How did Rome survive Hannibal and his elephants?

By refusing to give up, even after losing, by one ancient count, 70,000 soldiers in a single day. In 218 BC, the Carthaginian general Hannibal marched an army, including war elephants, over the Alps and into Italy. At one river crossing alone, his engineers had to build soil-covered rafts just to trick the elephants into thinking they were still on dry land.

Two years later, at a town called Cannae, Hannibal faced a much larger Roman army of about 86,000 men. Instead of meeting it head-on, he let his center retreat while his flanks swung around, trapping the Romans in a pocket. Polybius, the main ancient source, records that 70,000 Roman and allied soldiers were killed that day, and only a few thousand escaped. It remains one of the deadliest single days of fighting in history.

Rome should have asked for peace. Instead, it lowered the legal age for soldiers, drafted criminals and even enlisted slaves, and refused Hannibal's offer to ransom his prisoners. The war dragged on for fourteen more years. It turned in Rome's favor only when a young commander named Scipio, who had survived Cannae himself, invaded Carthage's home territory in North Africa. Forced to recall Hannibal to defend his own city, Carthage lost the decisive battle at Zama in 202 BC.

Carthage survived as a much smaller, disarmed state, but that wasn't enough for everyone in Rome. Decades later, the senator Cato the Elder visited Carthage, saw it growing wealthy again, and is said to have ended every speech afterward, on any topic, with the same idea: Carthage must be destroyed. (No ancient source gives the famous Latin line word for word.) In 146 BC, Rome stormed the city and levelled it completely. A later legend adds that the Romans sowed salt in its soil, but that story was invented in the 19th century.