The Rise of the Roman Republic75The turning point came in 207 B.C. when Hanni-
bal’s younger brother, who was in command of the
Carthaginian garrisons in Spain, decided to reinforce
him. A second Carthaginian army crossed the Alps, but
the Romans, who had remedied the tactical deficiencies
that had plagued them at Cannae, destroyed it before it
could join forces with Hannibal. Hannibal’s brother was
killed, leaving Spain helpless in the face of a new Ro-
man offensive. The Roman commander Publius Cor-
nelius Scipio (236–c. 183 B.C.) was not yet twenty-five
years old when he assumed the proconsulship, but he
proved to be Hannibal’s equal and the greatest Roman
general of the age. By the end of 206 B.C. he had driven
the Carthaginians from Spain (see illustration 4.6).
The loss of Spain meant that Carthage was deprived
of its chief source of wealth and manpower. In 204 B.C.
Scipio landed in Africa with a powerful army. Hannibal
was recalled from Italy, and in 202 B.C. he fought his last
battle against the Romans at Zama. Hannibal’s North
African allies deserted him, and Scipio won the title
Africanus by defeating Hannibal with tactics similar to
those used by Hannibal at Cannae. With their army de-
stroyed, the Carthaginians agreed to peace terms that
included the surrender of Spain and the islands and the
dismantling of their war fleet. Rome was the undisputed
master of the western Mediterranean.
The Establishment of Roman Hegemony
Rome’s victory over Carthage had been in doubt almost
until the end. It was purchased with enormous expendi-
tures of wealth and manpower. The ink on the treaty
had scarcely dried when the Senate called for yet an-
other war, this time in Greece. The motives for Roman
intervention in that troubled region are unclear. The
power of Macedon had waned during the third century
B.C., and Greek politics was dominated by two loose
and turbulent federations: the more aggressive Aetolian
League in central Greece, and the Achaean League in
the south. The result was constant warfare. This suited
the purposes of three neighboring states with vested in-
terests in the area. Rhodes, a commercial center with a
fine navy, and Pergamum, a growing kingdom in west-
ern Asia Minor, feared the revival of Macedonian
power and saw Rome as a potential ally. The third state,
Ptolemaic Egypt, had since its founding attempted to
undermine both Macedon and the Seleucid kingdom in
Syria (see chapter 3). By 202 B.C. the balance of power
among the three Hellenistic monarchies had been upsetby the accession of a child to the throne of the
Ptolemies. Freed from the restraining influence of
Egypt, Philip V of Macedon (238–179 B.C.) hoped to
regain control over Greece and made common cause
with the Seleucid monarch Antiochus III. Antiochus
was not interested in Europe, seeking only to annex
Palestine and those parts of Asia Minor that were under
Egyptian rule. Though the situation was unstable, it did
not appear to endanger Rome.
Many senators pretended to feel otherwise. On the
eve of the Second Punic War, Rome had sent a naval
expedition to suppress piracy along the eastern shore
of the Adriatic. Philip V felt threatened by the navy’sIIllustration 4.6
Scipio Africanus.The Roman commander who defeated the
Carthaginians was also the head of the aristocratic Scipio clan
and a leading advocate of Greek culture. This bust from Hercula-
neum was carved after his death and is thought to be an accurate
likeness.