On Writing on the battle of Zama - the most decisive battle of the Second Punic War and why losing sucks

The battle of Zama, fought in North Africa around 202 BC, was the defining battle of the Second Punic War (218-201 BC) – it ended the war leaving Carthage defeated and destitute because of egregious Roman war reparation. Hannibal and his mostly inexperienced and undertrained army was defeated by a well-drilled Roman army under Scipio, along with large numbers of local Numidian horsemen seeking independence from Carthage, who proved crucial toward the end of the battle. I suggested that the Numidians may very well have been the reason Rome won the battle. But the battle was a close-run thing and could have been won by Hannibal were it not for the timely arrival of the Roman allied Numidian horsemen in the back of Hannibal’s last and most experienced veteran line. The Romans nearly broke again to the genius of the great Carthaginian. But alas not this time. The Roman war machine marched on for centuries… 

I had stopped writing books around 2008 or 2009 and focused on scripts… there were some mild successes but nothing that garnered a sale or an agent – no surprise there. My wife in the meanwhile started her career and excelled at it, allowing me the luxury to return to non-fiction writing. 

Around 2015, I approached Marcus Cowper who had returned to Osprey Publishing and he approved a Campaign Series book on Zama – that was my first book after about six to seven years. Nikolai Bogdanovic was my editor and it was a happy reunion – at least for me – ha! Marcus also picked the magnificent artist Peter Dennis to illustrate the book with three amazing color plates spread throughout https://peterspaperboys.com/pages/about . Zama became a 96-page monograph with about 40K words of original work and rewrites – Nikolai did a fine job and it ended with around 31-33K words for the final text.

The great little book I wrote in 2016 COpyright: Osprey Publishing

Additionally, I had to secure image rights and present Peter Dennis all the art references – although he really did not need them since he is a world class military artist - but importantly, I had to articulate what I wanted the paintings to show. I was so happy with Peter’s work that I asked my wife to buy all three originals which now adorn my small office. They are great. I stare at them daily, imaging, perhaps even reliving, the great tragedy unfolding in those lovely three prints. The fear, the sweat, toil, blood and horror of ancient butchery – man-on-man… the killing and maiming of elephants and horses… terrible to ponder really.

I am including the image of the opening sequence of the battle, the Carthaginian far right looking at the far left Roman line, in which young and untrained Carthaginian elephants (one of the greatest cruelties inflicted by man on animal) are turned back onto their own lines. Significantly, it shows the Roman lines forming tunnels, instead of checkerboard pattern always associated with Republican Legions, to make the elephants run through a gauntlet of Roman troops intend on killing them, thereby negating a possible collision with the small-sized elephants. 

Additionally, I had to secure image rights and present Peter Dennis all the art references – although he really did not need them since he is a world class military artist - but importantly, I had to articulate what I wanted the paintings to show. I was so happy with Peter’s work that I asked my wife to buy all three originals which now adorn my small office. They are great. I stare at them daily, imaging, perhaps even reliving, the great tragedy unfolding in those three prints. The fear, the sweat, toil, blood and horror of ancient butchery – man-on-man… the killing and maiming of elephants and horses… terrible to ponder really.

I am including the image of the opening sequence of the battle, the Carthaginian far right looking at the far left Roman line, in which young and untrained Carthaginian elephants (one of the greatest cruelties inflicted by man on animal) are turned back onto their own lines. Significantly, it shows the Roman lines forming tunnels, instead of checkerboard pattern always associated with Republican Legions, to force the elephants through a gauntlet of Roman light troops intend on killing them, thereby negating collisions with the small elephants. 

Opening of the battle. Copyright: Osprey Publishing Artist: Peter Dennis

The North African forest elephant was rather small actually but is often shown as one of those great Indian elephants carrying towers on their backs. Arguably the greatest (and saddest) scene ever in film is captured in Oliver Stone’s Alexander – an incredible, and coincidental simultaneous rearing of Alexander’s horse and the Indian King Porus’s elephant. I believe the Indian elephant used in the film was killed by a poacher a few years ago. Typical.

The image shows the four distinct Roman units – velites (light skirmishers) who usually initiate battle but are in this case retreating and reforming along the backs of the now front-rank line troops called hastati (meaning spearmen even though they use pila) as they harass, capture or kill the elephants through the tunnels.  Behind the hastati are more seasoned troops named principes, and the final line is composed of veteran and heavily armored troops, the triarii, armed with long, classical spears instead of pila. These four types composed the manipular legion. A maniple is a tactical unit. Each legion was, on paper, composed of 1,200 men each except for the last line of veterans who were half that size. Roman cavalry was virtually non-existent, about 300 per legion, hence the crucial need to ally with the greatest horsemen of their time the Numidian light cavalry. Peter Dennis captures the moment when the Roman and allied cavalry will exploit the elephants turning into their own cavalry and foot. We see just the beginning of it. Despite this early set back the Romans were almost annihilated by Hannibal’s three lines facing Scipio’s army. 

Another point of note is that in my opinion and as depicted here - and there is no proof of how the maniples actually deployed forward into battle other than the checkerboard pattern before battle ensued, called the triple acies – the Romans are deploying forward and outward from a maniple formation to fill in the gaps between each maniple in a fan-like manner. Kind of like from a fist (the maniple) to a spread-out hand with the front growing in width with each maniple covering half of the gap between the standard deployment of the maniples. 

There were three great wars. Ultimately Rome prevailed and ‘canceled’ out the great culture and civilization of Carthage. Something like 50,000 survivors out of maybe 250,000-300,000 were sold into slavery, the rest killed and the city of Carthage was laid to waste – a Roman city was built in its stead.

Overall, I think Zama turned out to be a great little book on the decisive battle of the Second Punic War. Buy the book it is a very good primer on the conflict and provides a detailed account of the armies and battle - and no I do not make royalties from it - work-for-hire. So it is not a shameless plug – this time. https://ospreypublishing.com/zama-202-bc

Algerian artist Hocine Ziani’s magnificent painting of a Numidian cavalryman captures the essence of the ancient North African horsemen. I originally believed this to have been a representation of Hannibal but Hocine clarified that it was indeed a Numidian horseman. For more wonderful art see his website https://www.ziani.eu/en-gb/galerie Copyright: Hocine Ziani