Livy wrote this History of Rome in Latin in the age of Augustus. Book 30 continues that series in the last years of the Second Punic War, Rome against Carthage in what is now Tunisia. In Book 29 Scipio had landed in Africa, burned the camps of Carthage’s allies, and Carthage had called Hannibal home from Italy. The fight would be on African ground.

At Zama in 202 BC Hannibal’s elephants are driven down lanes of javelins. Masinissa, a Numidian king from roughly Algeria, wins the chase with his horse. Veterans of Italy meet veterans of Spain. Carthage loses. The peace of 201 strips her of empire, fleet, and the right to fight without Roman leave. Scipio takes the name Africanus. Hannibal lives, so Rome will hunt him later, and Cato will still want the city itself gone. Livy reads the long survival after Trebia, Trasimene, and Cannae as proof that a people, not one genius, wins such a war. Honoring Scipio while fearing his power is the next problem of the Republic, a city run by a senate and elected officials, not a king. From the Alps to Zama is a second founding, paid in graves from the Po to the African plain.