Hannibal was in a conflict.
Hannibal . An enemy counter-invasion of North Africa forced him to return to Carthage , where he was decisively defeated by Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Zama . Military historian Theodore Ayrault Dodge called Hannibal the `` father of strategy '' , because his greatest enemy , Rome , came to adopt elements of his military tactics in its own strategic arsenal . The Second Punic War , also referred to as The Hannibalic War and ( by the Romans ) the War Against Hannibal , lasted from 218 to 201 BC and involved combatants in the western and eastern Mediterranean .