Revisiting Zama

[Steven James]

This is the passage which quotes the bronze tablet Hannibal had placed in the temple of Juno Lacinia (Livy, 28.46.16). What I don't follow is your quoted numbers from it unless Polybios references it elsewhere?

Polybius provides a little more information 3 56

 "when he thus boldly descended into the plain of the Po and the territory of the Insubres, 4his surviving forces numbered twelve thousand African and eight thousand Iberian foot, and not more than six thousand horse in all, as he himself states in the inscription on the column at Lacinium relating to the number of his forces."

And in complete contradiction to the above, Polybius writes

2 24 17 "while Hannibal invaded Italy with an army of less than twenty thousand men. On this matter I shall be able to give my readers more explicit information in the course of this work."

So which one is it Polybius?