Scipio Africanus

Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (; Latin: [ˈskiːpioː]; 236/235–c. 183 BC) was a Roman general and statesman who was one of the main architects of Rome's victory against Carthage in the Second Punic War. Often regarded as one of the greatest military commanders and strategists of all time, his crowning achievement was the defeat of Hannibal at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC, which earned him the honorific epithet Africanus ("the African").

Born into a distinguished patrician family in Rome, Scipio followed his father Publius Scipio to war against Carthage, and survived the disastrous Roman defeat at Cannae. In 210 BC, despite never having held consular office, he was elected to take command of Rome's forces in Hispania, following the death of his father and uncle in battle. His campaign culminated in the victory at Ilipa in 206 BC against Hannibal's brother Mago Barca, leading to the Roman conquest of Carthaginian Iberia. Elected consul in 205 BC, Scipio launched an invasion of the Carthaginian homeland in Africa, compelling the Carthaginians to recall Hannibal. Following failed negotiations, Scipio routed Hannibal's army at Zama, forcing Carthage to sue for peace and bringing to an end the Second Punic War.

Despite his triumphs and heroic status among the Roman public, Scipio had many political opponents, in particular Cato the Elder. In 187 BC, Scipio and his brother Lucius were subjected to trials for bribes they supposedly received from the Seleucid king Antiochus III during the Roman–Seleucid War. Disillusioned, he left Rome and retired to his villa in Liternum, where he died circa 183 BC.

Early years

Family

Scipio Africanus was born as Publius Cornelius Scipio in 236 BC to his then-homonymous father and Pomponia into the family of the Cornelii Scipiones. His family was one of the major still-extant patrician families and had held multiple consulships within living memory: his great-grandfather Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus and grandfather Lucius Cornelius Scipio were both consuls and censors. His mother's brothers Manius Pomponius Matho and Marcus Pomponius Matho were consuls in 233 and 231 respectively, his father's brother Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Calvus was consul in 222, and his father was in 218.

Early military service

The Second Punic War started in early 218 BC when the Roman ultimatum to Carthage demanding that Hannibal withdraw from Saguntum in Spain was rejected. Scipio's father was consul that year and the younger Scipio joined him in the campaign to stop Hannibal's march on Italy. In a short cavalry engagement between Scipio's father and Hannibal at the river Ticinus near modern Pavia, Polybius claims that the son saved his father's life after the father was encircled by enemy horsemen. Other sources credit an unnamed Ligurian slave.

Two years later, in 216 BC, Scipio served as military tribune. He survived the disastrous Battle of Cannae – his father-in-law, the consul Lucius Aemilius Paullus, was slain there. – and, after the battle, rallied survivors at Canusium. According to Livy, when he heard that Lucius Caecilius Metellus and other young nobles were discussing a plan to abandon the republic and go overseas to serve as mercenaries, Scipio stormed into the meeting and forced all of them at sword-point to swear to Jupiter and the Capitoline triad that they would never abandon Rome. This story is probably a late invention, as it does not appear in Polybius.

The next year, in 213 BC, he was elected curule aedile and served with his cousin Marcus Cornelius Cethegus. His candidacy was opposed by one of the plebeian tribunes on the grounds that he had not yet reached the minimum age, but the voters expressed such enthusiastic support for Scipio that the tribune desisted.

Second Punic War

Campaign in Hispania

From the start of the war through to 211 BC, Scipio's father, Publius Cornelius Scipio, and uncle – Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Calvus – were in command of Rome's armies in Spain. They made some headway when the Carthaginians were forced to withdraw a considerable portion of their forces to handle a revolt by Syphax of Numidia. Through the seven years from 218, the brothers had successfully extended Roman control deep into Carthaginian territory. However, disaster struck in 211 BC when the brothers divided their forces to attack three separate Carthaginian armies and were defeated in detail. The brothers fell in separate battles against the Carthaginians, who were led by Hasdrubal Barca, Mago Barca, and Hasdrubal Gisco; the two Barcas were Hannibal's brothers.

Initially, Gaius Claudius Nero – who was praetor in 212 BC – was sent to contain the situation. But in 210 BC, the assembly elected Scipio to take command. Modern scholars dismiss the Livian narrative of senatorial indecision and have instead suggested that the senate chose Scipio but forced a popular vote to legitimise an irregular command. Giving Scipio command was an extraordinary act, as he at this point had never held a praetorship or consulship, but was regardless granted imperium pro consule, taking command on his arrival to Spain in the early autumn. He was the first person to have been given proconsular imperium without having held consular office. He went to Spain with some 10,000 reinforcements and was joined by another commander, Marcus Junius Silanus, who was dispatched pro praetore and soon assumed command of Nero's army.

Seeking to defeat the three Carthaginian armies in detail, the next year, 209 BC, saw Scipio's first major campaign: he besieged Qart-Hadast (modern Cartagena), which was a major Carthaginian logistics hub and of substantial strategic importance. In the battle, he captured the city by sending a wading party across the lagoon to the city's north when it reached low tide, he told the troops that he had a vision in which the god Neptune had promised aid; this alleged vision played a role in the rapid development of a Scipionic legend around him and his family. Storming the city rapidly and with little ability to tell combatants and civilians apart, Scipio ordered his men to massacre all they encountered and pillage any structures; Polybius viewed the massacre as intended to terrorise the local population into rapidly surrendering and included an anecdote of Romans being so thorough as to cut even the dogs and other animals in half. He then forced the surrender of Mago in the citadel and rapidly switched his tune, sparing the remaining citizens and only enslaving the town's non-citizens. He then took the three hundred Spanish hostages into his custody, giving them gifts, guaranteeing their safety and that of their families, and promising them freedom if their respective communities would ally with Rome.

After the battle, several Spanish tribes defected to the Romans. The next year, 208 BC, Scipio fought Hasdrubal north of the river Baetis, near Baecula. While Scipio was victorious, the battle was indecisive and Hasdrubal escaped north with most of his army across the Pyrenees for Italy; Hasdrubal and his army reached Italy in 207, where they were eventually defeated in the Battle of the Metaurus with the army destroyed and Hasdrubal slain. The following year, Hasdrubal was replaced by a certain Hanno, who was captured by Junius Silanus in Celtiberia. Following the army under Hasdrubal, son of Gisgo, which retreated to Gades (modern Cádiz), Scipio's brother took Orongis (modern Jaén) before a decisive victory in 206 BC at the Battle of Ilipa, north of modern Seville, forced the Carthaginians to withdraw from the peninsula. In mopping-up operations, Scipio captured Ilourgeia and Castulo, inflicting severe punishment on the former for having killed refugees from his army. Other Roman commanders captured other towns in Spain, including Astapa, whose inhabitants committed mass suicide. After a quickly-suppressed revolt by Spanish tribes when false rumours of Scipio's death from illness spread, he crossed into Africa to solicit the support of Syphax and thence into western Hispania to meet Massinissa for the same purpose. Syphax pledged loyalty but eventually joined with the Carthaginians; Massinissa, however, joined with the Romans with a small contingent when Syphax expelled him the kingdom of Massylii. Meanwhile, Gades surrendered to the Romans.

Some time c. 206 BC, Scipio also founded the town of Italica (located about 9 km northwest of Seville), which later became the birthplace of the emperors, Trajan, Hadrian, and Theodosius I.

With a general victory across the peninsula, Scipio then returned to Rome to stand for the consulship of 205 BC, leaving Lucius Cornelius Lentulus and Lucius Manlius Acidinus in command. He returned to Rome late in the year; according to Livy he was denied a triumph, on the grounds that he was privatus – that is, sine magistratu – and had never been elected to a magistracy with imperium.

African campaign

Scipio was elected unanimously to the consulship of 205 BC amid much enthusiasm; he was 31 and still technically too young to be consul. When he entered into office, he demanded that the senate assign him the province of Africa and threatened to take the matter to the popular assemblies if it refused to do so. Despite fierce opposition from the princeps senatus, Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, the senate bowed to his pressure and he received Sicily with permission to cross into Africa if he wished. Fabius' opposition may have been related to jealousy of Scipio's popularity, but also was likely informed by the failed African campaign c. 255 BC under Marcus Atilius Regulus during the First Punic War, which saw the Carthaginians' war efforts renewed. The senate, regardless, assigned Scipio no additional soldiers, leading him to recruit an army of volunteers; Livy reports that from his clients and supporters in Italy, he mustered some 30 warships and 7,000 men.

He spent most of his consulship preparing his troops in Sicily for the invasion of Africa. He captured Locri on the toe of Italy that year, and left one Pleminius in command there. After Pleminius assumed command, he robbed the city's temple and tortured and killed two military tribunes. For these crimes, the senate had Pleminius placed under arrest; Scipio was also implicated but was cleared the next year.

Invasion of Africa

His imperium was prorogued into 205 BC and in that year, he crossed with his men into Africa and besieged Utica before withdrawing and pretending in the winter to negotiate with the Carthaginians. During those pretended negotiations, Scipio mapped out the enemy camps and launched a night attack that was successful in destroying them and killing a large number of the enemy. The armies then fought in the Battle of the Great Plains some time early in the new year (his imperium was prorogued until the war's completion) and after capturing Syphax of Numidia, restored Massinissa to the kingdom. The Carthaginians reacted to the defeat by recalling their generals Hannibal and Mago from Italy and launching their fleet against Scipio's to cut off their supply lines. Scipio was forced into a naval battle near Utica, but was able to avert disaster, losing only some sixty transport ships. Another set of peace negotiations occurred, with the Carthaginians eventually agreeing to abandon all territorial claims in the Mediterranean and beyond, limit her rights to expand in Africa, recognize Massinissa's kingdom, give up all but twenty of her ships, and pay a war indemnity. However, during the negotiations, the Carthaginians – suffering from starvation – attacked a Roman food convoy, leading to protests to be sent and envoys exchanged.

Amid further attempts to remove him from command – one of the consuls of 203 BC, Gnaeus Servilius Caepio, attempted to substitute himself for Scipio to claim credit for the final blow against Carthage; the consuls of 202 BC coveted the African command for the same reason – Scipio refused peace terms at a parley with Hannibal in 202 BC. With the support of Masinissa's Numidian cavalry, the Battle of Zama was fought shortly after; the Romans won and Carthage then again sued for peace.

In the new year, 201 BC, Scipio remained in Africa to conclude negotiations, which saw Carthage's territory kept to the status quo ante bellum, Carthage restore to the Romans all captured goods and persons, Carthaginian disarmament of all but ten triremes, and Carthage needing to ask for Roman permission to make any war. Massinissa's territory in Numidia was to be confirmed; and a war indemnity of 10,000 talents was to be paid over the next fifty years. Although the consul of 201 BC, Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus attempted to oppose the peace so that he could continue the war in Scipio's place, the peace terms were ratified by the assembly in Rome, bringing the war to a final close.

Return

On his return, Scipio celebrated a triumph over Hannibal, the Carthaginians, and Syphax. There, he took the agnomen Africanus ('the African'), for his victories. By this point, Scipio's career reached far beyond his peers even though he was only in his early thirties. On his return, he deposited some 123,000 pounds of silver into the Roman treasury and distributed 400 asses each to his soldiers.

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