Scipio Africanus

Publius Cornelius Scipio, later called Africanus, was the Roman commander who won the Second Punic War, driving the Carthaginians out of Spain and then defeating Hannibal at Zama in North Africa in 202 BCE. Born in 236 or 235 BCE into one of Rome's leading patrician families, he rose to command while still in his twenties and is widely ranked among the great generals of antiquity. His story is told mainly by the Greek historian Polybius and the Roman Livy, some of whose anecdotes modern scholars doubt.

Scipio's father, also Publius, was consul in 218 BCE, when Hannibal marched on Italy, and the son went with him. Polybius says the young man rescued his father when enemy horsemen surrounded him in a cavalry clash at the river Ticinus; other sources gave the credit to a slave. In 216 BCE Scipio served as a military tribune and survived the slaughter at Cannae, after which, Livy claims, he forced a group of young nobles at sword-point to swear they would not abandon Rome. That tale may be a later invention.

In 211 BCE Scipio's father and uncle were killed in separate battles in Spain. The next year Rome made the unprecedented choice of giving their command to Scipio, who had never been consul or praetor. In 209 BCE he took New Carthage, today's Cartagena, the main Carthaginian base, by sending troops across a lagoon at low tide. His men massacred many inhabitants before he accepted the citadel's surrender and won over Spanish hostages with generous treatment. He beat Hasdrubal Barca at Baecula in 208 BCE, though Hasdrubal escaped to Italy, and in 206 BCE his victory at Ilipa, near Seville, ended Carthaginian power in Spain. Around this time he founded Italica, later the birthplace of the emperors Trajan and Hadrian.

Back in Rome, Scipio was elected consul for 205 BCE at about 31, younger than the usual minimum. Against opposition led by Fabius Maximus, he won permission to invade Africa, though he had to raise many of his troops as volunteers. Landing in 204 BCE, he besieged Utica, burned the enemy camps in a night attack, won the Battle of the Great Plains and helped his ally Masinissa take the Numidian throne. Carthage recalled Hannibal from Italy. After talks between the two generals failed, Scipio, strengthened by Masinissa's Numidian horsemen, defeated Hannibal at Zama in 202 BCE.

The peace of 201 BCE left Carthage with only ten warships, forbade it to wage war without Rome's consent, and imposed an indemnity of 10,000 talents over fifty years. Scipio celebrated a triumph and took the name Africanus.

Scipio's popularity, and stories that Spaniards had hailed him as a king, alarmed many senators. He was censor in 199 BCE, became leader of the senate, and was consul again in 194 BCE. In the war against the Seleucid king Antiochus III he served as a senior officer under his brother Lucius, though illness kept him out of the decisive Battle of Magnesia in 190 BCE.

On their return the brothers were attacked over money received from Antiochus, with Cato the Elder among their critics. In the senate, the story goes, Africanus tore up his brother's account books rather than submit them. Lucius was fined, and later tradition, told in different versions, has Africanus himself prosecuted. He retired to his villa at Liternum on the Campanian coast.

Ancient writers gave several dates for his death; most modern scholars accept Polybius's 183 BCE. His burial place is uncertain. His younger daughter Cornelia became the mother of the reforming Gracchus brothers, and his family line continued through the adoption of Scipio Aemilianus.

Our 300 BCE map shows the Roman Republic and Carthage before his war; by the 200 BCE map, shortly after Zama, Carthage has lost Spain and Rome has grown greatly. The Seleucid Empire he fought late in life also appears. See also Hannibal, the Battle of Cannae and the Punic Wars.