Livy Book 30

Scipio Africanus

For a very full biography see this site.
See also Lempriere's entry on Scipio here.

Scipio Africanus

Family

Publius Cornelius (PW 336) (236-184/3 B.C.), son of Publius and husband of Aemilia, the sister of Paullus; father of two sons and two daughters, Cornelia, wife of Scipio Nasica, and Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi.

Early Career

Born in 236 B.C., Scipio is said to have saved his father's life at the battle of Ticinus (218) and as military tribune to have rallied the survivors of Cannae at Canusium (216). After being curule aedile (213), he was appointed by the People to the command in Spain, being the first privatus to be invested with proconsular imperium (210). In Spain he followed his father's offensive strategy rather than the cautious policy of his own predecessor, Nero. He seized the enemy's base, Carthago Nova, by a brilliant coup de main (209).

Military commander in Spain

He drilled his army in new tactics, by which the three lines of the Roman army acted with greater mutual independence; he possibly adopted the Spanish sword and improved the pilum. In 208 he defeated Hasdrubal Barca at Baecula (Bailen) in Baetica: screened by his light troops, his main forces divided and fell on the enemy's flanks, a movement which was a complete break with traditional Roman tactics. He wisely avoided a wild-goose chase after the fleeing Hasdrubal (q.v. 2) and decided to fight on in Spain, where he finally defeated the two other Carthaginian armies at Ilipa (Alcala del Rio, near Seville): he held the enemy's main forces while the wings outflanked them (206). Thus Roman domination was established in Spain. Before he left Spain Scipio settled some veterans at Italica.

Fighting Hannibal in Africa

As consul for 205, Scipio carried through his determination to invade Africa, despite senatorial opposition led by Fabius. With an army composed partly of volunteers he crossed to Sicily; he also succeeded in snatching Locri from Hannibal. In 204 as proconsul he landed with perhaps 35,000 men in Africa, where he besieged Utica and wintered on a nearby headland (Castra Cornelia). Early in 203 he successfully attacked and burnt the camps of Syphax and Hasdrubal some 6 miles to the south. At Campi Magni (Souk el Kremis) on the upper Bagradas, Scipio defeated another enemy army by a double outflanking operation. When he captured Tunis, Carthage sought peace. During an armistice terms were referred to Rome, but after Hannibal's return to Africa the Carthaginians renewed the war in 202. After joining Masinissa, Scipio finally defeated Hannibal in the battle of Zama (q.v.), where neither side could ouflank the other and the issue was decided by the Roman and Numidian cavalry, which broke off its pursuit of the Punic horsemen and fell on the rear of Hannibal's army. Scipio was named Africanus after the country he had conquered.

Later career

In 199 Scipio was elected censor and became princeps senatus. A keen supporter of a philhellenic policy, he prudently but vainly urged in his second consulship (194) that Greece should not be completely evacuated lest Antiochus of Syria should invade it. In 193 he was sent on an embassy to north Africa and perhaps also to the East. When his brother Lucius was given the command against Antiochus (190), Africanus, who could not constitutionally yet be re-elected consul, was 'associated' with the command and served as his brother's legate.

Illness, opposition and death

After crossing to Asia, where he received back from Antiochus his captured son Lucius, Scipio fell ill and took no active part in his brother's victory at Magnesia (189). Meanwhile in Rome political attacks, led by Cato, were launched on the Scipios, culminating in the "Trials of the Scipios', on which the ancient evidence is conflicting. Africanus intervened when Lucius was accused in 187; whether he himself was formally accused either in 187 or 184 is not beyond doubt. But his influence was undermined and he withdrew embittered and ill to Liternum where he died soon afterwards (184/3)

His character and achievements

An outstanding man of action, Scipio may nevertheless on occasion have felt himself to have been divinely inspired and the favourite of Jupiter Capitolinus. This aspect of his character gave rise to the 'Scipionic legend', born during his lifetime but later elaborated (e.g. by parallels with Alexander the Great). Profoundly convinced of his own powers, Scipio personified a new era in which Greek ideas swept over Roman life. By his tactical reforms and strategic ideals he forged a new weapon with which he asserted Rome's supremacy in Spain, Africa, and the Hellenistic East, championing Rome's imperial and protectorate mission in the world. He turned a citizen-militia into a semi-professional army, which for ten years he commanded at the People's wish; his victory at Zama gave him the most powerful position yet held by a Roman general. But the time had not yet come when the individual challenged the power of the Senate. Scipio offered no threat to the nobility except through the normal channels of political life in which he showed no particular ability. Factional jealousies, the size of his clientela, and reaction against his generous foreign policy and his enthusiasm for Greek culture created invidia and led to his downfall amid personal and political rivalries, but he had demonstrated that Rome's destiny was to be a Mediterranean, not merely an Italian, power.
(Oxford Classical Dictionary)