Scipio, to whom after his defeat of Hannibal the name of Africanus was
given by his countrymen, was a Roman of a new type. For him the interest
and business of the world were not bounded by war. He read much and
travelled widely in the course of his life and thought deeply on many
things that had hardly begun to trouble the ordinary Roman of his time,
though they were to trouble deeply the Romans who came after him. He
loved Rome: but his love was not the simple unquestioning devotion of
the old Romans, for whom it was enough that the city was there, and that
their religion as well as their patriotism was bound up with it. He
loved Rome because he believed it stood for something fine.
Of Scipio's domestic life we do not know much: but he was a man of many
warm and devoted friendships and certainly showed deep attachment to his
father, to his brother, and to Scipio Aemilianus, his grandson by
adoption. When young he was distinguished by his slim height and extreme
fairness of complexion; a skin that flushed easily and showed the
feelings he afterwards learned to conceal.
Something of his character may be seen in his bust, which shows, above
the firm mouth and powerful chin of the man of action and resolute will,
the questioning eyes and fine brow of the thinker. It is a stern, but
not altogether a cold face; above all it is the face of a man to whom
nothing was indifferent. Like most portraits of great men, it represents
its subject well on in middle life, when the enthusiasms of youth have
cooled and settled, but it is the face of a man capable of enthusiasm,
if an enthusiasm controlled by judgement.
[Illustration: SCIPIO AFRICANUS]
Scipio was capable of enthusiasm: but not of a kind that carried him
away or made him do reckless things. The Romans of his time believed
that he had been born under a lucky star, was in some sense a special
favourite of the gods. Certainly the chances that destroy or make men
seemed throughout his life always to turn out for good. He made
mistakes, and they proved more successful than the wisest judgements
could have been. But the real secret of his success was not luck but his
sureness of himself. He never lost his head. He believed he could do
anything he put his hand to. This belief not only inspired others with
confidence; it carried him through the stages of difficulty and apparent
failure in which all but the strongest are apt to give up an enterprise
for lost. More than that, thanks to his belief in himself, Scipio was
never disturbed by jealousy or by envy of other men's success. Men's
praise did not excite him; his own opinion was what mattered and he knew
what it was. At the same time Scipio had in his nature no tinge of what
the Greeks called the 'daemon' in man and we the divine spark. The
impossible did not beckon to him. His imagination and his desires moved
among the things that could be done. He was incapable of a passion like
Hannibal's. He could never have set out to conquer the world, and held
on year after year, beaten but not defeated, knowing that he could not
win but refusing to give up. He was the natural leader of a successful
people. Always he had Rome behind him. Hannibal had nothing behind him,
in that sense. He had to create his instruments by the sheer force of
his own fiery energy. Scipio could never have done this. It would have
seemed to him foolish to try.
Although Scipio cared for many things outside the business of war, it
was as a soldier that he was admired and honoured by most of his
countrymen. War was the only road to high place and distinction
recognized in Rome. Scipio, like other young men of his class--he
belonged to a very ancient and honourable family, that of the
Cornelii--was trained as a soldier from his boyhood.
At the battle of the Ticinus the life of the consul Publius Cornelius
Scipio was saved by the gallantry of a lad of eighteen, serving his
first campaign. This lad was his son, named like himself Publius
Cornelius Scipio. He fought again at Cannae, and was, with the son of
old Fabius Cunctator, among the very few young officers who escaped
alive. As he made his way from the stricken field he came upon a group
of men, one or two being officers, who in despair after the frightful
day felt that Rome was lost. All that was left for them was to cross the
seas and try, in a new country, to carve a career for themselves. Scipio
and young Fabius, their swords drawn, compelled them to give up this
idea and swear that they would not desert their country. These young men
did yeoman service in helping Varro to collect the remnants of his
scattered army; and Scipio was clearly marked out for high command in
years to come.
That it would come as soon as it actually did no one, however, could
have foreseen. After the battles of Ticinus and Trebia, Scipio's father
and his uncle were sent to Spain to reconquer the lost provinces there
and prevent any help coming to Hannibal. They also stirred up trouble in
Africa. But their success was brief. When Hannibal's brother Hasdrubal
returned to Spain the Spaniards who had enlisted in the Roman armies
deserted. Finally, four years after Cannae, Publius Scipio was defeated
and killed and Cnaeus, shut in by three armies, suffered the same fate.
To allow the Carthaginians to hold Spain was a serious danger; to defeat
them a big task. Long did the Roman Senate deliberate over who was to be
sent. There did not seem to be any one capable who could be spared.
Fabius was very old; Aemilius dead; Marcellus needed against Hannibal.
The younger generals thought the Spanish command carried more risk than
glory.
At last Scipio came forward and offered himself. A vivid account of the
impression he made on the men of his day is given by Livy.
_Africanus, the Young Proconsul_
At Rome, after the recovery of Capua, the Senate and people were
as anxious about the situation in Spain as in Italy, and it was
determined to strengthen the army there and to send a new
commander. There was, however, no agreement about the best man for
the post, though all felt that, as two great generals had fallen
in the course of thirty days, their successor ought to be chosen
with unusual care. After various names had been proposed, it was
finally arranged that the people should elect a proconsul for the
Spanish command, and the consuls gave notice of the day of
election. It had been assumed that any who thought themselves
equal to the responsibility would come forward as candidates, and
when this expectation was disappointed, there was renewed mourning
for the recent disasters and regret for the lost generals. Thus it
happened that on the day of the election the citizens went down to
the Plain despondent and without definite purpose. Turning to the
assembled magistrates, they scanned the features of the leaders,
who were looking helplessly from one to another, and murmured that
the blow had been so great and that the position was now so
hopeless that no one dared to accept the Spanish command. All at
once P. Scipio, the son of Publius who had fallen in Spain,
proposed himself as a candidate, though he was only twenty-four
years of age, and took his stand in a conspicuous place. Every eye
was fixed on him, and the shouts of applause that at once burst
forth predicted good luck and success to his mission. Then the
election proceeded, and P. Scipio received the votes, not only of
every century, but of every individual. However, when the business
was finished and impetuosity and enthusiasm had cooled, men began
to ask themselves amid the general silence what they had really
done, and whether favour had not carried the day against
judgement. There was a strong feeling that the proconsul was too
young, and some even found a bad omen in the misfortunes of his
family and in the very name of Scipio, as he was leaving two
households in mourning to go to provinces where he would have to
fight over the tombs of his father and of his uncle.
When Scipio saw the trouble and anxiety caused by this hasty
action, he invited the people to meet him, and spoke with such
pride and confidence of his youth and the duty entrusted to him
and the war which he was to conduct that he awakened and renewed
all the former enthusiasm, and filled his hearers with a more
sanguine hope than is usually suggested by trust in promises or by
inference from established facts. Scipio, indeed, did not merely
deserve admiration for his genuine qualities, but from his youth
upwards he had been endowed with a peculiar faculty for making the
most of them. When he gave counsel to the people, he founded it on
a vision of the night or an inspiration seemingly divine, either
because he was in some sort influenced by superstition, or because
he expected that his wishes and commands would be carried out
readily if they came with a kind of oracular sanction. In very
early life he began to create this impression, and as soon as he
was of age, he would do no business, public or private, till he
had gone to the Capitol and entered the temple, generally sitting
there for a time alone and apart. By this habit, which he
maintained all through his life, he gave support, either of set
purpose or by accident, to a belief held by some that he was of
divine parentage, and he thus revived a similar and equally
baseless story, once current about Alexander the Great, that he
was the son of a huge serpent, which had often been seen in the
house before his birth, but glided away at the approach of any one
and disappeared from sight. Scipio did nothing to discredit these
wonders; in fact, he indirectly confirmed them, for, if he
asserted nothing, he did not deny anything.
Livy, xxvi. 18-19.
He was still very young, nevertheless he had already made people feel
confidence in him. In Spain, although he began with a bad failure since
he allowed Hasdrubal to cross the Pyrenees with his army and march to
Italy to assist Hannibal, his Spanish campaign was ably carried out and
his capture of New Carthage was a bold and brilliant exploit. When the
time came to choose a general, after the Metaurus, to attack Hannibal at
home, every one in Rome felt that Scipio was the man. He would finish
the war. There was, indeed, no serious rival; the long struggle had worn
the older generals out. Some of the old-fashioned senators distrusted
Scipio. He was too cultivated; too much interested in Greek literature
and too young. But he was the idol of the people, who adore success, and
was nominated by acclamation.
Soon the Carthaginians were so hard pressed that they sent frantic
messages to Hannibal to come to their aid. They knew that the death
struggle was upon them. Hannibal came. Even his genius could not, at
this stage, change the fortunes of war. He had no time to train the raw
Carthaginian levies. His veterans were invincible, but they were vastly
outnumbered when on the plains of Zama, five days' march from Carthage,
he met Scipio in the final battle (202). It was a victory for Rome.
Hannibal, who always saw things as they were, knew that the long
struggle was over. Carthage must make what terms it could. These terms
were severe. The city lost all its foreign possessions, had to pay a big
indemnity, and hand over all but twenty men-of-war and all elephants; no
military operations even within Africa could be undertaken save by
permission of Rome. The city, however, was left free. Scipio set his
face firmly against those who clamoured for the utter destruction of
Carthage. In the same way he protested against the demand made six years
later for the banishment of Hannibal.
Scipio returned to Rome amid scenes of extraordinary enthusiasm and
rejoicing. All the way from Rhegium, where he landed, to Rome itself the
people came out and lined the roads, hailing him as the man who had
saved his country. He entered the city in triumph, marching to the
Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline hill to lay before the altar his
wreaths of olive and laurel. Magnificent games were held, lasting for
several days, in honour of his victory, and he himself was given the
name Africanus.
For the next few years Africanus lived in Rome the life of a private
citizen, concerned with politics, giving his spare time to the study of
Greek literature, to which he was devoted. This study he shared with
many friends, among them Laelius, who had been his devoted lieutenant in
the Spanish and African wars, Tiberius Gracchus the Elder, the husband
of Scipio's daughter Cornelia, herself a woman of high character and
educated ability; and Aemilius Paulus, whose sister he married and whose
nephew was afterwards adopted into the family of the Scipios by the son
of Africanus and known as Scipio Aemilianus. As they read the plays,
poetry, and philosophy of the Greeks, educated Romans learned that they
were not alone in the world. Before them had lived a people who were
skilled in all the arts of life at a time when they themselves were rude
barbarians, like the Gauls whom they despised.
The Greece of their day, however, was no longer the Greece of the
glorious past. Alexander's great empire, which had extended over half
Asia, had fallen to pieces. In Greece itself the different peoples were
quarrelling among themselves. Even after the Roman armies had freed the
Greeks from Philip of Macedonia, Antiochus of Asia threatened them; at
the Court of Antiochus was Hannibal. It was as an envoy from Rome to his
Court that Scipio met and talked with Hannibal. Later he went out as
assistant to his brother Lucius, when the latter was made commander in
the war against Antiochus, and finally defeated him at the battle of
Magnesia in Asia Minor.
By no means all educated Romans shared Scipio's feelings about Greece.
On the contrary there were many who thought that the simplicity of the
grand old Roman character was being destroyed, while the young men were
falling into luxurious and effeminate ways. Marcus Porcius Cato, for
example, a man of the utmost uprightness and courage, took this view. He
was a hard man himself, and he wanted others to be hard. He could see no
difference between a love of beauty and luxury. He saw nothing that was
bad in the old order, nothing that was good in the new.
The Scipios, Africanus and his brother, who now bore the name of
Asiaticus, were Cato's particular enemies. He had struggled in the
Senate with Africanus over Carthage, for the old man wanted to see the
city of Hannibal razed to the ground. He hated Scipio's Greek ideas. He
thought him too proud and self-willed to be a good servant of the State.
After the Greek campaign Cato called upon Asiaticus to give an account
of the money spent in the wars against Antiochus, suggesting that he had
been extravagant. That such a charge should be brought against his
brother roused Scipio Africanus to passionate anger. He refused to
defend him; the character of a Scipio was its own defence. In the
presence of the Senate he tore up the account books which Cato had
called for. When Lucius was, nevertheless, condemned Scipio rescued him
by force. Thereupon he himself was charged with treason by two tribunes.
Even then his haughty spirit did not bend. Instead of pleading his cause
he reminded the people that it was the anniversary of the day on which
he had defeated Hannibal at Zama. Let them follow him to the Temple of
Jupiter and pray for more citizens like himself. The crowd obeyed. No
more was heard of the trial.
Scipio's pride, however, was deeply injured. He had been the idol of
Rome in his youth. That he and his brother should be accused before the
Roman people was to him an unbearable sign of ingratitude and baseness
of mind. He left Rome, shaking its dust from his feet, and retired to
the country. There a few years later he died at the age of fifty-three.
In his will he ordered that his ashes should not be taken to Rome.
In the same year (183) Hannibal also died. To the last the Romans feared
him; Hannibal took poison when he heard that Nicomedes of Bithynia, at
whose Court he was, had been ordered to hand him over to Rome.