fault with the generals whom Hannibal defeated in the early years of the war, they were probably no worse than many other Roman general who--simply by virtue of commanding Roman legions--saw their careers crowned with triumphs. The great strength of the Roman army was that it seldom required great generals. Its commanders usually needed only to point it at the enemy and let it go, and more often than not it prevailed. To deal with Hannibal, however, it took first the insight of Fabius to realize that what usually worked for the Romans wouldn't work against Hannibal, and then the brilliance of Scipio to meet him on equal terms and win.
At that, it is difficult to point at Zama and find any mistakes that Hannibal made. Indeed in fact can it be said that Scipio won by any particular brilliance. Shifting his maniples into direct columns (as against the usual checkerboard order) in order to provide lanes down which Hannibal's elephants would pass without doing serious damage was certainly a shrewd and sound move, but scarcely by itself a battle-winning plo
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