Scipio Aemilianus
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Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Aemilianus | |
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Roman triumphs |
Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Aemilianus (185–129 BC), known as Scipio Aemilianus or Scipio Africanus the Younger, was a Roman general and statesman noted for his military exploits in the Third Punic War against Carthage and during the Numantine War in Spain. He oversaw the final defeat and destruction of the city of Carthage. He was a prominent patron of writers and philosophers, the most famous of whom was the Greek historian Polybius. In politics, he opposed the populist reform program of his murdered brother-in-law, Tiberius Gracchus.
Family
Scipio Aemilianus was the second son of
Military career
First involvement in a war (Third Macedonian War, 171–168 BC)
Lucius Aemilius Paullus took his two older sons with him on his campaign in Greece. Plutarch wrote that Scipio was his favorite son because he "saw that he was by nature more prone to excellence than any of his brothers". He related that during mopping-up operations after the Battle of Pydna, Aemilius was worried because his younger son was missing. Plutarch also wrote that "The whole army learned of the distress and anguish of their general, and springing up from their suppers, ran about with torches, many to the tent of Aemilius, and many in front of the ramparts, searching among the numerous dead bodies. Dejection reigned in the camp, and the plain was filled with the cries of men calling out the name of Scipio. For from the very outset he had been admired by everybody, since, beyond any other one of his family, he had a nature adapted for leadership in war and public service. Well, then, when it was already late and he was almost despaired of, he came in from the pursuit with two or three comrades, covered with the blood of the enemies he had slain ..."[2] Scipio Aemilianus was seventeen at the time.
First involvement in the Numantine War (151–150 BC)
In 152 BC, the consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus urged the Senate to conclude a peace with the Celtiberians. The Senate rejected this proposal, and instead sent one of the consuls of 151 BC, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, to Hispania to continue the war. However, there was a crisis of recruitment due to rumors of incessant battles and heavy Roman losses. Additionally, Marcellus appeared to be afraid of continuing the war; this led to panic. Young men avoided enrollment as soldiers through unverifiable excuses. Men eligible to be legates (legion commanders) or military tribunes (senior officers) did not volunteer.[3]
Scipio Aemilianus was thought to have advised for the prosecution of the war. He asked the Senate to be sent to Hispania either as a military tribune or a legate, due to the urgency of the situation, even though it would have been safer to go to
Scipio served under Lucullus. Velleius Paterculus wrote that Scipio was awarded a mural crown, which was a military decoration awarded to the soldier who first climbed the wall of a besieged city or fortress and successfully placed the military standard on it.[5] Florus wrote that "having been challenged by [the Celtiberian] king to a single combat, carried off the spolia opima, the armor and arms stripped from the body of an opposing commander slain in single combat. These were regarded as the most honorable of all war trophies."[6]
Third Punic War (149–146 BC)
Although the power of Carthage had been broken with her defeat in the Second Punic War, there was still lingering resentment in Rome.
In the early stages of the war, the Romans suffered repeated defeats. Scipio Aemilianus was a military tribune (senior officer) and distinguished himself repeatedly: After a failed Roman attack into Carthage itself, it was Aemilianus who prevented a disaster by covering the army's retreat from the city.[8] When the Carthaginians launched a surprise night-time attack on the camp of consul Censorinus, it was Aemilianus who rallied part of the cavalry, led them out of a rear gate and attacked the Carthaginians in the flank, driving them back to the city and restoring the situation.[9] While collecting supplies from the countryside, Aemilius was one of the few who managed to prevent his foraging party from being ambushed.[10] When the Carthaginians mounted another surprise night-time attack on a fort protecting the Roman transport ships, it was Aemilianus who led out his men and drove off the assault party using a clever stratagem.[10] During a Roman attack on Hasdrubal's forces near Nepheris he again prevented disaster by checking the Carthaginian counter-attack which hit the Roman army when it was in a disadvantaged position.[11]
In 147 BC he was elected
Numantine War (143–133 BC)
In 134 BC Scipio was elected consul again because the citizens thought that he was the only man capable of defeating the Numantines in the Numantine War. The Celtiberians of the City of Numantia, which had strong defensive geographical features, held off the Romans for nine years. The army in Hispania was demoralized and ill-disciplined. Scipio concentrated on restoring discipline by forbidding luxuries the troops had become accustomed to, through regular tough exercises (all-day marches, building camps and fortifications and then demolishing them, digging ditches and then filling them up, and the like) and by enforcing regulations strictly. When he thought that the army was ready he encamped near Numantia. He did not proceed along the shorter route to avoid the guerrilla tactics the Numantines were good at. Instead, he made a detour though the land of the Vaccaei, who were selling food to the Numantines. He was ambushed several times but defeated the enemy. In one of these ambushes by a river which was difficult to cross, he was forced to make a detour along a longer route where there was no water. He marched at night when it was cooler and dug wells which had bitter water. He saved his men, but some horses and pack animals died of thirst. Then he passed through the territory of the Caucaei who had broken the treaty with Rome and declared that they could return safely to their homes. He returned to the Numantine territory and was joined by Jugurtha, the son of the king of Numidia, with archers, slingers, and twelve elephants.[17]
Eventually, Scipio prepared to besiege Numantia. He asked the allied tribes in Hispania for specified numbers of troops. He built a circuit of fortifications which was nine kilometers long. The wall was three meters high and two and a half meters wide. He built an embankment of the same dimensions as the wall around the adjoining marsh. He built two towers by the River Durius (Douro) to which he moored large timbers with ropes which were full of knives and spear heads and were constantly kept in motion by the current. This prevented the enemy from slipping through covertly. He managed to force Numantia into starvation. The Numantines surrendered. Some killed themselves. Scipio sold the rest into slavery, destroyed the city and kept fifty men for his triumph.[18] For his success Scipio Aemilianus received the additional agnomen of "Numantinus".[7]
Political career
Censorship
In 142 BC Scipio Aemilianus was a censor. During his censorship, he endeavoured to check the growing luxury and immorality of the period. In 139 BC, he was unsuccessfully accused of high treason by Tiberius Claudius Asellus, whom he had degraded when censor. The speeches he gave on that occasion (now lost) were considered brilliant.[7]
Tiberius Gracchus
Scipio helped his relative Tiberius Gracchus who in 137 BC had served in the Numantine War as a quaestor (treasurer) under the consul Gaius Hostilius Mancinus. The consul was pinned down by the enemy and, unable to escape, made a peace treaty. Tiberius negotiated the peace terms. The treaty was rejected by the senate as a disgrace. Plutarch wrote that "the relatives and friends of the soldiers, who formed a large part of the people" blamed this on Mancinus and insisted "that it was due to Tiberius that the lives of so many citizens had been saved". Those who disagreed with the violation of the treaty "cast forth those who had taken hand and share in the treaty, as for instance the quaestors and military tribunes, turning upon their heads the guilt of perjury and violation of the pact. In the present affair, indeed, more than at any other time, the people showed their good will and affection towards Tiberius. For they voted to deliver up the consul unarmed and in bonds to the Numantines, but spared all the other officers for the sake of Tiberius." Scipio used his influence to help to save the men "but none the less he was blamed for not saving Mancinus, and for not insisting that the treaty with the Numantines, which had been made through the agency of his kinsman and friend Tiberius, should be kept inviolate."[20]
The Encyclopædia Britannica suggests that Scipio Aemilianus was not in sympathy with the
Scipio made himself unpopular again.
Death and possible assassination
Modern historians believe "there is no strong evidence or credible argument to support any alternative hypothesis [from death by natural causes]".[26][27] The ancient sources, however, record various different rumours of foul play.
Appian wrote that it could not be known whether Scipio was murdered by Cornelia (the mother of the Gracchi brothers) and her daughter Sempronia (who was married to Scipio), who were worried that the Gracchian law might be repealed, or whether he committed suicide because he saw that he could not deliver on his promises. He added that "[s]ome say that slaves under torture testified that unknown persons were introduced through the rear of the house by night who suffocated him, and that those who knew about it hesitated to tell because the people were angry with him still and rejoiced at his death."[28]
Plutarch wrote that "although Scipio Africanus died at home after dinner, there is no convincing proof of the manner of his end, but some say that he died naturally, being of a sickly habit, some that he died of poison administered by his own hand, and some that his enemies broke into his house at night and smothered him. And yet Scipio's dead body lay exposed for all to see, and all who beheld it formed therefrom some suspicion and conjecture of what had happened to it."[29] In another book Plutarch wrote "no cause of such an unexpected death could be assigned, only some marks of blows upon his body seemed to intimate that he had suffered violence." The heaviest suspicions fell on Fulvius Flaccus who "that very day had reflected upon Scipio in a public address to the people".
Gaius Gracchus also came under suspicion. However, "this great outrage, committed too upon the person of the greatest and most considerable man in Rome, was never either punished or inquired into thoroughly, for the populace opposed and hindered any judicial investigation, for fear that Gaius should be implicated in the charge if proceedings were carried on".[30] Gaius Papirius Carbo also came under accusation. During a trial Lucius Licinius Crassus accused Carbo of being a party to the murder of Scipio.[31]
Personal character
Velleius Paterculus wrote that Scipio was "a cultivated patron and admirer of liberal studies and of every form of learning, and kept constantly with him, at home and in the field, two men of eminent genius, Polybius and Panaetius. No one ever relieved the duties of an active life by a more refined use of his intervals of leisure than Scipio, or was more constant in his devotion to the arts either of war or peace. Ever engaged in the pursuit of arms or his studies, he was either training his body by exposing it to dangers or his mind by learning."
Culturally, Scipio Aemilianus was both philhellenic and conservative. He was the patron of the so-called
Gellius wrote that after he was censor, Scipio was accused before the people by Tiberius Claudius Asellus, a plebeian tribune, whom he had stripped of his knighthood during his censorship. He does not mention what the accusation was. Although under accusation, Scipio did not stop to shave and to wear white clothing and did not appear in the garb of those under accusation. He added that in those days noblemen started shaving in middle age.[39] The satirist Lucilius wrote a verse about the episode: "Thus base Asellus did great Scipio taunt: Unlucky was his censorship and bad."[40]
Polybius relates a well-known anecdote of Scipio's reflections on the mutability of human affairs following the sack of Carthage:[41]
Scipio, when he looked upon the city as it was utterly perishing and in the last throes of its complete destruction, is said to have shed tears and wept openly for his enemies. After being wrapped in thought for long, and realizing that all cities, nations, and authorities must, like men, meet their doom; that this happened to
Macedoniaitself, the brilliance of which was so recent, either deliberately or the verses escaping him, he said:
- A day will come when sacred Troy shall perish,
- And Priam and his people shall be slain.
And when Polybius speaking with freedom to him, for he was his teacher, asked him what he meant by the words, they say that without any attempt at concealment he named his own country, for which he feared when he reflected on the fate of all things human. Polybius actually heard him and recalls it in his history.[42]
In popular culture
Scipio Aemilianus is portrayed as a young boy in the household of his adopted grandfather in the 1971 film Scipio the African. The name "Scipio" was used in the animated series, Code Lyoko in reference to the general's destruction of Carthage. He is also portrayed in the anime Drifters.
See also
- Scipio–Paullus–Gracchus family tree
Notes
- ^ Coarelli p. 187
- ^ Plutarch, Parallel Lives, The Live of Aemilius, 22.2–7
- ^ Polybius, The Histories, 35.4.1–7
- ^ Polybius, The Histories, 35, 4.8–14
- ^ Velleius Paterculus, Roman History, I.12.3
- ^ Florus, Epitome of Roman History 1.17
- ^ a b c d e public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Scipio § Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 406–407. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ Adrian Goldsworthy, The Fall of Carthage, pp. 342–343.
- ^ Adrian Goldsworthy, The Fall of Carthage, p. 343.
- ^ a b Adrian Goldsworthy, The Fall of Carthage, p. 344.
- ^ Adrian Goldsworthy, The Fall of Carthage, pp. 344–345.
- S2CID 161696751.
- JSTOR 1516752.
- S2CID 161764925.
- S2CID 162850949.
- ^ Pliny, Natural History, 22.6
- ^ Appian, Roman History, Book 6, The Wars in Spain, 84–89
- ^ Appian, Roman History, Book 6, The Wars in Spain, 90–98
- ^ Etcheto, Les Scipions, pp. 278-282.
- ^ Plutarch, Parallel lives, The live of Tiberius Gracchus, 7.1–3
- ^ "Scipio Africanus the Younger". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 4 May 2013.
- ^ Plutarch, Parallel lives, The live of Tiberius Gracchus, 7.4
- ^ Plutarch, Parallel Lives, The life of Tiberius Gracchus, 20.1
- ^ Plutarch, Parallel Lives, The life of Tiberius Gracchus, 21.4–25
- ^ Appian, Roman History, Book 13 The Civil Wars, 1.18–20
- .
Scipio Aemilianus… was crucial during and after the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, and his sudden death in 129 BC was an event that aroused suspicions. However, Worthington 1989 convincingly argues that the great man died of natural causes; there is no strong evidence or credible argument to support any alternative hypothesis.
- JSTOR 4476690.
- ^ Appian, Roman History, Book 13, The Civil Wars, 1.20
- ^ Plutarch, Parallel Lives, The live of Romulus, 27.4–5
- ^ Plutarch, Parallel lives, The live of Caius Gracchus, 10.4–5.
- ^ Cicero, De Oratore, II.40
- ^ Velleius Paterculus, Roman History, 1.13.3
- ^ Polybius, The Histories, 34, 15.7, 16.2
- ^ Gellius, Attic Nights, 2.20.4
- ^ Cicero De Oratore, 2.60
- ^ Cicero, De Oratore, 2.61, 64, 65, 66, 69
- ^ Gellius, Attic Nights, 4.20.10
- ^ Gellius, Attic Nights, 19.15
- ^ Gellius, Attic Nights, 3.4
- ^ Gellius Attic Nights, 4.17.1
- ^ "Polybius - Livius". www.livius.org. Retrieved 30 April 2022.
- ^ Polybius 38.22 The Fall of Carthage
References
Ancient sources
- Appian, Roman History, Book 6, The Wars in Spain, Loeb Classical Library, Vol I, Books 1–8.1., Loeb, 1989; ISBN 978-0674990029
- Appian, Roman History, Book 8 Part 1, The Punic Wars, Loeb Classical Library, Vol III, Books 1–3.26., Loeb, 1989; ISBN 978-0674990029
- Appian, Roman History, Book 13, The Civil Wars (Book I) in Spain, Loeb Classical Library, Vol I, Books 1–81., Loeb, 1989; ISBN 978-0674990050
- Cicero, De oratore I-III, Bloomsbury 3PL; new edition, 2013; ISBN 978-1853996313
- Florus Epitome of Roman History, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015; ISBN 978-1519684851
- Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus, Caius Gracchus, Romulus, in Plutarch's Lives (two volumes), Modern Library, 2001; Vol. 1 ISBN 978-0375756771
- Polybius, The Histories, Oxford World's Classics, OUP Oxford, 2010; ISBN 978-0199534708
- Velleius Paterculus, Roman History, Hackett Publishing, 2011; ISBN 978-1603845915
Secondary sources
- Astin, A. E., Scipio Aemilianus, Oxford University Press, 1967; ISBN 978-0198142577
- Filippo Coarelli, "La doppia tradizione sulla morte di Romolo e gli auguracula dell'Arx e del Quirinale", Gli Etruschi e Roma: atti dell'incontro di studio in onore di Massimo Pallottino, Rome, 1981, pp. 173–188.
- Etcheto, Henri, Les Scipions. Famille et pouvoir à Rome à l’époque républicaine, Bordeaux, Ausonius Éditions, 2012.
- Person, Émile (1877). De P. Cornelio Scipione Æmiliano Africano Et Numantino Thesim.
- Warmington, B.H. Carthage, A History, Barnes & Noble, New edition, 1994;ISBN 978-1566192101
- Ward, A. M., Heichelheim, F. M., and Yeo, C. A., A History of the Roman People, Pearson; 3 edition, 1998. 158.ISBN 978-0138965983
- Worthington, I, The Death of Scipio Africanus, Hermes, Vol. 117, No. 2 (1989), pp. 253–256 ( JSTOR reference)