Tom Holland

And this despair brings new leaders to power who are much more hawkish than the previous generation.

And these are men who are saying, well, look, we need a more assertive foreign policy.

We cannot go on like this.

So in 151, ignoring the prescriptions of the treaty that they had signed with Rome back in 201,

The Carthaginians go to war with Massinissa.

They do not have the permission of the Romans to do this.

And the result for the Carthaginians, unfortunately, is disaster.

So Massinissa, he's now basically 90, but he's still in the saddle.

He fights the Carthaginian army to a standstill near a town called Oriscopa, and he isolates them on a hill.

They don't have any water, so they have no option but to surrender and submit to humiliating terms, which include, again, a kind of massive indemnity.

Which is bad enough, but the real disaster is the open goal, obviously, that the Carthaginians have now given to the war party in Rome.

Because Hawkes there can now argue that Carthage is in breach of her treaty obligations, and that therefore, if the Romans attack Carthage, the gods will be backing them.

So that's everything they need.

Yeah, exactly.

And so in 150, the Romans begin to mobilize for an invasion of Africa.

And back in Carthage, understandably, the news of this throws the entire city into panic.

And so they desperately try to appease the Romans.

And they do this, first of all, by condemning the general who'd been defeated at Oriscopa to death.

And it will not surprise regular listeners to this series to learn that the name of this general is, of course, Hasdrubal, yet another Hasdrubal.

And then the Carthaginians send an embassy to Rome, basically to beg for mercy.