CHAPTER XVII. P. CORNELIUS SCIPIO. (210-206 B.C.) Scipio in Spain-His early history-His character and influence-Made pro-consul-Takes New Carthage-Carthaginians finally driven out of Spain. Ir is necessary now that we have reached this, the decisive, point of the war, to direct our attention once more to Spain; for it was on the Metaurus that Spain as well as Italy was lost to the Carthaginians, and it was in Spain, at this very time, that, moving in an atmosphere of mingled war and love, amidst romantic expeditions and hair-breadth escapes, fortunate in what he did, and perhaps more fortunate in what he failed to do, surrounded by devoted friends, like Lælius, or by court annalists, who saw all his doings through the bright halo which he or they diffused around them, the young general was being nursed by Fortune into fame, who was soon to drive the Carthaginians from Spain, then, without striking a blow, was to compel Hannibal to withdraw from Italy, was next to crush that greatest of all heroes in Africa, and, finally, to bring to a conclusion there the long agony of the Second Punic War. P. Cornelius Scipio is one of the central figures of Roman history. His presence and his bearing exercised a strange fascination over all who came within its influence, and his name, with the romances that began to cluster round it even in his lifetime, was a yet more living power with posterity. It turned the head of even the sober-minded SCIPIO'S EARLY HISTORY. 281 Polybius, and has given an air of unreality and of poetry to such fragments of his history of this portion of the war as have, unfortunately, alone come down to us. Let us pause for a while on the antecedents and the surroundings, the virtues and the failings, of so important and conspicuous a personage. Scipio was the son of that Publius who, by an unlookedfor reverse of fortune, had just been defeated and killed on the field of his numerous victories and in the full tide of his success. But Fortune, so capricious towards the father, was unswerving in her devotion to the son. He was then only twenty-four years of age; 1 but, young as he was, he was already known to fame by his conduct on three critical occasions. As a mere stripling of seventeen, he had saved, or, it was believed that he had saved, his father's life at the battle of Ticinus at the risk of his own; after Cannæ, it was his resolute bearing which had shamed or frightened the recreant nobles of Rome from deserting the fast sinking ship of the State; 3 at the age of twenty-three, he had been candidate for the Curule Edileship, and when the magistrate objected that he was not yet of legal age, he replied that, if all the Quirites wished to make him ædile, he was old enough. It was a characteristic reply, a sample of that contempt for the forms of law, and that mingled respect and contempt for popular opinion, which marked his conduct on several occasions of his life, and goes some way to explain alike what he did and what he failed to do; and now, when his father and uncle had fallen in Spain, and the comitia were being held for the election of some one to fill their place, and, as the story goes, people were looking anxiously one upon the other to see who would offer himself for a task wherein two Scipios had failed, it was the young I 4 Livy, xxvi. 18; Val. Max. iii. 7. 1. Polybius (x. 6. 10) makes him twenty-seven; but that this is a mere slip is evident fron his statement only three chapters before (x. 3. 4) that he was seventeen at the time of the battle of the Ticinus. B. C. 218. 2 Polyb. x. 3. 3-5; Livy, xxi. 46. 3 Livy, xxii. 53. Publius himself who, with mingled modesty and selfreliance, came forward, and was straightway chosen proconsul amidst the acclamations of all present.1 A second secret of Scipio's influence was the popular belief, in part, at least, shared by himself, that he was the special favourite of the gods and inspired by them in all he did. Stories were in the air of his divine descent, and even of his miraculous birth, which he had too much prudence either to affirm or to contradict. Why should the favourite of the gods refuse to avail himself of any help they offered him? In the existence of the gods and in their special help to him Scipio doubtless implicitly believed; but the ostentatious secrecy of his visits to the Capitol before undertaking any work of importance, must have been suggested by the credulity of the multitude rather than his own. At all events, his interviews with Jupiter there never ended in any other way than a careful consideration of the circumstances of the case in the privacy of his own study would have been likely to suggest. He was not, therefore, as has sometimes been said, a real enthusiast," nor was his, as Dr. Mommsen calls it, a "genuinely prophetic nature"; on the other hand, he was no mere vulgar impostor. He had enough of enthusiasm himself to evoke it towards himself in others; not enough to allow himself, under any circumstances, to be hurried away by it. 3 a One of the greatest of Roman heroes, Scipio, was himself only three parts a Roman. He was fond of literary men, and was himself not destitute of Greek culture; weakness which certainly could not be charged against any genuine Roman of the old school. By turns the hero and the enemy of the populace, he knew how to win yet how to despise, how to use yet sometimes how to abuse, popular favour. In Spain, with the air and the surroundings of a king, he had enough Roman feeling to reject the regal gewgaws I Livy, xxvi. 18; Appian, Hisp. loc. cit.; Zonaras, ix. 7. 2 Cf. Polybius, x. 2. 5 and 5. 5; Livy, xxvi. 19; Appian, Hisp. 19 3 See Mommsen, ii. 159-160. 4 Livy, xxix. 19. nd 26. SCIPIO'S CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE. 283 and the regal title which the Spaniards pressed upon him ;1 at Rome, after his victory at Zama, he showed that he still retained enough of the genuine republican spirit to refuse the invidious honours-the dictatorship for life and the statue in the Capitol-which the citizens, in the ecstacy of their joy, would fain have given him. But he had not that inborn reverence for law and for authority which had made the Romans what they were, and which would have bidden him cheerfully remain in Italy, even when he knew he had it in him to finish the war in Africa, rather than - resist the powers that be.3 A Roman of the old type would have submitted to an accusation or to a punishment which he knew to be unjust rather than involve himself in the semblance of illegality; but Scipio, when his brother Lucius was called to give an account of the moneys which he had received from King Antiochus, and was about to present to the Senate the document which would have cleared or condemned him, proudly snatched it from his hands and tore it to pieces before their eyes. So again, in his last appearance in public life, when it was his own turn to have his conduct called in question, he reminded his accusers, by a happy stroke of audacity which was akin to genius, that this was the day on which he had defeated Hannibal at Zama, and called upon them to follow him to the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter that they might there return thanks to the gods who had given them the victory, and pray that the Roman state might have other citizens like himself.5 The appeal was irresistible, and the Romans once more showed that they could not judge a Manlius in sight of the Capitol. These incidents have a grandeur peculiarly their own; but it is hardly a Roman grandeur. As a young man Scipio was fond of romantic situa I Polyb, x. 40; Livy, xxvii. 19. 2 Livy, xxxviii. 56; Val. Max. iv, 1. 6. 3 Livy, xxviii. 40. 4 Livy, xxxviii. 55; Val. Max. iii. 7. 1. 5 Livy, xxxviii. 51. 1 tions, and fortune showered them upon him. The charms of his personal presence, and the moral and the material victories which they won, his adventurous interviews with Spanish or Berber princes, or with hostile generals, his chivalrous treatment of captive maidens and their bridegrooms or their suitors, fill a large part in the histories which remain to us of his Spanish and his African campaigns. Much of the setting of these stories may be imaginary; but the stories themselves doubtless rest on a substratum of fact, and they reveal to us, however dimly, a union of gallantry and generosity, of prudence and of passion, of sensibility to the charms of beauty, and yet of resistance to their power, which enable us to feel something of the fascination which made Scipio the idol of his soldiers, of the natves of Spain and Africa, and of the great body, and those the more generous, of his fellow-citizens. He could Above all, if Scipio had not all the most characteristic Roman virtues, he was free from the worst Roman vices. He was not cruel, not faithless, not indifferent to human life; as times went, he was not self-seeking. appreciate virtue in an enemy. He could be generous to a fallen foe. He could observe the terms of a capitulation. He could suppress a mutiny without promiscuous massacre, and could sometimes take a town without slaughtering the inhabitants in cold blood. He could even enter into the peculiarities and characteristics of nations other than his own, and, unlike his younger namesake, could shrink from obliterating a seat of ancient civilisation and commerce at one fell blow. In fine, if he was not a worthy antagonist to Hannibal, he was the least unworthy that Rome, the nurse of heroes, could in this sixteen years' war produce; and if he was the favourite of Fortune, it must be admitted that that capricious goddess has seldom conferred her favours on one who did so much to deserve them. Scipio crossed to Spain with eleven thousand men I See Polyb. bk. x. xi. xiv. xv. Passim; Livy, xxvi. 49, 50; xxvii. 17-19; xxviii. 17, 18; xxx. 13-15, etc.; Appian, Hisp. 29-30, 37, etc. |