Revisiting Zama

[Michael Collins]

For good reason, Polybius is considered the most reliable source concerning the battle...

I think we can doubt this to be the case...

Actually, Polybius sets the scene of the battle with a lie, why does he recycle Herodotus` three spies story at this point in his narrative ?
It allowed Polybius to present the case for Rome and against Hannibal at the meeting between the two generals, and demonstrate Rome`s moral superiority before the battle.

In doing so he discared the real battle of Zama that had probably been accepted, but it was only a part of the history up until the middle of the C2nd BC; the cavalry battle fought close to the monument of Kbor Klib was seen just as a preliminary to a major battle that had been reported at the time by Gaius Laelius, then formally but only in rather vague terms in Rome several months afterwards by L. Veturius Philo when it was known that there was no longer any Numidian support for Carthage.

Up until the middle of the C2nd the story of the campaign of 202 that ended the war had been growing which must have included a cavalry battle fought (won by Numidian/Roman forces) close to Kbor Klib, talks between Hannibal and Scipio, and then a major, set-piece battle in which Hannibal is conclusively defeated. Some traces of this "history" (or rather the sequence of event in Roman histories and annals) are to be found in Appian.

Polybius bias is so very obvious here in this and in other examples in this campaign also (he does not mention Octavius` victory over Vermina, nor Q. Minucius Thermus` action, for two instances), it`s difficult to dismiss the possibility that he knowingly covered up the truth in order to present Scipio Africanus in a better light.