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The Battle of Zama, fought around October 19, 202 BC, marked the end of the Second Punic War. A Roman army led by Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (Scipio), with crucial support from Numidian leader Masinissa, defeated a Carthaginian force led by the commander Hannibal. Despite Hannibal possessing numerical superiority, Scipio conceived a strategy to confuse and defeat his war elephants. Scipio's troops then routed the Carthaginian infantry, thanks in part to superior Roman cavalry. Soon after this defeat on their home ground, the Carthaginian senate sued for peace, which was given to them by the Roman Republic on rather humiliating terms, ending the 17-year war. ==Prelude== Crossing the Alps, Hannibal reached the Italian peninsula in 218 BC and won several major victories against the Roman armies. The Romans failed to defeat Hannibal or drive him from Italy, but following Scipio's decisive victory at the Battle of Ilipa in Spain in 206 BC, Iberia had been secured by the Romans. In 205 BC, Scipio returned to Rome, where he was elected consul with a unanimous vote. Scipio, now powerful enough, proposed to end the war by directly invading the Carthaginian home land.〔Livy, 28.40〕 The Senate initially opposed this ambitious design of Scipio, persuaded by Fabius Maximus that the enterprise was far too hazardous. However, Scipio and his supporters eventually convinced the Senate to ratify the plan, and Scipio was given the requisite authority to attempt the invasion.〔.〕 Initially Scipio received no levy troops, and he sailed to Sicily with a group of 7,000 heterogeneous volunteers.〔.〕 He was later authorised also to employ the regulars stationed in Sicily, who consisted mainly of the remnants of the 5th and 6th Legion, exiled to the island as a punishment for the humiliation they suffered at the Battle of Cannae.〔 Scipio continued to reinforce his troops with local defectors.〔 He landed at Utica, and defeated the Carthaginian army at the Battle of the Great Plains in 203 BC. The panicked Carthaginians felt that they had no alternative but to offer peace to Scipio, and Scipio, who had the authority to do so, granted peace on generous terms. Under the treaty, Carthage could keep its African territory, but would lose its overseas empire, by that time a ''fait-accompli''. Masinissa was to be allowed to expand Numidia into parts of Africa. Also, Carthage was to reduce its fleet and pay a war indemnity. The Roman senate ratified the treaty. The Carthaginian senate recalled Hannibal, who was still in Italy (although confined to the south of the peninsula) when Scipio landed in Africa, in 203 BC. Meanwhile, the Carthaginians breached the armistice agreement by capturing a stranded Roman fleet in the Gulf of Tunis and stripping it of supplies. The Carthaginians no longer believed a treaty advantageous, and rebuffed it under much Roman protest.〔.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Battle of Zama」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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