that as the ruler of an empire as massive as this, he doesn't need to put up with any nonsense from the Romans, who he views as upstart barbarians. When he crosses the Hellespont into Thrace, he moves from Asia into Europe and begins menacing the Greek cities on the Eastern Seaboard of the Aegean, so what's now the Coast of Turkey, and the Romans send protests, he responds to the Roman ambassadors with absolute contempt. It's not just that he rules this massive empire. It's not just that he rules the Romans as barbarians who should keep out of Greek affairs. It's also the fact that by this point, he is in communication with the best possible man to advise him on how to defeat the Romans. And that is, of course, Hannibal.

Right. So basically, his intention is to hire Hannibal in the same way that you would hire a football coach or a brilliant sporting star to be the star player for his team, Presumably?

To a degree. I mean, Hannibal at this point is still in Carthage. And it is not 100% clear, initially, that Hannibal is in communication with the Antiochus. He almost certainly is. But certainly, the Romans feel that they cannot risk Hannibal teaming up with Antiochus. They send a party of three senators to Carthage to say, Look, hand him over. Hannibal is informed that this is going to be happening, and he plays it very, very cool. He walks around the marketplace. He doesn't let anyone know that he's planning anything. Then the moment night falls, he slips out to a side gate where he's had a horse prepared for him. He climbs onto it. He gallops away to the Coast where there is a fortress on a private estate of his. There's a jetty with a galley, and he gets onto the galley. There are men at all ready to take him away, and he makes his escape from Carthage. This galley sails all the way across the Mediterranean eastwards, really a journey back in history to the city of Tair, the city from which the colonists who had originally founded Carthage came. He lands in Tair, and he then goes overland up through Syria He ends up in the city of Ephesus on the Aegean Coast of what is now Turkey.

There he meets with Antiochus.

He's met the ruler of the Salukid Empire, Antiochus. What does he say to him? What happens?

He says, Listen, I will be your coach. As you said.

I'm in.

I'm in.

Five-year contract.

There it is. Yeah. Unsurprising, the Romans are furious about this. They send a delegation to Antiochus Marcus's court. It is said that attached to this delegation, not an official member of it, but going with the delegation, was Scipio Africanus. He had come to persuade the Slukeid king not to go to war. Hannibal, of course, is busy urging him the opposite. The two old enemies, they are, I guess, people who'd played football in the World Cup or something, and now are on posing asides in the Champions League or something like that as managers. But it doesn't stop them, so the story goes from meeting up again. They're having a chat, and Scipio asks Hannibal, Which general do you think is the greatest of all time?

This is a great conversation. This is exactly the conversation you'd want them to have.

Hannibal answers, and giving his reasons as he does so, that obviously, in first place, is Alexander the Great. Then he says, Actually, I would also place Pyrrhus in second. Pyrus was the guy who had invaded Italy a few generations before Hannibal's invasion. And again, Hannibal gives reasons why Pyrrhus has the number two position. And Scipio, who's obviously a little bit disappointed that Hannibal hasn't mentioned him, Then he says, Oh, and who would you put in the third place? And Hannibal then says, Well, I'd put myself at number three. Brilliant. And Scipio, to give him credit, laughs at this and says, Well, what if you had beaten me at the Battle of Zama? And Hannibal Oh, well, in that case, I would have put myself above Alexander and above Pyrus and above all other commanders.

God, Hannibal's not giving Scipio anything, is he?

I think it's a wonderful conversation. I like the fact that Scipio laughs. I mean, there hasn't been much laughter in this story. It's the only record we have of either Scipio or Hannibal laughing. It's obvious from Hannibal's reply that he's a very witty and confusing man.

Is he witty or is he just boastful?

He is witty. The account that we have of it specifies that he was being witty.

Oh, great banter.

That in a sense, Scipio didn't quite know how to reply to it because he felt that Hannibal had had the better of him in that exchange.

Are they speaking in Greek?

They would presumably have been speaking in Greek, yes. When they met before Zama, they had interpreters because they didn't want to leave open any chance of their communications being mistaken. But I guess at this point, they were speaking in Greek.

So late in 192, Antiochus and the Silukids invade Greece, and the Romans respond with overwhelming force, don't they? So they route him at, of all places, Thermopy. And when Antiochus withdraws across the Aegean, they pursue him into Asia, what is now, I guess, Turkey. And this army is led by Scipio's brother Lucius. So Scipio himself is there as an advisor. He's a director of football. Yes.

Yeah. Well, so it is said. But if he is actually there, and it's much debated by ancient historians, he's not at the big shootout, which takes place at a place called Magnesia, where the Silukids are comprehensively defeated. Lucius Scipio is the victor. If Scipio Africanus hadn't been present, neither was Hannibal. By this stage, both the old warhorses are fading into the background. But even so, the Romans remain paranoid about the mischief that Hannibal might get up to. And so part of the terms that Lucius imposes on his defeated foe is that Hannibal has to be surrendered into Roman hands. Antaicus has to quit Europe for good. He has to withdraw inland from the Aegean Sea board, inevitably has to pay a massive indemnity. But the point is made, we are not going to allow you to have Hannibal. And there's a sense, perhaps, that that is for the Romans, although it might seem a minor demand is, in the key one. They hate him and fear him that much. Obviously, Hannibal knows that this is going to be happening. So he's already made sure to scarper. For the next seven years, he leads the life of a fugitive.

He's constantly finding refuge in a court here, a court there, and then being forced to go on the run again. The Romans are endlessly pursuing him. Finally, in 183, on a country estate in Bethinia, which is now Northwestern Turkey, He is cornered. And Hannibal, who had known what was coming, he'd had various tunnels dug out from his house. But the Romans have cornered him. They block off the exits from the tunnels. And so there, Hannibal knows that he's got no way out. And so he does what Sofa Nisba had done many years before, and he glugs down some poison. And that is the end of him. And Rome's greatest enemy, at the age of 64, at last, is dead.

What a depressing and down beat and sadly banal way for Hannibal's life to have ended. This extraordinary character who blazed like a meteor across the pages of the classical world. And now he just is in Turkey and his flipping basement of his bunker taking poison. Disappointing.

Yeah, it's miserable. And in the long run, the poet Juvenile will write a poem. He was this great guy who led Elephants over the Alps, and now he's a dead loser in a basement in Bethinia.

We're all dead losers. And ultimately, Tom, that's the lesson of history.

I mean, it's interesting. You say that because Scipio actually dies in the same year, 183. And he, unlike Hannibal, had died in his bed of natural causes. He died very wealthy, adorned with honors, admired by his fellow citizens, secure in his Fame as the man who had beaten Hannibal. But amazingly, he also had died as an exile. And the reason for this is that in In 187, when Scipio returns with his brother Lucius from the Eastern campaign, and they are loaded down with wealth and money and cash and tremendous piles of plunder, this causes consternation in the Senate that these two Scipio brothers are now so wealthy that perhaps they might end up putting Rome itself in their shade. Cato and his allies feel strong enough to go on the attack. They openly accuse Lucius of embezelment. Remember, Cato's background as a paymaster. He knows where to sniff around. Scipio is accused of complicity in this. He's so offended that he arrives in the Senate and he pulls out his account books and he rips them up before the full gaze of the Senate, and indignantly, and to a degree, justifiably, reminds his accusers of all the treasure that he has won for Rome.

But the thing is, he's not prepared to stand and fight because he feels the humiliation of it too deeply. He's not going to bother swatting aside these pygmies as he sees them. Instead, he retires in high doujan to his country estate in Campania, so down by the Bay of Naples. Essentially, for the rest of his life, he's a broken man. It's a triumph for the Conservatives who had always hated him. It's a triumph for what What they see as an absolute point of principle that, and to quote Livy, no one citizen should be permitted an eminence so formidable that it prevents him from being questioned by the laws, i. E. Even Scipio Africanus is not above the law. Of course, there is one man in particular who had harried Scipio to his death, and that was M. Porcius Cato. Cato, with Scipio dead, has now inherited Scipio status as the most admired and prestigious man in the Senate. The question is, what is he going to do with this prestige?

Eto, even by Roman standards, has a pathological hatred and contempt for Carthage, doesn't he? He does. And this is going to be very, very ominous for the Carthageunians. They're beaten, but they're still a name to conjure with, one of the wealthiest cities in the Mediterranean. But for Carthage, the clock is ticking, Tom. Very sad. So we will find out the fate of Carthage in the fourth and final episode of this epic series. So that final episode, the climax of this tremendous journey, will be out on Thursday. Is it possible there are any people out there who have not already been motivated to join the Rest is History Club? Human beings are strange creatures, so maybe there are. If you want to join it now as your last chance before that episode, go to theresteshistory. Com and you can hear what happens to Carthage right away. What excitement. Tom, thank you very much and goodbye.

Bye-bye.

Tom, we have some absolutely unbelievable news to share with our listeners. Probably the most exciting news we've ever shared.

No? I mean, no dispute. This is the most exciting news of all time.

Right. We are announcing the launch of some brand new Rest is History merchandise. The important thing about this is that it is exclusively for you, the members. Nobody else will be able to get this.

That's absolutely right. So these are T-shirts that have been designed by one of our beloved Athel stands, Graham Johnson. And what he's done is to do designs for six of the biggest series that we have coming up over the next few months.

Yes. So it's exclusive merch for our members. And the very first iteration is this amazing T-shirt. It really is a wonderful design. It's showing Hannibal as Hercules crossing the Alps on an elephant. It's beautifully imagined, I have to say, and I would wear it with enormous pride myself.

It's so good that it has a Roman Hydra with lots of different heads. Hannibal has chopped off some of them, but there are others with Raymond Helmets on. I mean, it could not be more epic.

Epic is the word. Now, if you want to show your epic status as a member of the Rest is History Club, I think it's important for you to wear one of these T-shirts. When you're going out around town, When you see people, if you want to impress your husband or wife, wear this T-shirt, or wear multiple T-shirts, get several if you can, and you want to know how to get hold of it. The way you get to get hold of it is this. You go to the new exciting Rest is History website, log in, and go to the members merch section. Tom, what about if you're an Apple member?

Because I want to get this absolutely right, I'm going to read out what I have been given. If you're an Apple member, you will need to join our members us mailing list to get access. Just send an email to the restishistory@goalhanger. Com with Apple member in the subject line and a screenshot of your membership, and we will add you in. And honestly, that couldn't be easier, could it, Dominic?

No. That's the restishistory@goalhanger. C goalhanger. Com with Apple member in the subject line. Now, what if you're not a member of the show, or not yet a member of the show, I should say? Well, this is a wonderful opportunity for you to put that right and to get involved with the show. So not only will you be able get your hands on this unique and uniquely cool example of merch, but you'll also get all the great benefits, early access to series, bonus episodes, exclusive new mini-series, and so much more.

I mean, those are just sensational benefits. Not only do you get to wear a Hannibal-themed T-shirt, but there is so much else. So don't hang around. Sign up. Head to therestishistory. Com.. Bye-bye.