Scipio Africanus

Scipio Africanus a Roman general and statesman (236-183 BC), remembered as the commander who defeated Hannibal at the battle of Zama and thereby ended the Second Punic War. His victories in Spain and Africa, his political influence at Rome, and his later fall from favour made him one of the most celebrated and controversial figures of the Republic.

Early Life and the War in Spain

Publius Cornelius Scipio was born in 236 BC into one of the great patrician families of Rome. His father and his uncle held command in Spain during the war against Carthage, and both were killed there in 211 BC, a disaster that left the Roman position in the peninsula seriously weakened and deprived the young Scipio of two close kinsmen.

In 210 BC, at the age of about twenty-five, he was sent to Spain to take command, an appointment that was unusual for so young a man and that reflected both his family's standing and the confidence felt in him. He arrived to find the Roman forces demoralised and facing three separate Carthaginian armies, and he restored their discipline and their confidence.

His first great stroke came in 209 BC, when he marched rapidly on New Carthage, the Carthaginian capital in Spain, and took it by a skilful combination of assault and the exploitation of a lagoon exposed by the wind. The capture gave him the enemy's treasury, stores, hostages and a superb harbour, and it made his reputation as a commander of speed and boldness.

Victory in Spain and Return to Rome

Over the following years Scipio defeated the Carthaginian armies in Spain one after another, using superior tactics and diplomacy to detach the local tribes from Carthage. At Ilipa in 206 BC he won a decisive victory over a numerically superior force by an unexpected order of battle and a flanking manoeuvre, ending Carthaginian rule in the peninsula.

He cultivated the loyalty of the Spanish peoples and of the Celtiberian chieftains, and he won fame for his generosity and his treatment of prisoners and hostages, qualities that made him a magnetic and controversial figure. He returned to Rome in 206 BC, was elected consul for 205 BC, and was given command of the campaign in Africa, where he intended to bring the war to Carthage itself.

His African campaign began with the invasion of the Carthaginian homeland and the forging of an alliance with Masinissa, the Numidian king, whose cavalry would prove decisive. Scipio won a series of victories, including a devastating night attack on the enemy camps, and the Carthaginians, desperate, recalled Hannibal from Italy to defend the city.

Zama and the End of the War

The two commanders met in 202 BC at Zama, inland from Carthage. Scipio neutralised Hannibal's elephants with lanes in his formation, held his legions steady against the Carthaginian infantry, and relied on the superior cavalry of Masinissa to drive off the enemy horse and return to strike the Carthaginian rear. The result was a complete Roman victory and the end of the Second Punic War.

The peace imposed on Carthage was severe. The city surrendered its fleet and its elephants, paid a heavy indemnity over fifty years, and agreed to make war only with Roman permission. Scipio, who had wished to spare Carthage as a counterweight in the region, was nevertheless honoured with the surname Africanus, the first Roman commander to take the name of a conquered land.

The victory established Rome as the dominant power of the western Mediterranean and made Scipio the most admired man in the Republic. His triumph, his consulship and his prestige gave him enormous influence, and he became the leading figure in Roman politics for the next decade, though his eminence also made him many enemies.

Politics, Prosecution and Later Career

Scipio served again as consul in 194 BC and took a leading part in the debates over Rome's policy toward the Greek east, advocating intervention against Philip of Macedon and later against Antiochus III of the Seleucid empire. He campaigned with his brother Lucius in Asia Minor and helped secure a decisive victory over Antiochus at Magnesia in 190 BC.

His ascendancy provoked a powerful opposition led by Cato the Elder and others who distrusted the concentration of power and charisma in a single family. In the 180s BC Scipio and his brother faced accusations of bribery and the misappropriation of funds from the campaign against Antiochus, and Scipio's refusal to answer the charges in the manner expected of a defendant became a famous scene in Roman history.

He withdrew from public life to his estate at Liternum, embittered by the attacks, and died there in 183 BC, the same year as his great adversary Hannibal. His tomb was said to bear the inscription that an ungrateful fatherland should not have his bones, a line that became an emblem of the fate of a victorious general in a suspicious republic.

Character, Legend and Legacy

Scipio was remembered for a combination of military genius, personal charm and a claim to divine favour. He cultivated the reputation of being favoured by the gods, spending time in the temple of Jupiter before undertaking great enterprises, and his contemporaries and later writers credited him with a special destiny. The Roman historian Livy presents him as a heroic and almost superhuman figure.

He was also a man of culture, associated with the circle of Greek learning that gathered around the family of the Scipios and that did much to introduce Greek literature and philosophy to Rome. He is linked in the tradition with the poet Ennius and with the study of Greek letters, and his household became a centre of the Hellenising movement in Roman culture.

His defeat of Hannibal and his campaigns in Spain, Africa and Asia made him the model of the successful Roman general, and his later prosecution and withdrawal became the model of the great man destroyed by political jealousy. He stands at the head of a line of Roman conquerors, and his career marks the moment when Rome became the master of the Mediterranean.

See also

• Second Punic War
• Zama
• Hannibal Barca
• Roman Republic