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

Summary

The Rest Is History – Episode 642: Rome’s Greatest Enemy: Bloodbath in Africa (Part 3)

Overview

In this gripping third installment of their Punic Wars series, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook take listeners through the final phase of the Second Punic War. The episode centers around the dramatic showdown between Rome and Carthage on African soil, culminating in the legendary Battle of Zama. With vivid storytelling and insightful analysis, the hosts explore the personalities, politics, betrayals, and battlefield strategies that shaped one of history’s most pivotal conflicts—ultimately leading to the downfall of Rome’s greatest enemy, Hannibal Barca.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Polybius and the Legacy of Hannibal

• The episode opens with a reflection on the Greek historian Polybius and his unique perspective on Hannibal’s leadership and Rome's triumph.

• Notable Quote:
  “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.” – Polybius, read by Dominic Sandbrook [00:56]

• Polybius is admired for his proximity to Rome and the Scipio family, positioning him as a pro-Roman source who nonetheless holds deep respect for Hannibal.

• Tom Holland: “The Romans, unlike Polybius, were not generally in the habit of praising Hannibal, and the reason for that is that they feared and hated him too much. … If you have their hatred and their fear, they are paying you a kind of compliment.” [05:00]

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2. The Shift in War: Scipio’s African Gamble

• By 204 BC, Hannibal is entrenched and isolated in Bruttium but still commands Roman fear.

• Rome, under young and charismatic Scipio (Publius Cornelius Scipio), boldly decides to invade Africa, hoping to force Hannibal home.

• Conservative figures like Fabius Maximus oppose the plan, fearing for Rome’s safety and accusing Scipio of “glory hunting.” Scipio overcomes Senate resistance with popular support.

• Tom Holland: “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.” [10:22]

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3. Alliances and Rivalries in Africa

• Scipio is accompanied by figures like Marcus Porcius Cato (“the most conservative of the conservatives”) and allies with local king Masinissa.

• Masinissa’s rivalry with Syphax, another Numidian king allied to Carthage, is stoked by political maneuvering and the involvement of the remarkable Carthaginian noblewoman, Sophonisba.

• On Sophonisba:
  Dominic Sandbrook: “There’s one element that’s been missing and it’s brilliant to be able to unveil that element… a woman.” [14:53]
  Tom Holland: “Sophonisba is very smart, very beautiful, very, very patriotic…her marriage to Syphax cements the Carthaginian alliance.” [15:03]

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4. Scipio’s Cunning – The Burning of the Camps

• Scipio orchestrates a major act of subterfuge, feigning negotiations and then orchestrating the notorious burning of Syphax and Hasdrubal’s camps during winter quarters.
• Memorable Polybius Quote:
  “Of all Scipio’s many brilliant exploits, this seems to me the most splendid and inventive.” (via Tom Holland) [19:11]
• Tom Holland: “It’s blatant treachery…considering that the Romans are endlessly going on about what they call Punica fides, the sense that the Carthaginians are uniquely treacherous.” [19:12]

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5. The Battle of the Great Plains & Aftermath

• Scipio decisively defeats the remaining Carthaginian and Numidian forces at the Battle of the Great Plains.

• Masinissa captures both Syphax and Sophonisba, who, rather than being paraded in Scipio’s triumph, chooses suicide—a tragic and dramatic moment reflecting both political sacrifice and personal autonomy.

• Tom Holland: “She prepares a cup of poison, drinks it, and as she’s dying berates Masinissa for being absolutely useless. So that’s the end of her.” [22:13]

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6. Negotiations and the Recall of Hannibal

• With Carthage’s military position desperate, the senate must sue for peace on harsh terms, just as Hannibal is ordered to return from Italy.

• Scipio demands Carthaginian withdrawal from outside Africa, a minimal navy, and heavy indemnities.

• Dominic Sandbrook: “That must have been utterly galling for them.” [22:52]

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7. The Road to Zama – The Clash of Titans

• Despite initial agreement, Carthaginian hardliners, bolstered by Hannibal’s return, decide to gamble everything on a final battle.

• The Battle of Zama is set: Scipio and Hannibal, both undefeated, finally face each other.

• Tom Holland: “It’s clear…that these two colossi are going to be going head to head after all. I mean, it’s massive sport.” [26:01]
  Dominic Sandbrook: “It’s Napoleon and Wellington, isn’t it? … The World Cup Final is coming.” [26:45]

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8. The Battle of Zama – Key Moments (33:56 – 36:26)

• Hannibal’s weakness in cavalry is exploited—Scipio’s forces and Numidian horse rout their counterparts.
• Hannibal’s war elephants are neutralized by innovative Roman tactics (corridors in the lines).
• The final struggle: Roman infantry, now the best-drilled in history, break Carthage’s line as returning cavalry finish the rout.
• Polybius’ Account:
  “Many fell on both sides, fighting with fierce determination where they stood… at length, the squadrons of Masinissa and Laelius returned… arriving at the crucial moment.” (via Tom Holland) [35:56]
• Huge Carthaginian losses: 20,000 dead, 20,000 captured, against just 1,500 Romans.

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9. The Consequences of Defeat

• Scipio imposes even harsher peace terms: increased indemnity, only 10 warships, and vast expansion of Masinissa’s kingdom at Carthage’s expense.
• Political consequences and humiliation in Carthage, but Hannibal persuades his fellow citizens to accept peace.
• Hannibal’s Appeal:
  Tom Holland: “Gisco is mad if he thinks these terms are bad. They could have been much, much worse… Pray with one single voice that the Roman people will ratify Scipio’s terms.” [41:25]

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10. Aftermath: Hannibal and Scipio in Peacetime

• Hannibal emerges as a popular and progressive reformer in Carthage, streamlining finances and democratizing government—“an energetic left wing innovator… the Tony Benn of Carthaginian history.” [44:08]

• Scipio, hailed as “Africanus,” receives immense honors but struggles politically and is gradually undermined by old rival Cato the Elder.

• On Cato:
  Dominic Sandbrook: “When they return… Cato turns himself into the champion of the conservatives. He doesn’t take bribes, he lives very austerely.” [48:01]

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11. Rome and the Wider World: Expansion Eastward

• The hosts draw parallels to later Roman conquests, detailing the conquest of Macedon and the beginning of Roman domination in Greece and Asia.

• Rome’s habit of justifying imperial actions with “freedom” for subject peoples is highlighted as profoundly hypocritical.

• Tom Holland: “If you have the most lethal and battle-hardened fighting force in history, very tempting to use it.” [50:31]

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12. The Final Years of Hannibal and Scipio

• Hannibal flees Carthage to avoid Roman extradition, traveling first to Tyre, then joining Antiochus III of the Seleucid Empire.

• The hosts recount the famous (possibly apocryphal) meeting between Scipio and Hannibal in Ephesus, where Hannibal ranks himself behind Alexander and Pyrrhus, but says, “If I'd beaten you at Zama, I'd have put myself above all others.” [57:59]

• Hannibal, pursued relentlessly, ultimately takes his own life in Bithynia (modern Turkey). Scipio dies the same year, an exile from Rome despite his fame—envy and suspicion from the Senate led by Cato the Elder.

• Tom Holland: “It is a triumph for the conservatives… that even Scipio Africanus is not above the law.” [64:39]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with timestamps)

• [00:56] Dominic Sandbrook recounts Polybius: “For 16 years he waged ceaseless war against the Romans… 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.”
• [19:11] Polybius (via Tom Holland): “Of all Scipio’s many brilliant exploits, this it seems to me was the most splendid and inventive.”
• [22:13] Tom Holland: “She prepares a cup of poison, drinks it, and as she’s dying berates Masinissa for being absolutely useless.”
• [26:45] Dominic Sandbrook: “It’s Napoleon and Wellington, isn’t it? It’s very exciting. I mean, there’s proper tension. Sort of the World Cup Final is coming.”
• [35:56] Polybius (via Tom Holland): “Many fell on both sides, fighting with fierce determination where they stood.”
• [57:59] Tom Holland: “And who would he put in the third place? And Hannibal then says, well, I put myself at number three... What if you had beaten me at the Battle of Zama? ‘Oh, well, in that case, I would have put myself above Alexander and Pyrrhus and all others.’”
• [61:34] Tom Holland: “Rome’s greatest enemy, at the age of 64, at last is dead.”

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Major Episode Timestamps

• 00:56 – 05:35 Introduction, Polybius, Hannibal’s legacy in Italy
• 05:35 – 13:03 Scipio’s rise, opposition from Fabius, preparations for African campaign
• 13:03 – 19:59 Alliances, introduction of Sophonisba, beginnings of African intrigue
• 19:59 – 22:39 Burning of the camps, Battle of the Great Plains, fate of Sophonisba
• 22:51 – 26:01 Carthage’s negotiations, Hannibal’s recall, decision for a final battle
• 33:56 – 36:26 Highlighted play-by-play of the Battle of Zama
• 41:25 – 44:09 Aftermath in Carthage, Hannibal as reformer
• 50:31 – 53:22 Expansion eastward, Macedon and Greece
• 54:42 – 59:02 Hannibal’s flight, encounter with Scipio in exile, Eastern campaigning
• 61:34 – 64:47 The deaths of Hannibal and Scipio, the triumph of Roman conservatism

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Tone & Style

• The discussion is lively, irreverent, and full of dramatic color and wry humor, balanced by scholarly insight.
• Tom and Dominic often compare ancient characters with modern figures ("the Tony Benn of Carthaginian history," "Napoleon and Wellington," "the World Cup Final," and “director of football”). They delight in the quirks and personalities of their subjects, and skillfully unravel the complexity of motivations and political intrigue.

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Conclusion: Legacies and Foreshadowing

The episode closes by reflecting on the tragic, almost anticlimactic fates of both Hannibal and Scipio—the two titans who defined an era—while foreshadowing the fate of Carthage itself, soon to be decided in the series’ final installment. The rivalry between Rome’s glamour and tradition, as embodied by Scipio and Cato, sets the stage for future struggles, while the punitive peace and Rome’s growing might hint at the relentless expansion of Roman power across the Mediterranean.

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Listeners are left with a sense of both awe at the scale and audacity of the events, and poignant reflection on the impermanence of even the greatest feats and reputations in history.

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For the next chapter—Carthage’s fate—listen to Part 4.

Transcript

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[Tom Holland]

We heard you. Nine years of bring back the snack wrap and you've won. But maybe you should have asked for more. Say hello to the Hot Honey Snack wrap. Now you've really won. Go to McDonald's and get it while you can.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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 sieges, 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 schoolboys and school girls in British schools in the 1940s or something, sort of slogging their way through his torturous prose. Polybius, like him or loathe him, he's our best source for the Punic wars. And 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, and 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.

[Tom Holland]

Even though he was a Greek. And slightly disappointed that you didn't follow up your brilliant impression of Livy in our last episode with a. By doing a Greek accent for Polybius.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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

[Tom Holland]

But you ducked it. Yeah. So Polybius, for reasons that we will come to, he knows Rome very, very well indeed. And he's particularly close to the family of the Scipios. And they are the family that, as we heard in the previous episode, they played the kind of the leading role in Rome's great death struggle with Hannibal. So 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. And 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. So an unbelievable achievement. Now, the Romans, unlike Polybius, were not generally in the habit of praising Hannibal, and 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 kind of compliment.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Of course.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, 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 had seemed on the verge of destroying Roman power for good, his fortunes are much, much diminished. So by 204bc, he's been in Italy for 14 years. And you know, that is four times the length of the First World War. So that gives you some sense of what an ordeal this has been.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It's been a marathon, not a sprint.

[Tom Holland]

It. And the problem for Hannibal is that, as we heard in the previous episode, the Romans have conquered Spain, which was essentially the place where he was relying on for reinforcements and for supplies and for money and all kinds of things. So that's terrible. His allies in Italy have fallen away. And he is now essentially cornered in Bruttium, 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 kind of hoodoo that he has over them. And so their plan now is to just bypass him altogether. And they're going to do this by invading Africa. And this strategy had been articulated the year before by the man who has been mandated by the Roman Republic to execute it. So to quote him, I shall 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 Bruttium, Carthage itself. And the man who is speaking these words, he's only 30, but he has already established himself as the greatest military hero in Rome's history. And this is the young, long haired, smoothly shaved Publius Cornelius Scipio.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So in the last episode we heard how over the previous four years, Scipio had destroyed Carthage's power base in Spain. So 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 hour, 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, quote, if he judged it to be in the interests of the Republic. And 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 interest in the Republic, even though there are people in the Senate who are a little bit more cautious, aren't there?

[Tom Holland]

Yes. And regular listeners to this series will not be surprised that the guy who takes the lead in opposing this strategy is Fabius Maximus Cuctatl, the delayer, the guy who, back in the wake of late Trasime, had been appointed dictator, so put in supreme control of the Roman state for six months. And 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 Cannae and which is still being adopted in 204 BC. He's now, I mean, unbelievably old, he's about 130 and he is a figure of Enormous status. So he has the official title Princeps Senatus. He's the chief senator. And 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 an 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 of our city. If you really want to destroy Hannibal, then go to Bruttium and fight him there. Which is, I mean, a very stinging rebuke. And I think it's clearly animated by a kind of personal animus as well as anxiety about strategy. And 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.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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

[Tom Holland]

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

[Gordon Carrera]

Right.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

His general sense of un Romanness, 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, you know, is the most sort of shocking and. And toxic label that there could possibly be. Everything about him just seems wrong, doesn't it? Just seems un Roman.

[Tom Holland]

It's not just that he's been held king, but that he is incredibly popular, both with his troops and with the mass of the Roman people. So in Spain, in the wake of his great victories, his soldiers had taken to hailing him as imperator, 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 consul when he's only 30 and you're meant to be 40. And essentially he's been swept to power on a great wave of popular enthusiasm. And so there's a sort of nervous as, what will he do with this power, I think. But Scipio, he's not having any of this. And he throws Fabius's criticisms back in his face. And 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 know, you, Fabius, and. 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.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So the summer of 204, Scipio's expedition set sail from Sicily. He has his troop ships, his troop transports, and they are escorted by 40 warships. Scipio and his brother Lucius are commanding the. The right wing, as it were, of the fleet, 20 ships. And the 20 ships on the left wing are commanded by his friend L. Alius, who we talked about last time, and by a young paymaster called Marcus Porcius Cato. And Cato, a name that will recur in Roman history. He is a young man with reddish hair and grey 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.

[Tom Holland]

No, he's followed all the rules. He has this post, the paymaster. He's a quaestor, it's called. So he's responsible for keeping an eye on Scipio's spending. And that is absolutely the kind of role that someone of his age should have. You know, he's not swanning around like a consul with long hair and talking about snakes.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

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, Masinissa. So 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. And Masinissa has every reason to welcome Scipio's arrival with open arms. Because just as Rome is engaged in a death struggle with Carthage, Masinissa is engaged in a death struggle of his own. Because people who listen 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 Syphax. And Masinissa has been fighting him all his life. So as a teenager, he had kind of had the beating of Syphax and that was what had then enabled him to travel to Spain and fight for the. For the Carthaginians. But he's now come back and Syphax is still on the scene and still causing all kinds of trouble. And the fact that Masinissa has come back to Africa as an ally of the Romans means that Syphax, who previously had been an ally of the Romans, has now obviously swung round and become an ally of the Carthaginians.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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.

[Tom Holland]

I know, absolute scenes.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And this woman is called Sophonisba. And brilliant name and exciting person. Tell us all about Sophonisba.

[Tom Holland]

So she is the daughter of a Carthaginian general whose name it will stun listeners to learn is Hasdrubal. Right. But of course, I mean, basically, unless you're called Hannibal or Mago, your name is Hasdrubal. And he had been serving in Spain alongside Hasdrubal Barca. So 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. And now that Hasrubal and Mago are both dead, he's basically the best general the Carthaginians have, with the exception of Hannibal. And this isn'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, Hasdrubal has this daughter, Sophonisba, and Sophonisba is very smart, very beautiful, very, very patriotic. And Hasdrubal says to Sophonisba, look, it is your duty to go and marry Syphax and to get a meeting out of your hand and to make sure that he remains as a loyal ally of Carthage. And so Sophonisba does her duty. She goes off, she marries Sifax, and Syphax thinks she's absolutely great. He adores her. And so this really cements the alliance, which is obviously bad news for Masinissa, because in Africa, if Syphax with his Numidian horsemen and the mass weight of the Carthaginians in Africa, in Carthage, if they combine, Masinissa is in real trouble. So he's desperate for Scipio to arrive and provide him with the backing of the legions. And so when Scipio does land in Africa, you know, Masinissa is thrilled and he feels it's payback time. And sure enough, neither Hasdrubal nor Syphax prove any match for Scipio. And it turns out in fact that Scipio is prepared to play very, very dirty against Syphax and Hasdrubal. Indee.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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

[Tom Holland]

Well, so a few months after his arrival, he's in winter quarters, so there's no campaigning. Scipio arranges a truce with Syphax, the Numidian king. And his goal is to try and win him back to the Roman cause because Scipio and Syphax 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, you know, I'm not betraying her. Scipio then goes on, makes a personal visit to Sifax, tries to press his case again. Again Syphax 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 kind of earth or mud or whatever, but reeds. And then his spies come back from Hasdrubal's camp, which isn't far from Syphax's. And they say, well, Hasdrubal's camp, their winter quarters aren't made of mud or earth either. They are made of wood. So Scipio ponders this and then he intimates to Hasdrubal that he might be interested in opening negotiations with him. And 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.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, that sounds promising. That's nice.

[Tom Holland]

And Hasdrubal's interested in this and so negotiations start opening between his camp and the Roman camp and Syphax 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 Hasdbal's camp which is made of wood on fire.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh dear.

[Tom Holland]

And so Scipio, with this information he sends Laelius and Masinissa to torch Syphax's camp which duly goes up, is incinerated and large numbers of Syphaxis men with them. And then he sends out another squad to set fire to the Carthaginian camp. All the Carthaginians come rushing out. Scipio's men are on hand to slaughter them and Polybius, he thinks this whole wheeze is absolutely brilliant. So to quote him, of all Scipio's many brilliant exploits this it seems to me was the most splendid and inventive. But I mean it's blatant treachery. He's meant to be negotiating, it's, he's broken all kinds of oaths and 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.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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

[Tom Holland]

Actually the Romans are very anxious as we will see, to present themselves as being on the sides of right and of the gods. Okay, so I think Scipio's playing very, very dirty there anyway, I mean it works for him because he's wiped out large numbers of Carthaginian and Numidian troops. And even though Syphax and Hasdrubal managed to escape the inferno there's a sense now I think that Scipio clearly has the beating of them. And so it proves because the moment spring arrives he moves in for the kill and first he meets with what remains to Sifax and Hasdrubal. So their combined army in a battle that has the brilliantly Custer esque name of, of the Great Plains. So the Battle of the Great Plains and you know, Scipio displays tactical mastery yet again wipes them out. Sifax and Hasdrubal again manage to escape but 30,000 are left as food for the vultures on the Great Plains. And Scipio's cavalry commanded by Masinissa and Laelius pursue Syphax. They take him prisoner and also they take prisoner his queen, the beautiful and patriotic daughter of Hasdrubal Sophonisba. And she knows her duty. So 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. And so she knows that in this situation with Sifax knocked out, she has to marry Masinissa and try and persuade him to jump ship.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And Massinissa 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 got this great new wife. Isn't she tremendous? Scipio is appalled because he's very understandably anxious that Sophonisba will try and kind of win Masinissa round to the Carthaginian cause. And also, it has to be said, he's not very keen on women. This is something that is often said about him that, you know, women are kind of introduced into his camp and he won't have anything to do with them.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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

[Tom Holland]

Very much that vibe, I think. I mean, he get, you know, he marries.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

I don't think he's a great one for having ladies hanging around with him in his, in his camp. And so he essentially tells Massinissa, well, it's, you know, you have to choose between your wife or me. And Masinissa isn't an idiot. And so he, he chooses Scipio. And Sophonisba, who is composed and dignified to the end, prepares a cup of poison, drinks it, and as she's dying she berates Masinissa for. For being absolutely useless. So that's the end of her.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And is that the end of women in this, in this series?

[Tom Holland]

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

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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

[Tom Holland]

Completely.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. So they send 30ambassadors 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 Carthaginians will have to provision Scipio's army while, you know, people are sent back to Rome to find out whether the senate agrees to these terms. And they will have to pay another kind of 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, you know, 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 Bruttium, the heel of Italy, Hannibal and his army are still there.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, I was wondering what had happened to Hannibal during all this. So he's just been hanging around in southern Italy. Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

They say, listen, you're completely wasting your time there. Come back to Africa. We, you know, we really need you. And so they send him a transport fleet and Hannibal, I mean, he's gutted, absolutely gutted. He spent all this time there and now essentially he's got to recognize that it's, it's been wasted. So he, he boards the transport ships with his army and they head back to, to Africa. And they disembark at a place called Leptis Minor, which is a port about 100 miles to the south of Carthage. And he is aware that, you know, 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. And they also know of course, that they have Hannibal back on African soil. And Hannibal is the greatest general of his day.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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

[Tom Holland]

Absolutely. And so 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 them 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. I mean, it's massive sport.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It's Napoleon and Wellington, isn't it? It's very exciting. I mean, there's proper tension. Sort of the World Cup Final is coming.

[Tom Holland]

Pretty much tension, yeah, pretty much tension.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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, I mean, 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?

[Tom Holland]

80. 80 war elephants. I mean, 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 80 war elephants, you know, I mean, he has a serious force and it takes him all summer essentially to, to raise an army that he feels is large enough to take on Scipio in his legions. And finally, with the coming of autumn, he's ready and 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 Zama. So Hannibal is approaching Zama, Scipio is in situ. 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. You know, peace feelers have gone out, you know, and the justification for this is that they're going to have one last attempt at negotiation. But I think basically, you know, they both know that this is very unlikely to result in a peace treaty. They just want to meet each other.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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 know, you can keep Sicily, you can, you can keep Spain. I mean, you know, that's the Carthaginians 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 kind of 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.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, I mean, he'd already offered terms that didn't involve unconditional surrender, but now the Carthaginians carrying on the fight, he feels, well, you know, 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. And this means that the two greatest commanders of the age are about to meet in the ultimate clash of titans.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, we love a clash of the titans. On the Rest is history. Come back after the break. And the battle of Zama begins.

[Tom Holland]

This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Tom we often talk about how to organize our finances. I'm very conscious that I'm paying for a lot of mad subscriptions. And there's one thing that we've talked about often on the show. It's the thing that we probably hate more than any other, and it's a hidden fee. I would love to get my finances under control. There are all these things piling up on our bank statements and I think I need to fix this problem. I need to sort this out and to stop this.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, my finances are so chaotic that I need this app.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So I'll tell you what it is. It's called Rocket Money. It's a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions. It monitors your spending and it helps to lower your bills so that you can grow your savings.

[Tom Holland]

With Rocket Money, you can track all of your subscriptions and you can easily cancel within the app with just a few taps, saving you time avoiding charges. And you can also set budgets and goals and get personalized insights and regular reports to track how you're doing. They will even send you real time alerts for large transactions, upcoming bills, refunds, and even low balances. So let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. [e-mail] is history.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

That's RocketMoney.com is history. RocketMoney.com is history.

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[Merchandise Announcer]

I am here with some exceedingly exciting news. Now, as all our beloved club members will already know, one of the very best things of being a member of the Rest is History Club is getting access to exclusive members only miniseries. That's right, miniseries. Not just individual episodes. So these are special episodes every other month which only club members can listen to, no one else. And we've got a brand new one coming out this February, so that's going to be the very first one of 2026, and it is presented by me and the great art critic Laura Cumming. Four episodes. And it's about paintings that shed a particularly fascinating light on history. And it covers a broad range of times and places. So everything from Velasquez Las Meninas, described by many critics as the greatest of all paintings, right the way up to Henry Rayburn' Skating Minister. What do these paintings tell us about the times in which they were painted? It's really, really fascinating stuff. And if you are not watching it on YouTube or Spotify, if you're just listening to it as a podcast, don't worry, because we will be sending all our members an email which will be going into greater written detail about the painting, but also obviously giving you an.

[Tom Holland]

Image of the painting itself.

[Merchandise Announcer]

So you can have a quick look at that, perhaps before you listen to the episode. Although I have to say that Laura's.

[Tom Holland]

Descriptions of each painting are.

[Merchandise Announcer]

Are so good that perhaps you don't even need to look at the painting. So if you would like to sign up to that miniseries and to the other five miniseries that we will be doing this year, which will be covering everything from history's greatest photographs, the Vietnam War to England's She Wolves. Then you know where to go. Go to therestishistory.com if you are not already a club member and sign up there.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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. So, Tom, we don't have all day, so let's just get into the highlights. Take us through the highlights of this titanic clash.

[Tom Holland]

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 Masinissa's Numidians, even though they almost miss the battle because Masinissa turns Up very late. So Laelius is in command of the Roman cavalry, Masinissa is in command of his Numidians, and they meet with the Carthaginian cavalry, rout 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. You know, they're kind of quaking in their sandals. But Scipio has prepared for this onslaught. And again, remember, the infantry, like the cavalry, are very, very well drilled, much better drilled than any Roman army before them in history. And so when the elephants charge them, they essentially step aside and open up corridors down which the elephants just go rampaging and they kind of burst out the other side and they can be kind of easily tracked down and eliminated that way. So that's Hannibal's strongest card played. And it, you know, it hasn't worked. And so 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. And to quote Polybius, many fell on both sides, fighting with fierce determination where they stood. But at length, the squadrons of Masinissa and Oflalius returned from their pursuit of the Carthaginian cavalry and arrived by a stroke of fortune at the crucial moment. And the result, Dominic listeners, is that Scipio is able to inflict on Hannibal the kind of wipeout that he had so often inflicted on on the Romans.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

The irony of it.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, the irony. And 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. And the Romans, by contrast, lost only 1,500 men. And again, to quote Polybius, this was the result of the final battle between these two commanders, and it decided the war.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Crikey. So what a turnaround from the battles of Lake Trasimeen or Cannae. 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.

[Tom Holland]

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, you know, these, these decade and more, has been to hone the Roman army into a much more lethal killing machine than had 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 we said he doesn't have cavalry. And Hannibal's great genius has always been for coordinating infantry and cavalry.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And it just doesn't work. And 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.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

How much do those factors. So the extraordinary preparedness and proficiency of the Roman infantry but also the Carthaginian 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.

[Tom Holland]

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

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. If you're the bigger power essentially. And by this point Ram is indisputably the bigger power because over the course of the war she has occupied the.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Whole of Sicily and Spain of course.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. And she's in the process of conquering the. 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.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So the Carthaginians have rolled the dice. Hannibal has gambled and he has lost. And the result of this, I mean they probably thought well we have nothing to lose.

[Tom Holland]

But they do.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

But now they discovered precisely what they do have to lose Because Scipio's terms when they return to the negotiating table are, are that much harsher Precisely because the Carthaginians didn't agree immediately. So the indemnity is going to be.

[Tom Holland]

Even bigger and what is more it's going to be paid over 50 years. So that is a deliberate policy of tying the Carthaginians 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 Masinissa, the Numidian king. And Scipio confirms him as king not just over his own tribal federation but over Syphax's Numidians 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 Masinissa all the houses, territories, 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 Numidia is very unclear. And, you know, Massinissa will obviously have one point, the Carthaginians will have another. Masinissa is an ally of Rome. The Carthaginians are not allowed to go to war without Roman permission. You can see that it is, you know, this is going to be a sea of troubles for the Carthaginians.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, and it will give Massinissa all kinds of opportunities, won't it, for bad behavior in the future? So there are a lot 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? You know, rather like, 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.

[Tom Holland]

Or Hitler in the bunker, right?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Could you go down in flames?

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, it's that bad. And there is actually a Carthaginian senator called Gisco who stands up and makes this case to a public assembly. But Hannibal hears him and he is infuriated. And he physically hauls Gisco down from the rostrum where he's stand with his own hands. And this is not acceptable behavior at all. And so everyone is very cross with him. And Hannibal apologizes very gracefully and he says, look, you know, I haven't been in the city since I was 9 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, Gisko is mad if he thinks that these terms from Scipio are bad. They could have been much, much worse. And he says, you know, we will still be governing ourselves. There will not be a Roman garrison planted in the middle of our city. We still have, you know, our hinterland. And that hinterland is very rich and prosperous and fertile. And 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. And of course Hannibal is the great enemy of Rome. He is the man who, you know, year after year after year has been in the front line fighting the Romans. And 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.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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. And so in the long run, they do. The Carthaginians agree. Scipio in Rome gets approval from the Senate for his treaty. And at last, I mean this great war, I mean capital G, capital W, a war that has gone on for almost 20 years, it is over. And actually this is kind of the end for both Hannibal and Scipio as well because their time in the sun, you know, the opportunity to shine has now been taken away.

[Tom Holland]

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

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Left wing innovator.

[Tom Holland]

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

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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. I mean, 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 Carthaginians. And what about Scipio? So Scipio surely must now sort of glitter as the greatest here in the Roman Pantheon.

[Tom Holland]

He's trailing clouds of glory and he is given a stupefying succession of honours. So he's given a triumph. Interesting that he, you know, 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. So I think that's probably what's been going on in Scipio's mind. Anyway, he has his triumph, he's awarded Fabius, by this point, is dead. So the title of Princepsinatus 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, I mean, he's clearly a massive, dominating, glamorous, 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 one 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 climactic battle that ended that enemy's career. So you could think of Zama as the, you know, the Waterloo of the Punic Wars. And 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. So 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. And I think there's a similar feeling with. With Scipio.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

You know, he's got his long hair, he's very glamorous, he's, you know, son of a snake. He can't be bothered with senators sitting.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

On their dignity, talking about drainage, talking.

[Tom Holland]

About, well, I mean, probably moaning about him, right? And I think, you know, the very range of honors that he's got. You know, his titles, princeps, imperator, they generate jealousy, I think. And there is one person in Particular who really detests him. And this is Guy we met traveling with the Roman fleet to Africa from Sicily. And this is the erstwhile quaesta, the paymaster in Scipio's army, M. Porteous Cato. This man who was Scipio's opposite in every way. And to quote one of his later biographers, as Scipio's quaestor during the war in Africa, Cato was appalled by Scipio's habitual extravagance and how ready he was to lavish money on his soldiers. And 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.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

We talked about his slightly performative, but no doubt deep seated and heartfelt conservatism. So when they return in the years after the battle armor, 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.

[Tom Holland]

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

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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

[Tom Holland]

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

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right, Exactly. And I guess, you know, we compared Scipio with Alexander. That aspect of Scipio's personality, the populism, the showiness, the charisma, is precisely what Cato despises as unroman. So when Cato is campaigning, you know, he shares the rations of the men he wears, the kind of fatigues, he carries his own armor. You know, he is very different from the kind of glamour boy style that Scipio incarnates. And actually their enmity is going to become one of the great drivers of Roman politics in this period.

[Tom Holland]

So Scipio has been in charge of a campaign in Spain where he's been doing all this carrying his own armor and stuff and it's very successful. And when he returns to Rome in 194, he is awarded a triumph. And 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. And so this means that Scipio now has a rival who can kind of provide a counterweight to Scipio's prestige in the Senate. Something else that is slightly putting Scipio's lustre into shade is developments in the eastern Mediterranean which we have not yet talked about in this series, but there very dramatic developments have taken place 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. And if you have the most lethal and battle hardened fighting force in history, very tempting to use it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right?

[Tom Holland]

I mean, why let it go to waste?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, of course.

[Tom Holland]

And Carthage obviously remains Rome's, you know, the chief object of her vigilance. But she is not in any mood to take insubordination from other famous powers either. So in Macedon, 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. And this is a guy who's been Macedonian king for many decades, Philip Van. And 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 Cannae 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 kind of 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 Macedon. And in 197the legions meet with Philip's great phalanx, this great kind of bristling porcupine of spears, at a battle at a place called Cynocephalae. And the Romans cut the Macedonian phalanx to pieces. And the guy who has won that victory, a man called Flaminius, the following year he goes to the Isthmian games which are held in Corinth, the city that, you know, on the kind of the join point between northern Greece and the Peloponnese. And there he proclaims the freedom of the Greeks in flamboyant language, at the same time with a kind of 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 the fetters of Greece, with Roman garrisons. So even as he is proclaiming the fact that I've defeated Macedon, I freed Greece from Macedonian tyranny. Greece is now free. He is replacing those Macedonian garrisons with Roman garrisons. And it means that Greece is now effectively within less than a decade of the Battle of Zama, it's become a Roman protectorate.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So listeners may be wondering, so much of this story has been about the western Mediterranean, what's been going on in the eastern Mediterranean? And the answer is, in the previous 120 years also, Alexander the Great's empire, covering some of the richest parts of the kind of 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. And there are other Macedonian kingdoms, obviously Ptolemaic Egypt is one.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. So there are basically three. So there's Macedon, Yeah, which governs Greece, but have now been defeated by the Romans, the Ptolemies in Egypt, as you say. And then there's the largest of the lot, Seleucid Empire. The Seleucid Empire, which at this point is ruled by Antiochus iii, who is the heir of Seleucus, who had been one of Alexander's generals. And under Antiochus, who comes to be known as Antiochus the Great, the Seleucid Empire reaches its furthest extent. So it ends up stretching from the Aegean all the way to the frontiers of India. And 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 kind of upstart barbarians. And so 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. Yeah, and 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.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right. So he's basically, his intention is to hire Hannibal as 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.

[Tom Holland]

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 kind of teaming up with, with Antiochus. And so they send a party of three senators to Carthage to say, look, you know, hand him over. And Hannibal is informed that this is going to be happening. And he plays it very, very cool. He kind of walks around the marketplace, he doesn't let anyone know that he's planning anything. And 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 and there's a jetty with a galley. And he gets onto the galley, there are men at oars ready to take him away. And he makes his escape from Carthage and this galley sails all the way across the Mediterranean eastwards, really kind of a journey back in history to the city of Tyre, the city from which the colonists who had originally founded Carthage came. And he lands in Tyre and he then goes overland up through Syria and he ends up in the city of Ephesus on the Aegean coast of what is now Turkey. And there he meets with Antiochus.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So he's met the ruler of the Seleucid Empire, Antiochus, and what does he say to him? What happens?

[Tom Holland]

He says, listen, I will be your coach. And you know, as you said, I'm.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

In, I'm in five year contract.

[Tom Holland]

There it is. Yeah. Unsurprisingly, the Romans are furious about this and so they send a delegation to Antiochus court. And it is said that attached to this delegation, not an official member of it, but going with, with the delegation was Scipio Africanus and he had come to persuade the, the Seleucid king not to go to war. Hannibal, of course, is busy urging him the opposite. You know, the two old enemies, they are like, I guess, kind of people who'd played football in the World cup or something and now are on posing sides in the Champions League or something like that, you know, as managers. Right. 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?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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

[Tom Holland]

Hannibal answers and giving his reasons as he does so, that obviously in first place is Alexander the Great. And then he says, actually I would also place Pyrrhus in second. And Pyrrhus was The guy who had invaded Italy a kind of 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 says, oh, and who would he put in the third place? And Hannibal then says, well, I put myself at number three.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Brilliant.

[Tom Holland]

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 replied, oh, well, in that case, I would have put myself above Alexander and above Pyrrhus and above all other commanders.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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

[Tom Holland]

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

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Is he witty or is he just boastful?

[Tom Holland]

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

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, great banter, that.

[Tom Holland]

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.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Are they speaking in Greek?

[Tom Holland]

They would presumably have been speaking Greek. Yes.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay.

[Tom Holland]

When they met before Zama, they had interpreters because they. 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.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So late in 192, Antiochus and the Seleucids invade Greece. And the Romans respond with overwhelming force, don't they? So they route him at, of all places, Thermopylae. 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 sort of director of football.

[Tom Holland]

Yes, yeah, yeah, well, so it is said. But if. I mean, 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 Seleucids are comprehensively defeated. Lucius Scipio is the victor. And if Scipio Africanus hadn't been present, neither was Hannibal. So by this stage, both the kind of the old war horses 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. Antiochus has to quit Europe for good. He has to withdraw inland from the Aegean seaboard, 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 fact the key one. They hate him and fear him that much. Obviously, Hannibal knows that this is going to be happening, and so he's already made sure to scarpa. And for the next seven years, he leads the life of a fugitive. He's constantly finding refuge in, you know, a court here, a court there, and then being forced to go on the run again. The Romans are endlessly pursuing him. And finally, in 183, on a country estate in Bithynia, which is now northwestern Turkey, he is cornered. And Hannibal, who had known what was coming, he'd had various kind of tunnels dug out from his house, but the Romans have cornered him. They block off the exits from the tunnels. And so they're. That, you know, Hannibal knows that he's got no way out. And so he does what Sophonisba 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.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

What a depressing and downbeat and sadly kind of 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, you know, he's in Turkey in his flipping basement of his bunker, taking poison. Disappointing.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, it's miserable. And in the long run, the poet Juvenal will write a poem. You know, he was this great guy who led elephants over the Alps, and now he's, you know, a dead loser in a. In a basement in Bithynia.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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

[Tom Holland]

I mean, it's interesting you say that because. 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 187, when Scipio returns with his brother Lucius from the Eastern campaign, you know, and they are Loaded down with wealth and money and cash and, you know, 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. And Cato and his allies feel strong enough to go on the attack. And so they openly accuse Lucius of embezzlement. Remember, you know Cato's background as a paymaster. He. He knows where to sniff around. And Scipio is accused of complicity in this. And 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 dudgeon to his a country, a state in Campania, so down by the Bay of Naples. And essentially, for the rest of his life, he's a broken man. It's a triumph for the conservatives who had always hated him, and it's a triumph for 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. That is, even Scipio Africanus is not above the law. And of course, there is one man in particular who had harried Scipio to his death, and that was M. Porcius Cato. And Cato, with Scipio dead, has now inherited Scipio's status as the most admired and prestigious man in the Senate. And the question is, what is he going to do with this prestige?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So Cato, even by Roman standards, has a pathological hatred and contempt for Carthage, doesn't he?

[Tom Holland]

He does.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And this is going to be very, very ominous for the Carthaginians. They're beaten, but they're still, you know, 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 is your last chance. Before that episode. Go to thereestishistory.com and you can hear what happens to Carthage right away. What excitement. Tom, thank you very much and goodbye.

[Tom Holland]

Bye bye.

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

Hi there everybody. It's Dominic Sambrook here from the Rest.

[Gordon Carrera]

Is History and Gordon Carrera from the Rest Is Classified.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Now, over the last month or so, the regime in the Islamic Republic of Iran has been pushed to the edge, having seen the largest protest for a generation ripping across the country. Tens of thousands of people have been killed by the Ayatollah's forces since the uprising began, and a lot of people outside Iran are asking, is this the beginning of the next Iranian revolution?

[Gordon Carrera]

And Goal Hanger is covering every element of this. On the Rest Is Classified, David and I have looked at the role of intelligence agencies in this conflict. With the Internet blackouts and so much unknown, we've been looking at whether spies are best placed to judge whether the regime is truly at risk of falling.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Now on the Rest Is History. We have been looking at the origins of the Iranian regime at the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which saw the fall of the last shah and his replacement by the rule of the Ayatollahs. Now, given that the last Shah's son is being touted abroad as the man who might, just might, save Iran, you can't understand what is happening now without understanding what happened back then at the end of the 1970s.

[Gordon Carrera]

But it's not just our own two podcasts that are covering Iran. If you want to know whether Donald Trump's military buildup in the region means it's likely he's going to wade in and force regime change. Here Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart cover the latest developments in the Rest Is Politics.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And our dear friends at the Rest is Money have been looking at the economic collapse, the corruption and the impact of of the sanctions that have been eating away its social cohesion in Iran over recent years and have pushed so many people onto the streets and on empire.

[Gordon Carrera]

They've been looking at the similarities and differences between 1979 and today. How is it that a country that less than 50 years ago forced the Shah out of power is now seeing crowds chanting, long live the Shah?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So whatever happens next, to the people of Iran and to all those brave souls who've turned it on the streets, streets to protest. Stay tuned to Goal Hanger for all the context and the answers and the analysis that you need. Find. The rest is history. The rest is classified Empire. The rest is politics. And the rest is money. Wherever you get your podcasts, Tom, we have some absolutely unbelievable news to share with our listeners. Probably the most exciting news we've ever shared.

[Tom Holland]

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

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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

[Tom Holland]

That's absolutely right. So these are T shirts that have been designed by one of our beloved Athelstans, 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.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes, 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.

[Tom Holland]

And it's so good that it has a Roman hydra with lots of different heads. Hannibal's chopped off some of them, but there are others with Roman helmets on.

[Merchandise Announcer]

I mean, it could not be more epic.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Epic is the word. Now, if you want to show your epic status as a member of the Rest is History Club Club, I think it's important for you to wear one of these T shirts. So when you're going out around town, when you see people, if you want to impress your husband or wife, wear this T shirt and or wear multiple T shirts. Get several if you can. And you'll 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. And Tom, what about if you're an Apple member?

[Tom Holland]

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 mailing list. To get access, just send an email to the Rest is [e-mail] 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?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No. So that's the rest is [e-mail] with Apple member in the subject line. Now what if you're not a member of the show? 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 to 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 miniseries and so much more.

[Tom Holland]

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 thereestishistory.com Bye Bye Bye bye.