He also kept some of these men from deserting. Though Scipio took a civilian position in B. This gave Scipio access to a new cache of weapons and supplies. At the Battle of Baecula in B. The next year, Scipio convinced the local population in Spain to forswear Carthage and pledge their allegiance to Rome. Scipio was elected consul in B. He next planned to take his forces to Africa, but had to overcome opposition from the Roman Senate. Though his political enemies limited his troop numbers, Scipio was able to raise additional troops and soon traveled from Sicily to North Africa.
Hannibal was recalled from Italy in order to defend Carthage. During the conflict, the Romans sounded horns that panicked the Carthaginian elephants, causing them to reverse and trample many of Hannibal's troops. Scipio's forces were triumphant and the Carthaginians sued for peace, thus ending the Second Punic War.
Scipio returned to a hero's welcome in Rome in B. Due to his triumphs in Africa, he was awarded the title "Africanus. Despite his triumphs, Scipio had many powerful political enemies in Rome, including Marcus Cato. Scipio faced charges of bribery and treason that were intended to discredit him, and he left Rome in B. Disgusted by the ingratitude of the Roman government, Scipio arranged for his body to be buried in Liternum and not in Rome.
The Iberian Peninsula ceased to be a base from which Carthage might have launched a fresh invasion of Italy. Scipio was not prepared to rest after his success in Spain. He was convinced that the best way to defeat Hannibal and achieve long-term security for Rome was to invade his home territory.
He figured that a direct attack on Carthage would oblige Hannibal to abandon his Italian campaign in order to save his capital city. This was an ambitious strategy, which drew Scipio into conflict with more cautious elements in the Roman establishment.
Scipio received only qualified support for his bold plan to take an army across to Sicily and then to use this as a springboard for an assault on the Carthaginian homeland. He was granted a force of some 32, troops, which was scarcely sufficient for an expedition of such scope.
A direct bid to seize Carthage was hardly feasible. The city occupied an elevated position on a narrow peninsula, protected by three lines of fortifications. Only a prolonged blockade by both land and sea was likely to undermine its formidable defences. Local politics complicated the situation. There were two rivals for power in the neighbouring kingdom of Numidia.
One of these, Syphax, had defected to the Carthaginians. On the other hand, his rival Masinissa came over to the Roman side, bringing with him his light cavalry, a significant asset on the flat, open terrain of North Africa. Arriving in Africa in the spring of , initially Scipio made limited headway. In a rare error of judgement, he wasted resources on an unsuccessful siege of the second Carthaginian city, Utica, which he had hoped to turn into an operational base.
In reality, he could have safely bypassed Utica, and the unwise delay allowed his opponents to reinforce their position. Scipio turned the situation around the following year by burning the enemy camps in a daring night attack.
The inhabitants were taken by surprise, since the signal for the raid was the trumpet fanfare which routinely signalled the end of the day in the Roman camp. The Carthaginian huts were wooden, those of their Numidian allies of reeds, so the fire spread rapidly. The inferno caused panic and alarm, with many of the fugitives cut down by soldiers positioned on the outskirts of the camps.
Scipio followed with a rapid march inland to confront the Carthaginians at the Great Plains, where they had regrouped. Scipio was taking a great risk: he was outnumbered, with limited food and supplies, and he was 75 miles from his base outside Utica.
The manoeuvrability instilled by regular training paid off. The Great Plains was a disaster for the Carthaginians. It was soon followed by the defeat and capture of Syphax. As he had hoped, the Carthaginian leaders responded by recalling Hannibal from Italy. The result, in October , was a decisive clash between the latter and the combined forces of Scipio and Masinissa, on the plains some 70 miles west of Carthage.
The Battle of Zama was one of the most decisive engagements of the ancient world; in our companion article on p. Defeat at Zama forced Carthage to sue for peace. The victors imposed a sizeable indemnity and insisted on the destruction of most of the Carthaginian war fleet. Carthage was compelled to cede control of its foreign relations to Rome, and Masinissa was restored to his territories as a reward for his assistance.
These were harsh terms, but they could have been worse. There was to be no Roman occupation, and the city remained intact.
Nor was there any attempt to punish Hannibal. But it is hard not to see this phase of his career as an anti-climax after his great achievements. Illness, however, was to prevent him from taking part in the decisive battle at Magnesia, in modern Turkey. His affinity for Greek culture, and his generosity towards defeated foes, aroused the suspicion of more traditional Romans. Scipio was no doubt the real target when charges of corruption were brought against his brother in the Senate. Although he was never formally condemned, his position had been damaged, and in he withdrew from the capital to live quietly on his farm.
On his death, Scipio gave orders that he was not to be buried with his family at Rome, where his opponents were in the ascendant. It was a sad close to a distinguished career. Such was Scipio's impact upon the Romans that even during his lifetime legends began to cluster around him: he was regarded as favoured by Fortune or even divinely inspired.
Not only did many believe that he had received a promise of help from Neptune in a dream on the night before his assault on Carthago Nova but that he also had a close connection with Jupiter. He used to visit Jupiter's temple on the Capitol at night to commune with the god, and later the story circulated that he was even a son of the god, who had appeared in his mother's bed in the form of a snake.
The historian Polybius thought that this popular view of Scipio was mistaken and argued that Scipio always acted only as the result of reasoned foresight and worked on men's superstitions in a calculating manner. But Polybius himself was a rationalist and has probably underestimated a streak of religious confidence, if not of mysticism, in Scipio's character that impressed so many of his contemporaries with its magnanimity and generosity.
Thus, although Polybius had an intense admiration for Scipio, whom he called "almost the most famous man of all time," the existence of the legend, a unique phenomenon in Rome's history, indicates that Polybius' portrait is too one-sided.
A man of wide sympathies, cultured and magnanimous, Scipio easily won the friendship of such men as Philip, king of Macedonia, and the native princes of Spain and Africa, while he secured the devotion of his own troops.
Though essentially a man of action, he may also have been something of a mystic in whom, at any rate, contemporary legend saw a favourite of Jupiter as well as a spiritual descendant of Alexander the Great. One of the greatest soldiers of the ancient world, by his tactical reforms and strategic insight he created an army that defeated even Hannibal and asserted Rome's supremacy in Spain, Africa, and the Hellenistic East.
He had a great appreciation of Greek culture and enjoyed relaxing in the congenial atmosphere of the Greek cities of Sicily, conduct that provoked the anger of old-fashioned Romans such as Cato.
Indeed, he was outstanding among those Roman nobles of the day who welcomed the civilizing influences of Greek culture that were beginning to permeate Roman society.
His Greek sympathies led him to champion Rome's mission in the world as protector of Greek culture; he preferred to establish Roman protection rather than direct conquest and annexation. For 10 years he commanded a devoted army at the people's wish. His position might seem almost kingly; he had been hailed as king by Spanish tribes, and he may have been the first Roman general to be acclaimed as imperator emperor by his troops; but, though convinced of his own powers, he offered no challenge to the dominance of the Roman nobility ensconced in the Senate except by normal political methods in which he showed no outstanding ability.
Reaction against his generous foreign policy and against his encouragement of Greek culture in Roman life led to his downfall amid personal and political rivalries, but his career had shown that Rome's destiny was to be a Mediterranean, not merely an Italian, power. Scipio's influence outlived the Roman world. Great interest was shown in his life during the early Renaissance, and it helped the early humanists to build a bridge between the classical world and Christendom. He became an idealized perfect hero who was seen to have served the ends of Providence.
Petrarch glorified him in a Latin epic, the Africa , which secured his own coronation as poet laureate in on the Capitol, where, some 1, years earlier, the historical Scipio used to commune in the temple of Jupiter. Encyclopaedia Britannica Article.
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