The Battle of Zama Didn't Happen as Documented

Pro: Your first point is that if I consider Polybius to be biased and untrustworthy, it means that I have no reason to believe that the accomplishments of Hannibal were true. I would not consider this to be true though, because the Romans would have literally no reason to lie about how Hannibal managed to defeat the far superior Roman armies due to poor Roman commanders. That part of the war is more likely to cause people to think more poorly of the Romans, it is very likely that Polybius wanted to defend Scipio Africanus in specific. Con: I think you have missed my point. I"m saying that Polybius made Hannibal famous. Yes, we would likely know his name and his great battles but Hannibal"s biography- his childhood oath, his lost eye, his treaty with Scipio- those details were reported by Polybius. Others may have told better or different accounts. In fact, there were almost certainly Greek and Phoenician versions of Hannibal is we will never get to read. If we throw out Polybius, Hannibal is reduced to a name, a date, a statistic. Polybius made Hannibal a legend. Consider Vercingetorix, the Arverni chieftain who fought Julius Caesar at the Battle of Alesia. Every detail we know of the man comes from Caesar"s commentaries. Was Caesar an objective biographer? Of course he wasn"t - they were enemy combatants, Caesar may have even been the man who strangled Vercingetorix to death. But if we throw out Caesar as biased, we have nothing. We might not even know Vercingetorix"s name. Consider Mithridates or Decebalus, great generals who battled Roman legions for decades with many great victories but who are far less legendary in our time because either no Roman wrote a compelling biography or that compelling biography did not survive. We just don"t have documents of their strategies, their speeches on the eve of battle, so we think of those great figures less. Arminius, the victor of Teutoberg Forest was little more than a name until Tacitus" history was rediscovered in the 14th century. Sure, Polybius is Roman historian writing for a Roman audience and we must take that bias into account. But without Polybius, the Battle of Zama is just a place and a date and you and I would not be having this debate. Yes, Polybius was a friend of the Scipios but he was also a general who knew what it was like to be conquered by Romans. He clearly admired Hannibal and gave him a good story, even if only, like Vercingetorix, to make his conquest by Romans the more praiseworthy. Pro: Also, I definitely went a bit overboard on the word "supposedly," I did not try to imply that the battle of Zama wasn't the last battle of the Second Punic War, I was simply trying to express that there is a lot about what is documented of the battle that can be considered very sketchy. Con: We agree the details are sketchy. History belongs to the victorious and the story of the defeated is seldom properly told. Pro: The problem that I have with the idea that there were lots of untrained elephants in the Carthaginian formation is that it is really odd to suggest that Hannibal would have taken so many highly untrained elephants. If there were any elephants that Carthage would have brought, they would not be numerous, definitely not numerous enough to screw up the entire Carthaginian left flank and allow the Romans to get behind Hannibal's forces. Con: Well, Polybius would seem to agree. He only claims "some" elephants hit the left flank and credits Masinissa"s Numidians with driving off the left flank. Pro: Also, keep in mind that the Romans even agreed Hannibal's forces were not nearly as strong as the force he originally took to Italy. The idea that Hannibal was able to fight with twice as many elephants as he was able to fight with when he had a fresh army fully ready for fighting is illogical. Con: Not really. We have to assume that the breeding and training of war elephants was mostly conducted at Carthage. Female elephants don"t tolerate the presence of male elephants for long periods outside of mating and will instinctively flee an enraged male. War elephants were always male. Elephants were difficult to transport and difficult to replace. Therefore, elephant production was slow, expensive, and centralized. Hannibal probably took every elephant he could over the Alps but it"s reasonable to assume that number was far less than what he could muster in Africa and he had to share with his brothers (Mago had 32 elephants at Ilipia. Hasdrubal had 10 at Metaurus). When Hannibal rushed home in 202 BC, Carthage had already lost its home army with all of its equipment after Scipio"s sneak attack and the subsequent Battle of the Great Plains. We don"t know for sure (because Polybius doesn"t say) but must reasonably assume that the best trained and experienced elephants available to Carthage were destroyed before Hannibal"s return. It makes sense that Hannibal took anything he could to fight at Zama and emptied the stockades of their leftover, unready elephants. Just like most of his infantry, Hannibal had superior numbers but of substantially inferior quality. I"m sure Hannibal would have traded in a snap his 80 elephants at Zama for those 27 tried and true elephants who entered Italy. Pro: And lastly, I am going to talk about the third point. When I used the word "untouched," I meant that his third line was fresh by the time it engaged with the Romans and that it had not really engaged in any serious fighting. You didn't seem to mention the reason behind Hannibal seeing a very evident opportunity for hours and not at all acting upon it. Hannibal surely had enough time to engage with the opposing army. Con: I did say but I can expand. At the end of the first phase, Hannibal had about 6,000 infantry to Rome"s roughly 25,000. Let"s assume the Carthaginians had some advantage in skill nullified by the Roman advantage in morale. Applying Lanchester"s Law of force concentration that gives the Romans a 17:1 advantage. If Hannibal advanced over uneven terrain, Scipio would have a powerful advantage even if he couldn"t get his hastati organized in time, even if the calvary failed to return. Scipio"s advantage in ranged attacks alone might have finished off a phalanx marching over uneven terrain and the Carthaginians were almost certainly getting pelted by velites even as they awaited the coup de grace. Yes, Hannibal"s army was doomed by standing still but the pace of destruction would only have been increased by maneuver in any direction. Hannibal"s decision to stand was the best play available with a losing hand. If Hannibal had engaged, the only result would have been fewer dead Romans.