Zama: The Battle That Never Was?

[Walhaz]

I agree that it can be very hard to really "know." Often there are contradictions and inconsistencies and conflicting accounts and so on ad infinitum. Often there are logical reasons why something would have happened differently, or not at all, or in a different place. And when you compile all of those inconsistencies together, they can point to a truly remarkable hypothesis. If the hypothesis is logically consistent and confounds refutation, the temptation to fully embrace it can be very strong. The best way to test a hypothesis like this (which is otherwise untestable) is to turn it on its head and inside out, a.k.a. try to defend the hypothesis that Cannae never happened. (There are many, many inconsistencies and contradictions about that battle as well.) If just the idea that Cannae never happened offends the sensibilities, then I would rethink the original hypothesis because offense at the idea that Cannae never happened but embrace of the idea that Zama never happened is a pretty clear indication of some kind of bias in the thought process.

Please understand I am not claiming that anyone in this thread or who has written about Cannae or Zama is biased or has not thought this subject through: this is a thought exercise that I came up with to identify bias in my own cognitive processes.