Scipio Africanus the Younger

▪ Roman general

Introduction

also called  Scipio Aemilianus , Latin  Scipio Africanus Minor , in full  Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus (Numantinus) 

born 185/184 BC

died 129 BC, Rome

      Roman general famed both for his exploits during the Third Punic War (Punic War, Third) (149–146 BC) and for his subjugation of Spain (134–133 BC). He received the name Africanus and celebrated a triumph in Rome after his destruction of Carthage (146 BC). He acquired the (unofficial) name Numantinus for his reduction of Spanish Numantia (133 BC).

Background and early life

      Scipio was the second son of Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus (Paullus Macedonicus, Lucius Aemilius), hero of the Third Macedonian War and son of the consul (of the same name) who fell at the Battle of Cannae in 216. Paullus himself, twice consul, was an outstanding Roman leader who combined traditional Roman virtues with a keen interest in Greek culture. Soon after Scipio's birth, Paullus divorced his wife Papiria, and it was probably after their father's remarriage that Scipio and his elder brother, Quintus Fabius Maximus Aemilianus, were adopted into other families, although both remained in close contact with their natural father. While the elder brother was adopted by a grandson, or possibly a son, of Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator, the famous general of the Second Punic War, Scipio himself was adopted by Publius Scipio, the son of Scipio Africanus the Elder. Thus Scipio succeeded to the family tradition of two of Rome's greatest generals—the victor against Hannibal of Carthage and the conqueror of Perseus of Macedonia.

      Scipio's upbringing is described in a passage of Plutarch's biography of his father, Aemilius Paullus, who

brought up his sons in accordance with the traditional native type of education, as he himself had been brought up, but also, and more keenly, on the Greek pattern. For the young men were surrounded not only by Greek teachers, scholars, and rhetoricians, but also by Greek sculptors, painters, overseers of horses and hounds, and instructors in hunting.

      This education, based on a combination of Greek (ancient Greek civilization) and Roman culture, set the direction of Scipio's further interests. He was introduced to military life in 168, when he and his brother served under their father in the Third Macedonian (Macedonia) War. At the decisive Battle of Pydna (Pydna, Battle of) he followed up the routed enemy with such dash that he was reported missing and was feared killed. After the battle, his father put him in charge of the Macedonian royal game preserves in order to develop his strength and courage; his intellectual development was enriched with a legacy of books from the Macedonian royal library.

Friendship with Polybius

      The most significant influence on Scipio's character was his friendship with the Greek historian Polybius, one of the thousand Achaean leaders who had been deported and detained without trial in Italy. Scipio and his brother persuaded the authorities to allow Polybius to remain in Rome, where he became a close friend and mentor of the two young men. No doubt Scipio was oppressed by the thought of the responsibility that he would have on becoming the head of the great house of the Scipios (it is uncertain when his adoptive father, Publius Scipio, died) as well as in representing the Aemilii. Under Polybius' guidance, he was determined to prove a worthy representative and to pursue the normal aims of a Roman noble: honour, glory, and military success.

      Polybius emphasized two aspects of Scipio's character, his personal morality and his generosity. Of the former, he tells how Scipio sought to excel all his contemporaries in his reputation for temperance at a time when morals were generally declining and young men were becoming increasingly corrupt, partly because they had “caught the dissoluteness of Greek customs” and partly because of the great influx of public and private wealth as a result of the Macedonian War; “in about five years Scipio secured a general recognition of his character for goodness and purity” and generosity. Polybius, however, does not draw attention to an element of cruelty in Scipio's character that is noticeable in several episodes of his life; it may generally have had a deterrent purpose and not been an unusual trait in the Roman character, but not every Roman general celebrated a victory by throwing deserters to the wild beasts.

Military and political achievements

      Scipio's early political apathy was soon cast aside; by 152 he had probably been elected quaestor, which was the first rung of an official career, and had entered the Senate. But at the same time, he was also pursuing his cultural interests: he was among the young nobles who were attracted by the lectures of three visiting Athenian philosophers whose views on political morality shocked more old-fashioned Romans, such as Cato. Scipio achieved public acclaim in 151. A series of disasters to Roman armies in Spain resulted in such reluctance to undertake military service in the peninsula that, in a dispute over the levy, the consuls who were responsible for it were even temporarily imprisoned by the tribunes who opposed the levy. In the crisis, Scipio, who had been assigned to Macedonia, inspired confidence by volunteering to serve in Spain instead; his example was immediately followed by other officers and men.

      Serving as military tribune to Lucius Lucullus, Scipio displayed great personal courage in the Spanish campaigns; in 151 he killed a Spanish chieftain who had challenged him to single combat, and at Intercatia he won the mural crown (corona muralis), which was awarded to the first man to mount the walls of an enemy town. In 150 he was sent by Lucullus to Africa to obtain some elephants from the Numidian king Masinissa, the friend of his grandfather Africanus. While there he witnessed a great but indecisive battle between Masinissa and the Carthaginians; the latter then asked him to arrange a settlement, but, in the event, negotiations broke down. Scipio then left Africa, but he was soon to return not as a peacemaker but as a conqueror. When back in Rome, at Polybius' request, he managed to gain the somewhat grudging support of old Cato (Cato, Marcus Porcius) (whose son had married Scipio's sister Aemilia) for a proposal to release the 300 Achaean internees who still survived without trial. They had been held in Italy since the end of the Third Macedonian War (171–168). Thus a great blot on Rome's good name was at length partially removed.

      In 150 war with Carthage was in the air. When it eventually broke out the following year, Scipio returned to Africa with the Roman army, serving again as military tribune, and his service was very effective. The two consuls besieged Carthage by land and sea, but later in the year, after one had returned to Rome, the Carthaginians launched a night attack upon the camp of the isolated Manilius, a situation that was retrieved only by the skill of Scipio. During the winter Scipio again displayed conspicuous ability when Manilius led two unsuccessful expeditions against the Carthaginian forces in the interior. Again he came into the limelight when the aged Masinissa, on the point of death, asked that the grandson of his friend Africanus arrange the future of his kingdom. Scipio decided to divide Numidia between the king's three sons and thereby avoided any danger that a united Numidia might have presented.

Destruction of Carthage

      As the war against Carthage dragged on without decisive result, Scipio resolved to return to Rome in 148 to stand for the curule aedileship, but such was his military record and the general disappointment with the conduct of the war that the Roman people wanted to see him in command. Because he was at least five years under the legal minimum age for the consulship and had not been praetor, his election as consul for 147 was contrary to the rules for holding office (cursus honorum). When a tribune, voicing the popular enthusiasm, threatened to veto the consular elections unless Scipio was accepted as a candidate, the Senate gave way and allowed the tribunes to introduce a bill to exempt Scipio from the legal restrictions; he was thus elected consul and given the African command.

      Once back in Africa, he determined to starve out Carthage with a blockade by land and sea; gradually the cordon was drawn tighter around the beleaguered city, and in the spring of 146 it fell to his final assault: after six days of street fighting the citadel was captured and Carthage was destroyed. As Scipio surveyed the burning city and meditated on the fall of great nations, he wept and, grasping the hand of Polybius (the historian himself records the incident), said: “it is glorious, but I have a dread foreboding that some time the same doom will be pronounced upon my own country.” After arranging for the organization of Carthaginian territory as the new Roman province of Africa, Scipio returned to Rome for a triumph and to be hailed as the second Africanus.

      Thus, before the age of 40, Scipio had gained Rome's final victory over Carthage and had become a popular hero, but he still had many opponents in the Senate. He soon reached the crown of a noble's career by his election to the censorship of 142, though the other censor—Lucius Mummius, who had brought peace to Greece by his sack of Corinth—was not a welcome colleague. Scipio carried out his censorial duties with sternness, in the spirit of the censorship of Cato, who had lived just long enough to express approval of Scipio's African command.

Siege of Numantia

      The background of the next phase of Scipio's life was again Spain, where for years Rome had been engaged in war with the Celtiberians and had suffered a series of defeats and humiliating setbacks. One such scandal concerned the Senate's repudiation of a truce arranged by the commander Gaius Hostilius Mancinus and his young quaestor Tiberius Gracchus (Gracchus, Tiberius Sempronius), which had saved a Roman army from destruction. The story cannot be repeated here, but, while Mancinus was shamefully condemned for his conduct, Gracchus was spared, thanks to his popularity at Rome for having rescued a trapped army. Scipio helped in Gracchus' escape, possibly because of their family relationship: Gracchus was his cousin and also his brother-in-law, though in fact Scipio's marriage to Sempronia had been a private failure. Scipio also urged the adoption of a more effective policy in Spain. This led to his own election to a second consulship for 134 and the command of the Celtiberian war; special legislation was needed, because a second consulship was unconstitutional.

      Scipio took with him to Spain a number of volunteers and a corps of 500 friends and dependents as a kind of bodyguard (an embryonic praetorian cohort): these were perhaps all the more necessary because his first task was to rediscipline the Roman troops in Spain, who were in a shocking state. His main objective was to reduce the Celtiberian capital, the hill town of Numantia, which could not be stormed but had to be blockaded and starved out. Around the town he built seven camps, linked by a strong wall (traces of these works still survive), and, with overwhelming forces after an eight-month siege, he finally forced the 4,000 besieged to capitulate (133). The town was burned, and the survivors were sold into slavery. Thus Rome's dominion in Spain was established beyond question, and Scipio returned to Rome for a second triumph in 132.

Last years

      In the meanwhile, Rome had been shaken by a constitutional crisis. The tribune Tiberius Gracchus introduced a bill for the distribution of public lands among the poor of the city. His disregard of constitutional procedure and custom in forcing through his bill had provoked the Senate to use force to crush him and his supporters and thus initiated a period of increasing political upheaval and revolution (133). Absent in Spain during the crisis, Scipio was spared the necessity for actively taking sides. In view of his friend Laelius' earlier attempted land law, it may be conjectured that he would not have opposed the bill as such. But surely he did not approve of Tiberius' methods; when forced to give a public opinion he quoted Homer's line, “So perish all who do the like again,” and he admitted that Tiberius “had been killed justly.”

      By his anti-Gracchan attitude Scipio lost much popularity, the more so when he helped to defeat a bill to legalize reelection to the tribunate. He then took up the cause of the Italian allies of Rome, who were discontented with the effects of Gracchus' land bill; he took some action to modify its working, at least as far as it concerned the allies. Then suddenly one morning, when he was due to make a speech on the Italian question, he was found dead in his bedroom (129 BC). His death remained an unsolved mystery. Various eminent people were suspected at the time or later—e.g., Gaius Gracchus and even Sempronia (his wife and Gracchus' sister) or Cornelia (Gracchus' mother). The funeral oration delivered by his best friend, Gaius Laelius, although unclear in its surviving form, is believed to say, “A disease carried him off.”

Assessment

      As a soldier Scipio contributed much to the maintenance and extension of Rome's power in the world. For some 20 years he was an outstanding figure, but he had many political enemies, and his leadership was seldom unchallenged. His political aims and ideals have been variously assessed. Modern scholars have turned the group of cultured Roman aristocrats who converse with Scipio in Cicero (Cicero, Marcus Tullius)'s De republica (“On the Republic”), De senectute (“On Old Age”), and De amicitia (“On Friendship”) into a “Scipionic circle” with coherent cultural and political ideals. Scipio himself was influenced by Polybius, interpreting the Roman Republic of his day through the lens of Greek political philosophy. Both Polybius and Scipio thought that states were subject to cycles of growth and decay, and they interpreted Scipio's conquest of Carthage as the acme of Rome's greatness, from which only decline was possible. Both men believed that a “mixed constitution”—with balance and separation of powers—was the best form of government, the form that would decline the most slowly. This attitude nurtured the very high standards to which Scipio held the Roman aristocracy, as is seen in his volunteering for duty in Spain (151) and in his severity as censor (142). He favoured the role of the people in political decision making; but, like Polybius, he feared that an excess of the democratic element would lead to tyranny and so opposed the actions of Tiberius Gracchus during his tribunate (133). Even Scipio's decision to divide Masinissa's kingdom among the king's three sons can be seen as deference to the ideal of separation of powers. Praised by Cicero, the Polybian and Scipionic ideals of a mixed and balanced constitution survived the ancient world to influence the political philosophers Niccolò Machiavelli (Machiavelli, Niccolò) and Montesquieu (Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de), as well as the Founding Fathers of the United States.

Howard Hayes Scullard Ed.

Additional Reading

The main ancient sources for Scipio Aemilianus are Polybius XXXI-XXXIX, Appian, Punica 98ff., and Hispanica 84ff. Fragments of Scipio's speeches are contained in H. Malcovati, Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta, 2nd ed. (1955). The standard work is A.E. Astin, Scipio Aemilianus (1967). Scipio's politics are the subject of H.H. Scullard, “Scipio Aemilianus and Roman Politics,” Journal of Roman Studies, 50:59–74 (1960). The idea that Laelius said that Scipio died from a disease (morbus) was suggested as a slight change in a corrupt text by E. Badian, Journal of Roman Studies, 46:200 (1956).

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