Battle of Capua crush the rebellion of Syphax without the Scipios gaining any advantages in Iberia. In Sicily, the Siege of Syracuse continued. On the whole, the Romans under Marcus Claudius Marcellus had gained the upper hand. The Carthaginians had not recovered from the ravages of pestilence which had decimated their army. Capua had defected to Hannibal after the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC. Hannibal had made Capua his winter quarter in 215 BC and had conducted his campaigns against Nola and Casilinum from here. The Romans had recaptured Casilinum, crucial for attacking Capua, in 214 BC. Since then they had conducted
Battle of Utica (203 BC) and the reconquest of the parts of Sicily that had been temporarily lost after the battle of Cannae, the Romans secured a base for a naval assault on Carthage. They made use of that by carrying out a number of raids on African soil in 208, 207 and 205 BC. Since 206 BC, when Scipio Africanus finally expelled the Carthaginians from Iberia (see the battle of Ilipa), he was preoccupied with the idea that Africa should be the next target. To this end, he concluded an alliance with Syphax – one of the most powerful Numidian rulers at the time