A Greater than Napoleon: Scipio Africanus
[Illustration: From the bust in the Capitoline Museum, supposed to be
Scipio Africanus.]
A GREATER THAN NAPOLEON
SCIPIO AFRICANUS
BY
Captain B. H. LIDDELL HART
_WITH FRONTISPIECE AND MAPS_
FOURTH IMPRESSION
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS LTD.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MCMXXX
_Printed in Great Britain_ _All Rights reserved_
_TO
THE MASTER, FELLOWS AND SCHOLARS
OF
CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE
CAMBRIDGE_
PREFACE.
The excuse for this book is that no recent biography of Scipio exists;
the first and last in English appeared in 1817, and is the work of a
country clergyman, who omits any study of Scipio as a soldier! The
reason for this book is that, apart from the romance of Scipio’s
personality and his political importance as the founder of Rome’s
world-dominion, his military work has a greater value to modern students
of war than that of any other great captain of the past. A bold claim,
and yet its truth will, I hope, be substantiated in the following pages.
For the study of tactical methods the campaigns of Napoleon or of 1870,
even of 1914-1918 perhaps, are as dead as those of the third century
B.C. But the art of generalship does not age, and it is because Scipio’s
battles are richer in stratagems and ruses—many still feasible
to-day—than those of any other commander in history that they are an
unfailing object-lesson to soldiers.
Strategically Scipio is still more “modern.” The present is a time of
disillusionment, when we are realising that slaughter is not synonymous
with victory, that the “destruction of the enemy’s main armed forces on
the battlefield” is at best but a means to the end, and not an end in
itself, as the purblind apostles of Clausewitz had deceived
themselves—and the world, unhappily. In the future, even more than in
the past, the need is to study and understand the interplay of the
military, economic, and political forces, which are inseparable in
strategy. Because Scipio more than any other great captain understood
and combined these forces in his strategy, despite the very “modern”
handicap of being the servant of a republic—not, like Alexander,
Frederick, Napoleon, a despot,—the study of his life is peculiarly
apposite to-day. Above all, because the moral objective was the aim of
all his plans, whether political, strategical, or tactical.
My grateful thanks are due to Sir Geoffrey Butler, K.B.E., M.P., Fellow
of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; to Mr W. E. Heitland, M.A., Fellow
of St John’s College, Cambridge; and to Mr E. G. Hawke, M.A., Lecturer
at Queen’s College, London, for their kindness in reading the proofs and
for helpful comments.
B. H. L. H.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION ... 1
I. HALF LIGHT ... 9
II. DAWN ... 20
III. THE STORM OF CARTAGENA ... 31
IV. THE BATTLE OF BÆCULA ... 44
V. THE BATTLE OF ILIPA ... 56
VI. THE SUBJUGATION OF SPAIN ... 67
VII. THE TRUE OBJECTIVE ... 88
VIII. A POLITICAL HITCH ... 106
IX. AFRICA ... 123
X. A VIOLATED PEACE ... 151
XI. ZAMA ... 164
XII. AFTER ZAMA ... 191
XIII. SIESTA ... 204
XIV. THE LAST LAP ... 222
XV. DUSK ... 238
XVI. ROME’S ZENITH ... 248
LIST OF MAPS.
BATTLE OF BÆCULA ... _Facing p._ 46
BATTLE OF ILIPA (SCIPIO’S MANŒUVRE) ... _Facing p._ 60
SPAIN (AT TIME OF 2ND PUNIC WAR) ... _Facing p._ 84
UTICA ... _Facing p._ 126
AFRICA (THE TERRITORY OF CARTHAGE) ... _Facing p._ 144
BATTLE OF ZAMA ... _Facing p._ 176
THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD ... _Facing p._ 202
A GREATER THAN NAPOLEON
INTRODUCTION.
The road to failure is the road to fame—such apparently must be the
verdict on posterity’s estimate of the world’s greatest figures. The
flash of the meteor impresses the human imagination more than the
remoter splendour of the star, fixed immutably in the high heavens. Is
it that final swoop earthwards, the unearthly radiance ending in the
common dust, that, by its evidence of the tangible or the finite, gives
to the meteor a more human appeal? So with the luminaries of the human
system, provided that the ultimate fall has a dramatic note, the memory
of spectacular failure eclipses that of enduring success. Again, it may
be that the completeness of his course lends individual emphasis to the
great failure, throwing his work into clearer relief, whereas the man
whose efforts are crowned with permanent success builds a stepping-stone
by which others may advance still farther, and so merges his own fame in
that of his successors.
The theory at least finds ample confirmation in the realm of action. A
Napoleon and a Lee are enshrined in drama, in novel, and in memoir by
the hundred. A Wellington and a Grant are almost forgotten by the
writers of the nations they brought through peril intact and victorious.
Even a Lincoln may only have been saved from comparative oblivion by the
bullet of an assassin, a Nelson by death in the hour of victory, which
relieved by emotion-awakening tragedy the disrepute of a successful end.
It would seem likely that a century hence the name of Ludendorff will be
emblazoned as the heroic figure of the European War, while that of Foch
sinks into obscurity; there are signs already of this tendency to exalt
the defeated.
For permanence of reputation a man of action must appeal to emotion, not
merely to the mind; and since the living man himself no longer can
kindle the emotions of posterity, the dramatic human touch of ultimate
failure is essential. This truth would seem to hold in most branches of
human effort. Scott’s gallant but belated attempt to reach the South
Pole lives in the world’s memory, while the successful ventures of
Amundsen and Peary are fading. In sport, Dorando’s Marathon is an
enduring memory; but who among the general public could recall the name
of Hayes, the actual victor, or, indeed, that of any subsequent Marathon
winner.
For this irrational, this sentimental verdict, it is fashionable to fix
the blame on modern journalism, yet the barest survey of history shows
that its origins lie far back in the mists of time. On the historian, in
fact—who of all men should by training and outlook put his trust in
reason—falls the major responsibility for this eternal tendency—the
glorification of dramatic failure at the expense of enduring
achievement. The history of the ancient confirms that of the modern
world, and in no example more strikingly than that of Scipio Africanus,
the subject of this brief study, which is an attempt to redress the
“historical” balance by throwing further weights of knowledge and
military appreciation on Scipio’s side, not as commonly by detraction
from his rivals. Gradually, progressively, the belittlement of Scipio
has been pressed by historians anxious to enhance the fame of Hannibal.
It is the more unreasonable, the less excusable, because here there are
no mass of conflicting sources and contemporary opinions. The reliable
data on which to base a study and a judgment are practically limited to
the works of Polybius and Livy, with but a few grains from other, and
admittedly less trustworthy, ancient authorities. And of these two,
Polybius, the earlier, is almost contemporary with events, the friend of
Gaius Lælius, Scipio’s constant subordinate, from whom he could get
first-hand evidence and judgments. He had the family archives of the
Scipios at his disposal for research, and he had been over the actual
battlefields while many of the combatants were still alive. Thus he
gained an almost unique base upon which to form his estimate.
Further, being a Greek, his views are less suspect than those of Livy of
being coloured by Roman patriotic bias, while modern historical
criticism is unanimous in its tribute alike to his impartiality, his
thoroughness of research, and the soundness of his critical insight.
The verdict of Polybius is clear, and his facts still more so.
That there were divergent judgments of Scipio among the Romans of
succeeding generations is true; but Polybius explains the reasons so
convincingly, their truth borne out by the known facts of Scipio’s
strategical and tactical plans, that there is no vestige of excuse for
modern writers to regard as due to luck what superstition led the
ancients to ascribe to divine aid. “The fact that he was almost the most
famous man of all time makes every one desirous to know what sort of man
he was, and what were the natural gifts and the training which enabled
him to accomplish so many great actions. But none can help falling into
error and acquiring a mistaken impression of him, as the estimate of
those who have given us their views about him is very wide of the
truth.” “... They represent him as a man favoured by fortune ... such
men being, in their opinion, more divine and more worthy of admiration
than those who always act by calculation. They are not aware that the
one deserves praise and the other only congratulation, being common to
ordinary men, whereas what is praiseworthy belongs only to men of sound
judgment and mental ability, whom we should consider to be the most
divine and most beloved by the gods. To me it seems that the character
and principles of Scipio much resembled those of Lycurgus, the
Lacedæmonian legislator. For neither must we suppose that Lycurgus drew
up the constitution of Sparta under the influence of superstition and
solely prompted by the Pythia, nor that Scipio won such an empire for
his country by following the suggestion of dreams and omens. But since
both of them saw that most men neither readily accept anything
unfamiliar to them, nor venture on great risks without the hope of
divine help, Lycurgus made his own scheme more acceptable and more
easily believed in by invoking the oracles of the Pythia in support of
projects due to himself, while Scipio similarly made the men under his
command more sanguine and more ready to face perilous enterprises by
instilling into them the belief that his projects were divinely
inspired. But that he invariably acted on calculation and foresight, and
that the successful issue of his plans was always in accord with
rational expectation, will be evident.”
To the mind of to-day not only does such an explanation appear
inherently probable, but affords a key to the understanding of a man
whose triumphs, whether military, political, or diplomatic, were, above
all, due to his supreme insight into the psychology of men. Who,
moreover, applied this gift like the conductor of a great orchestra to
the production of a world harmony. In conducting policy, through war to
peace, he indeed attained a concord which aptly fulfilled the musical
definition: “A combination which both by its ... smoothness and by its
logical origin and purpose in the scheme can form a point of repose.” As
a conductor of the human orchestra he had, however, two weaknesses, one
inborn and one developing with years. He could not comprehend the low
notes—the narrowness and baseness to which men can descend,—and the
exaltation of spirit born of his power over men prevented him from
hearing the first warnings of that discord which was to impair the
glorious symphony so nearly completed.
CHAPTER I.
HALF LIGHT.
Publius Cornelius Scipio was born at Rome in the 517th year from the
city’s foundation—235 B.C. Though a member of one of the most
illustrious and ancient families, the Cornelii, of his early years and
education no record, not even an anecdote, has come down to us. Indeed,
not until he is chosen, through a combination of circumstances and his
own initiative, to command the army in Spain at the age of twenty-four,
does history give us more than an occasional fleeting glimpse of his
progress. Yet bare and brief as these are, each is significant. The
first is at the battle of the Ticinus, Hannibal’s initial encounter with
the Roman arms on Italian soil, after his famous passage of the Alps.
Here the youthful Scipio, a lad of seventeen, accompanied his father,
the Roman commander. If his first experience of battle was on the losing
side, he at least emerged with enviable distinction. Let the story be
told in Polybius’s words: “His father had placed him in command of a
picked troop of horse” (in reserve on a small hill) “in order to ensure
his safety; but when he caught sight of his father in the battle,
surrounded by the enemy and escorted only by two or three horsemen and
dangerously wounded, he at first endeavoured to urge those with him to
go to the rescue, but when they hung back for a time owing to the large
numbers of the enemy round them, he is said with reckless daring to have
charged the encircling force alone. Upon the rest being now forced to
attack, the enemy were terror-struck and broke up, and Publius Scipio,
thus unexpectedly rescued, was the first to salute his son as his
deliverer.” It is said that the consul ordered a civic crown, the Roman
V.C., to be presented to his son, who refused it, saying that “the
action was one that rewarded itself.” The exploit does credit to the
young Scipio’s gallantry, but the outcome, as emphasised by Polybius,
does still more credit to his psychological insight. “Having by this
service won a universally acknowledged reputation for bravery, he in
subsequent times refrained from exposing his person without sufficient
reason when his country reposed her hopes of success on him—conduct
characteristic not of a commander who relies on luck, but on one gifted
with intelligence.”
To the present generation, with personal experience of war, the point
may have greater force than to the closeted historians. To the former,
the higher commander who aspires to be a platoon leader, thrusting
himself into the fight at the expense of his proper duty of direction,
is not the heroic or inspired figure that he appears to the civilian. To
some too, not natural lovers of danger for its own sake—and these are
rare in any army,—the point will touch a chord of memory, reminding them
of how by the moral hold on their men given by one such exploit they
were thereafter enabled to take the personal precautions which better
befit the officer entrusted with the lives of others. The civilian at
home poured scorn on the German officer “leading” his men from behind;
not so the fighting soldier, for he knew that when the occasion called,
his officer enemy did not hesitate to risk, nay throw away his life, as
an example. The story still lives of the German officer who led a
forlorn hope mounted on a white horse.
The exploit, and the popular fame it brought, launched Scipio’s military
career so auspiciously as to earn him rapid advancement. For, less than
two years later, 216 B.C., Livy’s account speaks of him as one of the
military tribunes, from whom the commanders of the legions were
nominated, and in itself a post that made him one of the deputies or
staff officers of the legion commander. If a parallel is desired, the
nearest modern equivalent is a staff colonel.
This second glimpse of Scipio comes on the morrow of Cannæ, Rome’s
darkest hour, and it is curious that the future general, who, like
Marlborough, was never to fight a battle that he did not win, should in
his subordinate days have been witness of unrelieved disaster. There is
no record of Scipio’s share in the battle, but from Livy’s account it
seems clear that he was among the ten thousand survivors who escaped to
the greater Roman camp across the River Aufidus, and further, one of the
undaunted four thousand who, rather than surrender with their fellows,
quitted the camp after nightfall, and eluding the Carthaginian horse,
made their way to Canusium. Their situation was still perilous, for this
place lay only some four miles distant, and why Hannibal did not follow
up his success by the destruction of this remnant, isolated from
succour, remains one of the enigmas of history, to all appearance a
blemish on his generalship.
With the four thousand at Canusium were four military tribunes, and, as
Livy tells us, “by the consent of all, the supreme command was vested in
Publius Scipio, then a very young man, and Appius Claudius.” Once more
Scipio shines amid the darkness of defeat; once more a time of general
disaster is the opportunity of youth backed by character. Disruption, if
not mutiny, threatens. Word is brought that men are saying that Rome is
doomed, and that certain of the younger patricians, headed by Lucius
Cæcilius Metellus, are proposing to leave Rome to its fate and escape
overseas to seek service with some foreign king. These fresh tidings of
ill-fortune dismay and almost paralyse the assembled leaders. But while
the others urge that a council be called to deliberate upon the
situation, Scipio acts. He declares “that it is not a proper subject for
deliberation; that courage and action, and not deliberation, were
necessary in such a calamity. That those who desired the safety of the
state would attend him in arms forthwith; that in no place was the camp
of the enemy more truly than where such designs were meditated.” Then,
with only a few companions, he goes straight to the lodging of Metellus,
surprising the plotters in council. Drawing his sword, Scipio proclaims
his purpose: “I swear that I will neither desert the cause of Rome, nor
allow any other citizen of Rome to desert it. If knowingly I violate
this oath, may Jupiter visit with the most horrible perdition my house,
my family, and my fortune. I insist that you, Lucius Cæcilius, and the
rest of you present, take this oath; and let the man who demurs be
assured that this sword is drawn against him.” The upshot is that,
“terrified, as though they were beholding the victorious Hannibal, they
all take the oath, and surrender themselves to Scipio to be kept in
custody.”
This danger quelled, Scipio and Appius, hearing that Varro, the
surviving consul, had reached Venusia, sent a messenger there, placing
themselves under his orders.
Scipio’s next brief entry on the stage of history is in a different
scene. His elder brother, Lucius, was a candidate for the ædileship,[1]
and the younger Publius “for long did not venture to stand for the same
office as his brother. But on the approach of the election, judging from
the disposition of the people that his brother had a poor chance of
being elected, and seeing that he himself was exceedingly popular, he
came to the conclusion that the only means by which his brother would
attain his object would be by their coming to an agreement and both of
them making the attempt, and so he hit on the following plan. Seeing
that his mother was visiting the different temples and sacrificing to
the gods on behalf of his brother and generally showing great concern
about the result, he told her, as a fact, that he had twice had the same
dream. He had dreamt that both he and his brother had been elected to
the ædileship, and were going up from the Forum to their house when she
met them at the door and fell on their necks and kissed them. She was
affected by this, as a woman would be, and exclaimed, ‘Would I might see
that day,’ or something similar. ‘Then would you like us to try,
mother?’ he said. Upon her consenting, as she never dreamt he would
venture on it, but thought it was merely a casual joke—for he was
exceedingly young,—he begged her to get a white toga ready for him at
once, this being the dress that candidates are in the habit of wearing.
What she had said had entirely gone out of her head, and Scipio, waiting
until he received the white toga, appeared in the Forum while his mother
was still asleep. The people, owing to the unexpectedness of the sight,
and owing to his previous popularity, received him with enthusiastic
surprise; and afterwards, when he went on to the station appointed for
candidates and stood by his brother, they not only conferred the office
on Publius but on his brother too for his sake, and both appeared at
their home elected ædiles. When the news suddenly reached his mother’s
ears, she, overjoyed, met them at the door and embraced the young men
with deep emotion, so that from this circumstance all who had heard of
the dreams believed that Publius communed with the gods not only in his
sleep, but still more in reality and by day.”
“Now, it was not a matter of a dream at all; but as he was kind,
munificent, and agreeable in his address, he reckoned on his popularity
with the people, and so by cleverly adapting his action to the actual
sentiment of the people and of his mother, he not only attained his
object, but was believed to have acted under a sort of divine
inspiration. For those who are incapable of taking an accurate view of
opportunities, causes, and dispositions, attribute to the gods and to
fortune the causes of what is accomplished by shrewdness and with
calculation and foresight.”
To some the deception, even though for a worthy end, may seem out of
tune with the higher Roman virtues; and Livy, to whom as a Roman the
artifice would appear less admirable than to Polybius, a Greek, leaves
in doubt the origin of this habit of Scipio’s, developed in his after
career either by reason of its success or practice. Here is Livy’s
appreciation: “Scipio was undoubtedly the possessor of striking gifts;
but besides that he had from childhood studied the art of their
effective display. Whether there was some vein of superstition in his
own temperament, or whether it was with the aim of securing for his
commands the authority of inspired utterances, he rarely spoke in public
without pretending to some nocturnal vision or supernatural suggestion.”
Livy may exaggerate the frequency, for he wrote at a later date, and
legends grow round the characteristics of the great. Such supernatural
claims only appear occasionally in Scipio’s recorded utterances, and he,
a supreme artist in handling human nature, would realise the value of
reserving them for critical moments.
Livy continues: “In order to impress public opinion in this direction,
he had made a practice from the day he reached manhood of never engaging
in any business, public or private, without first paying a visit to the
Capitol. There he would enter the sanctuary and pass some time,
generally in solitude and seclusion. This habit ... made converts to a
belief, to which accident or design had given wide currency, that his
origin was other than human. There was a story once widely believed
about Alexander the Great, that his male parent had been a huge serpent,
often seen in his mother’s chamber, but vanishing directly men appeared.
This miracle was told again of Scipio ... but he himself never cast
ridicule upon it; indeed, he rather lent it countenance by the course
which he adopted of neither wholly disclaiming such tales nor openly
asserting their truth.” This last tale, incidentally, is repeated by
several of the ancient writers and enshrined in ‘Paradise Lost,’ where
Milton writes:—
“He with Olympias, this with her that bore
Scipio, the height of Rome.”
The view that this claim to divine inspiration had a religious and not
merely an intellectual basis gains some support from Scipio’s conduct in
the Syrian War of 190 B.C., when, because he was a member of the college
of the priests of Mars, known as Salian priests, he stayed behind the
army and indirectly kept it waiting at the Hellespont, as the rule bound
him to stay where he was until the month ended.
Again, modern psychologists may suggest that his dreams were true and
not invented, such is known to be the power of strong desire to fulfil
itself in dreams. Whatever the explanation and the source of his
“visions,” there can be no doubt as to the skill with which he turned
them to practical account. And it is a supreme moral tribute to Scipio
that this power was exerted by him purely to further his country’s good,
never his own. When trouble and accusation came in later days, and an
ungrateful State forgot its saviour, Scipio did not invoke any divine
vision in his defence. That he so refrained is the more definite and the
more significant, because, with other psychological means, he showed
himself still the supreme “organist” of the human instrument.
Scipio’s election to the ædileship is historically important, not only
because it illumines the sources of his success and influence over men,
but also for its light on the causes of his political decline, the
self-imposed exile from an ungrateful country, which saw a marvellously
brilliant career close in shadow. It is Livy who shows that his election
was not so unopposed as Polybius’s account would suggest; that the
tribunes of the people opposed his pretensions to the office because he
had not attained the legal age for candidature. Whereupon Scipio
retorted that “if the citizens in general are desirous of appointing me
ædile, I am old enough”—an appeal over the heads of the tribunes which
was instantly successful, but which by its triumphant defiance of
tradition and rule was likely to add resentment to the jealousy which
inevitably accompanies the precocious success of youth.
Footnote 1:
The ædileship was normally the first rung of the ladder to the higher
magistracy. Its functions were those of a civic “Home Office”—the care
of the city and the enforcement of the by-laws, the supervision of the
markets and of prices and measures, the superintendence and
organisation of the public games.