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Carthage had conquered a good bit of Spain. Hannibal's family had been fighting the Romans in Spain, and he wanted to drive them right out and swoop around to attack Italy. The Carthaginians had gotten pretty rich, and tended to park their plump behinds on cushions and use mercenaries for fighting on land and sea. The Barca family had political enemies and it was easy to get the backing of the home front to send Hannibal out of town. He had a handful of major victories in Italy during the impressive fifteen years he spent in Italy. But, he had no siegecraft, so walled towns simply shut the gates and refused him entry. He managed to live off the land, but he couldn't replace lost troops, failed to build local alliances, and eventually he was considered worn down enough to be evacuated by Carthaginian ships. The Romans waved bye-bye and didn't try to stop the evacuation.

While this was going on Scipio booted the Carthaginians out of Spain. He persisted in Spain until he cleaned the clocks of Carthaginian commanders and their forces, returned to Rome, raised an army without support from the Senate, sailed for Africa, linked up with the former ally of Carthage (won over by Scipio), then destroyed Carthaginian forces, which led to Hannibal's recall from Italy.

The Battle of Zama led to the dismantling of Carthage's fleet (there's a really nice segment about the artificial harbor and the fleet of Carthage in "Engineering an Empire", btw), war indemnity, and the Romans kept Spain, Cisalpine Gaul (includes the Riviera), Italy of course, and everything was going quite well. The king of Macedon had more or less allied himself with Hannibal and was trying to grab the eastern Adriatic coast, but as soon as the little Hannibal matter was cleared up in Italy, the Romans destroyed him and conquered Greece.

After Zama there was a period of quiet settlement, but Hannibal went back to his plotting another attack on Italy. Scipio and his brother prevailed against a major eastern ally of Hannibal, the Carthaginians finally tired of his BS, and he was booted from the city, into exile, and hunted by Rome, until he killed himself somewhere in the east end of the Med.

Naturally, with the corrupticratic regime of the Roman so-called republic, no good deed went unpunished. Scipio and his brother were both investigated and prosecuted (sound familiar?). I'd take Scipio over Hannibal any freakin' day, btw.