Veneto of their Celtic neighbours. During the 3rd century BC, the Veneti, together with the Cenomani Celts on their western border, sided with the Romans, as Rome expanded and struggled against the Insubres and Boii (Celts). During the Second Punic War (218 – 202 BC), the Veneti even sent a contingent of soldiers to fight alongside the Romans against Hannibal and the invading Carthaginians. These Venetians were among those slaughtered at the Battle of Cannae (216 BC). In 181 BC a Roman triumvirate of Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, Caius Flaminius, and Lucius Manlius Acidinus founded a Latin colony at Aquileia as
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