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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Scipio Biography PUBLIUS CORNELIUS SCIPIO AFRICANUS MAJOR was born in 237 B.C. In the battle of the Ticinus against Hannibal (218 B.C.), he saved his father's life. He fought at Cannae (q.v.) as a military tribune. In 212 he was elected aedile, though not legally qualified by age, and in 211 proconsul, with command of the Roman forces in Spain. By a bold and sudden march he captured (210) Carthago Nova, the stronghold of the Carthaginians, and obtained an immense booty. (See CARTAGENA.) At Baecula, in the valley of the Guadalquivir, he defeated Hasdrubal, but could not prevent him from crossing the Pyrenees and marching to the assistance of Hannibal. (See HASDRUBAL, 3.) In 207 he won a more decisive victory over the other Hasdrubal, son of Gisco, and Mago, at an unknown place called Silpa, or Elinga, in Andalusia, which placed the whole of Spain in the hands of the Romans. He was elected consul in 205, though he had not yet filled the office of praetor, and in the following year he sailed from Lilybaeum in Sicily, at the head of a large army, to invade Africa. His successes compelled the Carthaginian Senate to recall Hannibal q.v ) from Italy. The great struggle between Rome and Carthage was terminated by the battle fought at Naragra, on the Bagradas, near Zama, Oct. 19, 202. Hannibal advised his countrymen to abandon what had now become a hopeless contest; when peace was concluded in the following year, Scipio returned to Rome and enjoyed a triumph and received the surname of Africanus. When his brother Lucius, in 190, obtained command of the army destined to invade the territories of Antiochus, King of Syria, Scipio served under him as legate. Lucius was victorious in the war, and on his return to Rome (189 B.C.) assumed the surname of Asiaticus. But the clouds were now gathering heavily round the Scipios. In 187 Cato Major and others induced two tribunes to prosecute Lucius for allowing himself to be bribed by Antiochus in the late war. He was declared guilty by the Senate, his property was confiscated, and he himself would have been thrown into prison had not his brother forcibly rescued him from the hands of the officers of justice. In 185 Scipio himself was accused by the tribune, M. Naevius, but, instead of refuting the charges brought against him (which were probably groundless), he delivered, on the first day of his trial, a eulogy on his own achievements and opened the second day by reminding the citizens that it was the anniversary of the battle of Zama and therefore not a time for angry squabbling but for religious services. He then summoned the people to follow him to the Capitol to give thanks to the gods and to pray that Rome might never lack citizens like himself. His audience was electrified, and the thing proposed by Scipio was done before opposition became possible. To resume the trial was out of the question; but Scipio retired to his country seat at Liternum in Campania, where he died 185 or 183 B.C. Scipio is commonly regarded as the greatest Roman general before Julius Caesar. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 595. |