Battle of Cannae the grandfather of Scipio Aemilianus, the patron of Polybius (one of the main sources of this history). In the spring of 216 BC Hannibal took the initiative and seized the large supply depot at Cannae, in the Apulian plain, placing himself between the Romans and their crucial source of supply. As Polybius noted, the capture of Cannae "caused great commotion in the Roman army; for it was not only the loss of the place and the stores in it that distressed them, but the fact that it commanded the surrounding district". The consuls, resolving to confront Hannibal, marched southward in
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