Tom Holland

He has his own.

We've mentioned them before.

The best trained cavalry the Romans have ever had.

And of course, he has Massinissa's Numidians, even though they almost miss the battle because Massinissa turns up very late.

So Laelius is in command of the Roman cavalry, Massinissa is in command of his Numidians, and they meet with the Carthaginian cavalry, rout them, and chase them from the battlefield.

Now, Hannibal's strength, as we've said, is in his war elephants, and he places them in the front line, 80 of them.

Terrifying sight.

The Roman front lines, you know, they're kind of quaking in their sandals.

But Scipio has prepared for this onslaught.

And again, remember, the infantry, like the cavalry, are very, very well drilled, much better drilled than any Roman army before them in history.

And so when the elephants charge them, they essentially step aside and open up corridors down which the elephants just go rampaging.

And they kind of burst out the other side and they can be kind of easily tracked down and eliminated that way.

So that's Hannibal's strongest card played, and it hasn't worked.

And so what now happens is that it comes down to the infantry, these great rival blocks of men on foot, and they advance and they smash into each other.

And to quote Polybius, many fell on both sides, fighting with fierce determination where they stood.

But at length, the squadrons of Massinissa and of Laelius returned from their pursuit of the Carthaginian cavalry and arrived by a stroke of fortune at the crucial moment.

And the result, Dominic, listeners, is that Scipio is able to inflict on Hannibal the kind of wipeout that he had so often inflicted on the Romans.

Yeah, the irony.

And Hannibal himself takes horse.

He manages to flee the disaster.