Scipio Africanus

Every great conqueror eventually meets the one opponent who has learned all his tricks. For Hannibal, that opponent was Publius Cornelius Scipio, the Roman who watched Hannibal destroy army after army, studied how he did it, and then beat him in Africa. Polybius, who knew Scipio's closest friend, called him perhaps the most illustrious man born before his own generation, and complained that other writers made him a darling of fortune when he was in fact a man of cool calculation.¹

Early life: a consul's son at the Ticinus

Scipio was born in 236 BC into the Cornelii Scipiones, one of the great patrician houses of Rome: his father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all been consuls. In 218 BC, the year Hannibal crossed the Alps, his father was consul and led the first Roman army to meet him.²

Scipio's first appearance in history came in that campaign, in the cavalry clash at the Ticinus River. Polybius heard the story from Gaius Laelius, Scipio's lifelong friend: the teenage Scipio saw his father wounded and cut off, failed to rally his escort, and charged alone into the enemy until his men followed and the consul was saved. Livy tells the same story and says most writers agree, but he records that the historian Coelius gave the credit to a Ligurian slave. Britannica judges the story may well be true.³

He married Aemilia, a daughter of Lucius Aemilius Paullus, the consul who fell at Cannae. Polybius remembered her as a great lady who attended the women's processions in splendor, with a train of servants and vessels of gold and silver. They had two sons; the elder, Publius, too sickly for a public career, adopted the boy who would become Scipio Aemilianus.⁴

Cannae and the oath at Canusium, 216 BC

Two years later Scipio served as a military tribune at Cannae, where Hannibal encircled and destroyed the largest army Rome had ever fielded. Among the survivors who gathered at Canusium, Livy says, the officers chose Scipio, still very young, to share the command with Appius Claudius. When word came that a group of young nobles under Lucius Caecilius Metellus meant to abandon Italy and sail away, Scipio went straight to their lodging, drew his sword over their heads and made each of them swear never to desert the Republic. Britannica tells the same story of a plot to desert Rome thwarted at Canusium.⁵

In 213 BC he was elected curule aedile. Livy and Britannica tell how the tribunes objected that he was under age, and he answered that if the Roman people wanted to make him aedile, he was old enough. Polybius tells a different version, in which he stood together with his elder brother Lucius and won the office for both of them after telling his mother of a dream.⁶

The command in Spain, 210 BC

Disaster struck the family in 211 BC, when his father and uncle were defeated and killed in Spain and the Carthaginians swept forward to the Ebro. In 210 BC, Livy says, no experienced general would take the Spanish command, until Scipio, about twenty-four years old, stood up on a rise in the Campus Martius and declared himself a candidate; every century voted for him. Britannica stresses that he held no senior office at all: giving a private citizen a command outside Italy set an important precedent.⁷

His target was New Carthage (Carthago Nova, modern Cartagena), the enemy's headquarters, arsenal and treasury. Polybius explains that Scipio knew all three Carthaginian armies in Spain were at least ten days' march from the city, and that fishermen had told him the lagoon behind its walls could be waded at low water. While his main force attacked the walls, a column crossed the shallows and climbed the undefended northern side; Scipio had told his men that Poseidon had promised him help. The city fell in a single day, with its stores, its hostages and a fine harbor. Britannica dates the assault to 209 BC; Livy placed it in 210 BC, while noting that some writers put it a year later.⁸

After the capture, Livy and Polybius both tell how Scipio returned a beautiful young captive untouched to her family and her betrothed. Livy names the young man as the Celtiberian noble Allucius and adds that Scipio gave him the ransom gold as a wedding gift, the version the Danish national encyclopedia retells. Painters from the Renaissance on loved this "Continence of Scipio".⁹

Baecula and Ilipa: driving Carthage out of Spain

In 208 BC he beat Hasdrubal Barca at Baecula. Instead of advancing in the usual Roman lines, Britannica explains, he screened his front with light troops and sent his main force around both enemy flanks. Polybius and Livy both record that the Spaniards afterward hailed him as king, and that he refused: the title, he told them, could not be borne at Rome, and he preferred to be called general. Hasdrubal escaped with his army and marched to Italy, where he died at the Metaurus in 207 BC; Scipio chose not to chase him.¹⁰

The decisive blow fell in 206 BC at Ilipa, near Seville. Polybius gives Hasdrubal son of Gisco 70,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry and 32 elephants against Scipio's 45,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry; Livy counts 50,000 foot and 4,500 horse on the Carthaginian side and notes that some writers said 70,000. For days the armies formed up facing each other in the same order. Then, Britannica and Polybius explain, Scipio came out at dawn with his formation reversed, his Spanish allies in the center and his Roman legions on the wings, and the legions wheeled around both enemy flanks while the weak center was held back. The Carthaginian armies were destroyed, and Roman control of Spain was complete.¹¹

Africa, 205 to 203 BC

Elected consul for 205 BC, Scipio wanted to ignore Hannibal, who was boxed into southern Italy, and strike at Africa itself. He had to overcome opposition in the Senate first, and he crossed to Sicily with an army that included volunteers and survivors of Cannae eager to redeem themselves. Britannica and the Danish encyclopedia both describe how he forced the plan through against strong resistance.¹²

In 204 BC he landed in Africa with perhaps 35,000 men and laid siege to Utica. Early in 203 BC, with the help of the Numidian prince Masinissa, he set fire to the winter camps of Hasdrubal son of Gisco and his ally King Syphax, then smashed their new army at the Great Plains on the upper Bagradas. Polybius, describing the fire and slaughter in the camps that night, called it the most brilliant and the most daring of all Scipio's achievements. Carthage asked for terms, then recalled Hannibal from Italy.¹³

Zama, 202 BC

The two generals met near Zama in 202 BC. Polybius says Hannibal put more than eighty elephants in front of his army. Scipio left lanes between his maniples, and light troops drove many of the beasts down those corridors and off the field. His cavalry, Roman under Laelius and Numidian under Masinissa, then routed Hannibal's horsemen. Hannibal's veterans in the third line held firm against the legions until the Roman and Numidian cavalry came back and struck them in the rear.¹⁴ › Battle of Zama, 202 BC

Polybius counts more than 1,500 Roman dead and more than 20,000 Carthaginian, with almost as many taken prisoner. The war was over. Scipio granted comparatively lenient terms to Carthage and to Hannibal personally, and in 201 BC took the name Africanus for his victory.¹⁵

Command style

Scipio was the first Roman general to beat Hannibal's methods with Hannibal's own tools: speed, surprise, deception and the flank attack. Britannica points to the new tactics he trained into his army in Spain, the screens of light troops and the divided main force that hit the enemy's wings at Baecula and Ilipa, and to his use of cavalry at Zama, where for once Rome rather than Hannibal had the stronger horse.¹⁶

He also understood soldiers. Polybius compares him to the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus: he let his men believe that his plans came from the gods, as with Poseidon at New Carthage, because troops fight better when they think heaven is on their side, while in fact he planned everything by calculation. Britannica adds that the lucky fall of the lagoon at New Carthage strengthened the troops' faith in their commander's divine support.¹⁷

Later life and death

Peace brought honors. Scipio was censor in 199 BC and became princeps senatus, the first man of the Senate, a rank he kept until his death; he was consul a second time in 194 BC. In 190 BC he went east as legate to his brother Lucius in the war against Antiochus III of Syria, but was too ill to take part in the Roman victory at Magnesia, after which Lucius took the name Asiagenus.¹⁸

At home, enemies led by Marcus Porcius Cato attacked the brothers. Lucius was accused over 500 talents received from Antiochus, and Africanus himself may have been prosecuted. Livy says that when he was summoned before the people he reminded them that it was the anniversary of his victory over Hannibal, walked up to the Capitol to give thanks to the gods, and the whole assembly followed him. Livy admits that the sources disagree on the accuser, the date and the outcome of these "trials of the Scipios".¹⁹

Embittered, he withdrew to his farm at Liternum in Campania. Britannica says he died there in 184 or 183 BC. The ancient writers already disagreed: Livy reports that Polybius and Rutilius put his death in 183 BC, the year Hannibal took poison, but argues himself that he died earlier. Livy also says that some placed his death and burial in Rome and others at Liternum, and that he was said to have ordered his tomb built on his estate so that his funeral would not be held in his ungrateful country.²⁰

Legacy and memory

Livy saw both of Scipio's possible tombs: a monument at Liternum with his statue, which he watched a storm bring down, and the tomb of the Scipios outside the Capena Gate in Rome, with three statues said to show Publius, Lucius and the poet Ennius. His family went on to dominate Rome: his younger daughter, Livy says, was betrothed to Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, and the adopted grandson Scipio Aemilianus grew up heir to Aemilia's fortune.²¹

Britannica's verdict rests on one fact: the young tribune who survived Cannae ended the Second Punic War, and won the name Africanus for it. Polybius, writing a generation later, made the larger claim: in his account of Zama the Carthaginians fought for their lives and their rule in Africa, the Romans for universal dominion, and Britannica notes that for Polybius this was the first time a Roman could see the outline of a world empire. Polybius also set out to correct the legend of a lucky general, insisting that every success came from foresight.²²

Whether he or Julius Caesar was Rome's greatest general is the debate in Scipio vs Caesar, and the duel with his great rival is weighed in Hannibal vs Scipio. The whole struggle is told in Rome vs Carthage, and Scipio takes his place among the greatest commanders of ancient Rome.