Scipio Africanus

A Command Nobody Wanted

Publius Cornelius Scipio was born into Rome's highest aristocracy and lost his father and uncle in the same year, both killed fighting Carthage's armies in Spain. He was in his mid-twenties and had held none of the offices Roman law normally required first when he was given the Spanish command that nobody else wanted. He took New Carthage in 209 BC in a day, cleared Spain, then argued Rome into letting him carry the war to Africa instead of chasing Hannibal, Carthage's own general, around Italy. At Zama in 202 BC he beat Hannibal in the field — the only man who ever did — and ended the Second Punic War, Rome's long fight against Carthage. Rome gave him the name Africanus and then spent twenty years becoming suspicious of him.

Accused, He Simply Left

Cato — a rival senator — and the tribunes accused him of taking bribes from Antiochus, the Seleucid king he had just helped defeat in a war fought under his brother's command. Rather than stand in court and answer, he left Rome for his estate at Liternum and never came back. He died there in 183 BC, around fifty-three. Later Roman writers record that he ordered an inscription for his tomb: Ingrata patria, ne ossa quidem habebis — ungrateful fatherland, you shall not even have my bones.