Tom Holland

Essentially.

And by this point, Rome is indisputably the bigger power because over the course of the war, she has occupied the whole of Sicily.

And Spain, of course.

Yeah.

And she's in the process of conquering the road that joins Spain to Italy, which will become the Provincia or Provence, as it's still called to this day.

And what is more, it's going to be paid over 50 years.

So that is a deliberate policy of tying the Carthaginians down, crippling their economy for half a century.

They cannot go to war without explicit Roman permission.

So that essentially means that the Romans have now taken over Carthage's foreign policy.

And previously they'd been permitted 20 warships.

Now they can only have 10.

But the guy who is laughing, I mean, the guy who's really come out well from this, of course, is Massinissa, the Numidian king.

And Scipio confirms him as king not just over his own tribal federation, but over Syphax's Numidians as well.

And I think even more fatefully, and whether this was a deliberate policy to create trouble or not, it's unclear, but I mean, it definitely will create trouble.

The peace terms imposed on the Carthaginians obliged them, and I quote, to restore to Massinissa all the houses, territory, cities, and other property which had belonged to him or to his ancestors.

So effectively, this is to leave Carthage with its own hinterland.

But

What the borders are between that hinterland and Numidia is very unclear.

And Massanissa will obviously have one point, the Carthaginians will have another.

Massanissa is an ally of Rome.