Neither Hannibal nor Scipio participated at the Metaurus (207), but it was the war’s turning point: Ennius thought Juno was now at last reconciled with Rome, and Livy presented Rome’s victory over Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal as revenge for Cannae. Things looked bad for Rome after both consuls of 208, Marcellus and Crispinus, died in battle. Roman success was made possible by another reconciliation, between two old enemies the consuls Salinator and Nero. Nero’s forced march up Italy was enthusiastically greeted and fed en route. He returned south and threw Hasdrubal’s head before Hannibal’s camp. Appendix 8.1 concludes that Salinator was not a senior decemuir (priest) in 236. Appendix 8.2 discusses Roman battle vows and asks why Livy omitted Salinator’s Metaurus vow in his battle narrative. Appendix 8.3 examines the unusual joint triumph of Salinator and Nero. Appendix 8.4 shows another name (Sena) for Metaurus was current before Horace immortalized it.

This chapter examines the different lenses through which Corippus represented the Moorish world. It looks first at the many terms the poet used to refer to all of the ‘Moorish’ groups within North Africa – ally or enemy alike. It then considers the specific ethnonyms within the Iohannis and addresses their value for our understanding of North Africa in this period. It notes that Corippus’ accounts of ‘Laguatan’ identity (an ethnonym preserved in many forms in the Iohannis, but unique to the poem) may well indicate forms of affiliation that were much more fluid than has previously been acknowledged, and incorporated a range of different groups, regardless of their origins.

The chapter closes with a discussion of the ‘catalogue of tribes’ in Iohannis Book II, which has been central to much modern scholarship. It argues that this catalogue was intended to evoke the final triumphal ceremony which marked the conclusion of John’s campaigns in 548. This has an important narrative function, but also reveals the cognitive assumptions which underpinned imperial views of the Moorish world from Carthage. This was not an ordered ‘map’ of tessellating tribal groups, but was instead an image of a diverse – but ultimately subjugated – world.