Nanhai Lieutenant Ren Xiao becomes gravely ill…

Scipio feigns negotiations, then mounts a treacherous surprise attack on Syphax, approaching by stealth and setting fire to the enemy camp, where the combined armies of the Carthaginians and Numidians become panicked and flee, and are mostly killed by Scipio's army.

Though not a "battle," both Polybius and Livy estimate that the death toll in this single attack exceeded forty thousand Carthaginian and Numidian dead, and more captured.

Hasdrubal Gisco and Syphax, both men having succeeded in escaping from their camps, which Scipio and his Numidian ally Masinissa had destroyed with the aid of and Laelius, fall back with a few followers who had also escaped the massacre.

Scipio, his command extended until the end of the war, marches to meet Hasdrubal and Syphax at a place called the Great Plains.

The charge of the Roman cavalry causes the Carthaginian infantry and cavalry flee from the field; only the Spanish infantry remain standing, defending themselves fiercely.

The number of Spanish mercenaries is about equal to the first line of the Romans, the hastati.

Then Scipio orders his principes and triarii to march from behind the hastati and attack the flanks of the Spanish mercenaries, who are routed, with only a handful managing to escape.

Syphax, fleeing back to his kingdom in Numidia, is pursued by Masinissa and Laelius, who defeat him at the Battle of Cirta, as a result of which he is captured and brought back to the Roman camp as a prisoner.

Masinissa is given command of Syphax's kingdom, the land from which he had originally been exiled.

The Carthaginians have little choice following the Battle of the Great Plains but to sue for peace with Rome.

Scipio proposes modest terms for the Carthaginians in a peace treaty.

The Carthaginians, no longer believing a treaty advantageous, rebuff it under much Roman protest, and the Carthaginain Senate suddenly decides to finally recall Hannibal, who has an army of elite veterans loyal to his command, from a battle-scarred Italy, for one more stand against Rome.

Meanwhile, the Carthaginians breach the armistice agreement by capturing a stranded Roman fleet in the Gulf of Tunis and stripping it of supplies.

Liu Bang, after years of war with his rivals, establishes the Han dynasty and reunifies Central China in 202 BCE.

Establishing his capital at Chang'an, he inaugurates China’s Han Dynasty as Emperor Gaozu.

The fighting has left many areas of China depopulated and impoverished, and feudal lords continue to rebel while the Xiongnu make frequent incursions into northern Chinese territory.

The precarious state of the empire therefore forces the Han court to treat Nanyue initially with the utmost circumspection.

Prusias I has expanded the territories of Bithynia in a series of wars against Attalus I of Pergamon and Heraclea Pontica on the Black Sea.

Philip V of Macedon grants him the ports of Keios and Myrleia in 202, which he renames Prusias and Apameia respectively.

Agathocles, another member of the court clique in Alexandria, becomes the guardian of Ptolemy V when Sosibius retires in about 202.

Agathocles soon provokes Tlepolemus, the governor of Pelusium (Egypt's eastern frontier city), who marches on Alexandria, where his supporters rouse a mob, compelling Agathocles to resign in favor of another courtier.

The boy king, enthroned in the stadium while the mob clamors for the murderers of his parents, nods in confusion at the prompting of a courtier, and the mob searches out and butchers Agathocles and his family.

Tlepolemus, however, soon proves incompetent and is removed.

Antiochus now marches against Egypt.

The Roman Republic being embroiled in the Second Punic War with Carthage, ...

…Antiochus, secretly allied to Philip V, initiates the Fifth Syrian-Egyptian War by invading Palestine in 202 to reconquer what he had lost at Raphia.

During the confusion in Egypt, Antiochus makes serious inroads into Coele Syria.

Ptolemy's forces mount a counteroffensive, capturing Jerusalem.

The Rhodian admiral Theophiliscus, on the way back to Rhodes, dies of the wounds he had received at Chios, having appointed Cleonaeus as his successor.

As the Rhodian fleet is sailing in the strait between Lade and Miletus on the shore of Asia Minor, Philip's fleet attacks them.

Defeating the Rhodians, Philip forces their fleet to retreat back to Rhodes.

The Milesians are impressed, and send Philip and the Heracleides garlands of victory when they enter Milesian territory.

Rhodes' initial response to the declaration of war is diplomatic; they ask the Roman Republic for help against Philip.

The Romans, however, are wary of another war, the Second Punic War having just ended.

The Roman Senate attempts to persuade the populace to enter the war, even after Pergamon, Cyzicus and Byzantium have joined the war on the Rhodians’ side, but is unable to sway the city's war-weary population.