to call their great commander out of Italy to the defence of Carthage.
Publius Cornelius Scipio, who after the departure of Hasdrubal from Spain
had quickly brought the peninsula under the power of Rome, led the army of
invasion. He had not been long in Africa before the Carthaginian Senate
sent for Hannibal to conduct the war. At Zama, not far from Carthage, the
hostile armies came face to face. Fortune had deserted Hannibal; he was
fighting [Footnote: Son of the consul mentioned on page 259.] against
fate. He here met his first and final defeat. His army, in which were many
of the veterans that had served through all the Italian campaigns, was
almost annihilated (202 B.C.). Scipio was accorded a splendid triumph at
Rome, and given the surname Africanus in honor of his achievements.
[Footnote: Some time after the close of the Second Punic War, the Romans,
persuading themselves that Hannibal was preparing Carthage for another
war, demanded his surrender of the Carthaginians. He fled to Syria, and
thence to Asia Minor, where, to avoid falling into the hands of his
implacable foes, he committed suicide by means of poison (183 B.C.).]

[Illustration: PUBLIUS CORNELIUS SCIPIO (Africanus).]

THE CLOSE OF THE WAR.--Carthage was now completely exhausted, and sued for
peace. Even Hannibal himself could no longer counsel war. The terms of the
treaty were much severer than those imposed upon the city at the end of
the First Punic War. She was required to give up all claims to Spain and
the islands of the Mediterranean; to surrender her war elephants, and all
her ships of war save ten galleys; to pay an indemnity of five thousand
talents at once, and two hundred and fifty talents annually for fifty
years; and not to engage in any war without the consent of Rome. Five
hundred of the costly Phoenician war galleys were towed out of the harbor
of Carthage and burned in the sight of the citizens.