203 BC
The battle on the Great Plains
Within 30 to 50 days Hasdrubal and Syphax raise a new army of about 30,000, with 4,000 Iberians newly arrived at Carthage, and camp on the Great Plains of the Bagradas, about 120 km from Utica. Scipio leaves a force before Utica and marches there without a baggage train, with perhaps 20,000 men. After three days of skirmishing both armies form up.
A Numidian horseman, from Theodore Ayrault Dodge’s history of Hannibal, 1891Wikimedia Commons, Theodore Ayrault Dodge, Public domain (Numidian cavalry.png)
Hasdrubal puts the Iberians in the centre, the Carthaginian infantry and cavalry on their right, and Syphax’s Numidian infantry and cavalry on their left. Scipio places his two Roman legions in the centre in their three lines, an allied legion on each side, the Roman cavalry under Laelius on the right and Masinissa’s Numidians on the left. At the first charge the cavalry on both Carthaginian wings break, and the Carthaginian and Numidian infantry flee before the allied legions reach them. Only the Iberians charge home against the hastati.
Sources
- Polybius, Histories, book 14, 7 to 8.
- Livy, History of Rome, book 30, 7 to 8.
- Nigel Bagnall, The Punic Wars (1990).
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