The Battle of Zama Didn't Happen as Documented

I"ll take a stand in defense of Polybius, the father of Roman historiography. He earned that title because he believed in carefully documenting his sources, interviewing the witnesses and traveling to the sites where history was made. We have no primary sources for Zama, no surviving accounts from the actual participants. Polybius was a Greek calvary commander taken hostage by Rome. He served first as a tutor, then a military advisor to Scipio Aemilianus, grandson of the victorious Roman general of Zama. He fought in the Third Punic War and was present at the Sack of Carthage. Of the 3 surviving classical sources only Polybius interviewed soldiers from both sides of the battle, only Polybius visited the battleground. Livy mostly relied on Polybius 100 years later to write his history and Appian, 100 years after Livy, did not document his sources. Perhaps Polybius was not perfect in objectivity but he was certainly sympathetic towards Hannibal. If we toss out Polybius as dishonest or lazy, then we must likewise toss out almost everything we know of Hannibal- crossing the Alps, Cannae, Antiochus III- because Polybius is the font from which the biography of Hannibal flows. I"ll take exception, therefore, to Pro"s odd qualifications- Zama was "supposedly" the last battle, the calvary "was said" to have given chase. No history contradicts Polybius on these points. History defers to Polybius as the historian closest to the events. Accurate or not, there is no more instructive account on which to build a substitute narrative. Fortunately for us, Polybius was not demonstrably dishonest or lazy. He was, for his time, as expert and meticulous a documentarian as we could hope for. Pro proffers three problems with the Polybian account (unsurprisingly, two are about elephants- everybody gets so charged up about the elephants): 1. The elephant drivers were trained to kill their elephants if the beasts went bezerker, making a charge into friendly ranks impossible . Response: We don"t know for certain this was true at Zama but yes, killing a rogue elephant was a practice documented in contemporary battles. The trouble with Pro"s argument is that both sides were familiar with the tactic and likely targeted the rider first. In fact, killing the rider was the best way to panic an elephant at distance- much less dangerous than stabbing up close. Drivers steered the elephants with mouth hooks and chains like a horse"s bridle. Without a rider, elephants looked for an escape from the melee and the best route might very likely have been through friendly lines. Polybius only says that some of those 80 elephants advancing on thousands of archers and slingers, tens of thousands of javelins and spears, turned left and disrupted the allied Numidians who were supporting the elephant charge. I think it"s safe to assume that those drivers were either dead or dismounted. The remaining elephants, whether many or few, engaged the Roman skirmishers and by all accounts there was much carnage on both sides. An unspecified number of elephants reached the Roman lines but Scipio (probably to Hannibal"s surprise) deployed his maniples perpendicular to Hannibal"s line and in rows rather than the usual checkerboard quincunx formation. This encouraged the elephants to pass down the alleys, flanks exposed, without disrupting Scipio"s formation. That was an old school Greek tactic developed by Alexander and it is to young Scipio"s credit that he knew and relied on his military history. Livy states that the surviving elephants swung around to crash the Carthaginian calvary on the right, Polybius has the survivors exiting the field. 11 elephants are thought to have survived the gauntlet. 2. Hannibal still has 100 elephants at the Battle of Zama, discrediting Polybius" account. Response: Pro"s characterization of Polybius" is quite wrong. Polybius sets the number of elephants who survived the Alps at 27. The next time we get an elephant count is at the end of 216 BC, when we read that Hannibal has only one elephant left which he rides in triumph into Capua. No historian claims that the 80 (not 100) elephants at Zama are the same as the roughly 40 (not 100) elephants Hannibal led out from Spain 16 years earlier. Hannibal returned to Africa with 4,000 horse but no elephants are mentioned. Importantly, the 80 elephants at Zama we"re reported to be undertrained and inexperienced at battle. 3. Hannibal"s third line stood idle for hours while the Romans reformed and advanced. Response: I can"t find any account that tells how long it took for Scipio to reform but two or three hours is plausible. Unlike Pro, I find Polybius" narrative fairly credible. For Hannibal, Zama was a battle of desperation. Carthage had already lost all of its European settlements and alliances, lost control of the sea lanes and ports, lost the better part of their Numidian allies by civil war and betrayal, lost their main African army at the Battle of the Great Plains. Scipio was closing in on the City of Carthage itself when Hannibal rushed home with the men he had left to him from the Italian campaign to make a last stand. He had little time to muster what conscripts and mercenaries he could and few choices of battlegrounds where the inexperienced elephants might count for something. Of the 12,000 men he brought from Italy, 4,000 were Numidian calvary. 2 or 3,000 were Italians who had turned against Rome and couldn"t be trusted not to turn again to save themselves. That left only 5 or 6,000 trained and trusted infantry which Hannibal made his third line. The first line was mercenaries, the second line new recruits from Carthage. In all these first two lines were about 24,000 but their equipment and training was all patchwork and they"d had no time figure out how to fight cohesively. Hannibal"s Italian allies made the vanguard. Hannibal"s plan was all shock- hit Scipio with elephants, then grind the Romans with the first two inferior lines. Pro says the third line was untouched but Polybius states that were forced to fight their own men at Hannibal"s command, to prevent their panicked, retreating comrades from disrupting the third line they killed them or forced them to the wings. All these tactics were militarily sound but they failed to achieve the necessary effect on the steady Romans. Scipio"s men were better trained and better armed. Many of his Romans were survivors of Cannae, dishonored but experienced soldiers of the Fifth and Sixth Legion, hungry for redemption and revenge. They"d been winning battles all year under Scipio and knew if they won at Zama, they could go home rich and victorious. When the first phase was over, when the slaughter of the rookies was complete, Hannibal"s best 6,000 still faced an intact army of something like 25,000 Romans. Between them were 20,000 dead lying in heaps, making any orderly advance of phalanx impossible. 6,000 calvary were to his rear so no retreat or maneuver was possible. Hannibal had no choice but to wait for the Romans to slowly reform and advance over the uneven ground. By all accounts, Hannibal"s last army fought excellently, even without hope, until most were dead or captured. So, no. I don"t find that any of these arguments discredit Polybius to any significant degree. In the absence of a better history or more compelling arguments by my opponent, I"ll stick to Polybius as the best available account of the Battle of Zama.