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| Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus Numantinus (the Younger) |
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Born
in 185 BC, he was the second son of Lucius Aemilius Paullus
Macedonicus, hero of the Third Macedonian War and son of the consul (of
the same name) who fell at the Battle of Cannae in 216.
Paullus
himself, twice consul, was an outstanding Roman leader who combined
traditional Roman virtues with a keen interest in Greek culture. Soon
after Scipio's birth, Paullus divorced his wife Papiria, and it was
probably after their father's remarriage that Scipio and his elder
brother, , were adopted into other families, although both remained in
close contact with their natural father.
While
the elder brother Maximus was adopted by a grandson, or possibly a son,
of Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator, the famous general of the Second
Punic War, Scipio himself was adopted by Publius Scipio, the elder son
of Scipio Africanus (the Elder). Thus Scipio succeeded to the family
tradition of two of Rome's greatest generals�the victor against
Hannibal of Carthage and the conqueror of Perseus of Macedonia.
Paullus had 2 younger sons. However, these two died within days of each other in 167 BC and he was then without an heir.
Scipio's
upbringing is described in a passage of Plutarch's biography of his
father, Aemilius Paullus, who brought up his sons in accordance with
the traditional native type of education, as he himself had been
brought up, but also, and more keenly, on the Greek pattern. For the
young men were surrounded not only by Greek teachers, scholars, and
rhetoricians, but also by Greek sculptors, painters, overseers of
horses and hounds, and instructors in hunting. This education, based on
a combination of Greek and Roman culture, set the direction of Scipio's
further interests.
Scipio
Aemilianus was married at an early age to his cousin, Sempronia, the
only surviving daughter of Scipio Africanus' youngest daughter, and
sister of the Gracchi brothers, who bitterly despised him.
Scipio
was introduced to military life in 168, when he and his brother served
under their father in the Third Macedonian War. At the decisive Battle
of Pydna (at age 17) he followed up the routed enemy with such dash
that he was reported missing and was feared killed.
After
the battle, his father put him in charge of the Macedonian royal game
preserves in order to develop his strength and courage; his
intellectual development was enriched with a legacy of books from the
Macedonian royal library.
Friendship with Polybius
The
most significant influence on Scipio's character was his friendship
with the Greek historian Polybius, one of the thousand Achaean leaders
who had been deported and detained without trial in Italy. Scipio and
his brother persuaded the authorities to allow Polybius to remain in
Rome, where he became a close friend and mentor of the two young men.
No doubt Scipio was oppressed by the thought of the responsibility that
he would have on becoming the head of the great house of the Scipios
(it is uncertain when his adoptive father, Publius Scipio, died) as
well as in representing the Aemilii. Under Polybius' guidance, he was
determined to prove a worthy representative and to pursue the normal
aims of a Roman noble: honour, glory, and military success. Polybius
emphasized two aspects of Scipio's character, his personal morality and
his generosity. Of the former, he tells how Scipio sought to excel all
his contemporaries in his reputation for temperance at a time when
morals were generally declining and young men were becoming
increasingly corrupt, partly because they had �caught the dissoluteness
of Greek customs� and partly because of the great influx of public and
private wealth as a result of the Macedonian War; �in about five years
Scipio secured a general recognition of his character for goodness and
purity� and generosity. Polybius, however, does not draw attention to
an element of cruelty in Scipio's character that is noticeable in
several episodes of his life; it may generally have had a deterrent
purpose and not been an unusual trait in the Roman character, but not
every Roman general celebrated a victory by throwing deserters to the
wild beasts.
Military service in Spain
Scipio's
early political apathy was soon cast aside; by 152 he had probably been
elected quaestor, which was the first rung of an official career, and
had entered the Senate. But at the same time, he was also pursuing his
cultural interests: he was among the young nobles who were attracted by
the lectures of three visiting Athenian philosophers whose views on
political morality shocked more old-fashioned Romans, such as Cato.
Scipio
achieved public acclaim in 151. A series of disasters to Roman armies
in Spain resulted in such reluctance to undertake military service in
the peninsula that, in a dispute over the levy, the consuls who were
responsible for it were even temporarily imprisoned by the tribunes who
opposed the levy. In the crisis, Scipio, who had been assigned to
Macedonia, inspired confidence by volunteering to serve in Spain
instead; his example was immediately followed by other officers and men.
Serving
as military tribune to Lucius Lucullus, Scipio displayed great personal
courage in the Spanish campaigns; in 151 he killed a Spanish chieftain
who had challenged him to single combat, and at Intercatia he won the
mural crown (corona muralis), which was awarded to the first man to
mount the walls of an enemy town. He gained an influence over the
tribes similar to his grandfather by adoption 60 years before.
In
150 he was sent by Lucullus to Africa to obtain some elephants from the
Numidian king Masinissa, the friend of his grandfather Africanus. While
there he witnessed a great but indecisive battle between Masinissa and
the Carthaginians; the latter then asked him to arrange a settlement,
but, in the event, negotiations broke down. Scipio then left Africa,
but he was soon to return not as a peacemaker but as a conqueror.
When
back in Rome, at Polybius' request, he managed to gain the somewhat
grudging support of old Cato (whose son had married Scipio's sister
Aemilia) for a proposal to release the 300 Achaean internees who still
survived without trial. Thus a great blot on Rome's good name was at
length partially removed.
Destruction of Carthage
In
149 war was declared by Rome on Carthage and in the next two years, he
fought in the Third Punic War. Scipio returned to Africa with the Roman
army, serving again as military tribune, and his service was very
effective. The two consuls besieged Carthage by land and sea, but later
in the year, after one had returned to Rome, the Carthaginians launched
a night attack upon the camp of the isolated Manilius, a situation that
was retrieved only by the skill of Scipio. During the winter Scipio
again displayed conspicuous ability when Manilius led two unsuccessful
expeditions against the Carthaginian forces in the interior.
Again
he came into the limelight when the aged Masinissa, on the point of
death, asked that the grandson of his friend Africanus arrange the
future of his kingdom. Scipio decided to divide Numidia between the
king's three sons and thereby avoided any danger that a united Numidia
might have presented.
As
the war against Carthage dragged on without decisive result, Scipio
resolved to return to Rome in 148 to stand for the curule aedileship,
but such was his military record and the general disappointment with
the conduct of the war that the Roman people wanted to see him in
command. Because he was at least five years under the legal minimum age
for the consulship and had not been praetor, his election as consul for
147 was remarkable. When a tribune, voicing the popular enthusiasm,
threatened to veto the consular elections unless Scipio was accepted as
a candidate, the Senate gave way and allowed the tribunes to introduce
a bill to exempt Scipio from the legal restrictions; he was thus
elected consul and given the African command.
Once
back in Africa, he determined to starve out Carthage with a blockade by
land and sea; gradually the cordon was drawn tighter around the
beleaguered city, and in the spring of 146 Carthage fell to his final
assault: after six days of street fighting the citadel was captured and
Carthage was destroyed. As Scipio surveyed the burning city and
meditated on the fall of great nations, he wept and, grasping the hand
of Polybius (the historian himself records the incident), said: �it is
glorious, but I have a dread foreboding that some time the same doom
will be pronounced upon my own country.� After which he tore the city
apart stone by stone, however there is debate as to whether or not he
did salt the ground.
After
arranging for the organization of Carthaginian territory as the new
Roman province of Africa, Scipio returned to Rome for a triumph and to
be hailed as the second Africanus. Thus, before the age of 40, Scipio
had gained Rome's final victory over Carthage and had become a popular
hero, but he still had many opponents in the Senate. He soon reached
the crown of a noble's career by his election to the censorship of 142,
though the other censor Lucius Mummius, who had brought peace to Greece
by his sack of Corinth, was not a welcome colleague. Scipio carried out
his censorial duties with sternness, in the spirit of the censorship of
Cato, who had lived just long enough to express approval of Scipio's
African command.
In 142, during his censorship, he tried to stop the growing luxury and immorality of the society.
In 140 he set sail east with his friends Polybius, the historian, and Panaetius, the philosopher.
In 139 he was accused of high treason, unsuccessfully, by his political enemies.
Siege of Numantia
The
background of the next phase of Scipio's life was again Spain, where
for years Rome had been engaged in war with the Celtiberians and had
suffered a series of defeats and humiliating setbacks. One such scandal
concerned the Senate's repudiation of a truce arranged by the commander
Gaius Hostilius Mancinus and his young quaestor Tiberius Gracchus,
which had saved a Roman army from destruction. While Mancinus was
shamefully condemned for his conduct, Gracchus was spared, thanks to
his popularity at Rome for having rescued a trapped army. Scipio helped
in Gracchus' escape, possibly because of their family relationship:
Gracchus was his cousin and also his brother-in-law, though in fact
Scipio's marriage to Sempronia had been a private failure.
Scipio
also urged the adoption of a more effective policy in Spain. This led
to his own election to a second consulship for 134 and the command of
the Celtiberian war; special legislation was needed, because a second
consulship was unconstitutional. Scipio took with him to Spain a number
of volunteers and a corps of 500 friends and dependents as a kind of
bodyguard (an embryonic praetorian cohort): these were perhaps all the
more necessary because his first task was to rediscipline the Roman
troops in Spain, who were in a shocking state.
His
main objective was to reduce the Celtiberian capital, the hill town of
Numantia on the Douro river in Nearer Spain, which had defied Roman
armies for 50 years. The town could not be stormed but had to be
blockaded and starved out. When Scipio Aemilinus arrived, it lasted 8
months. Around the town he built seven camps, linked by a strong wall
(traces of these works still survive), and, with overwhelming forces
after an eight-month siege, he finally forced the 4,000 besieged to
capitulate (133). The town was burned and he had the city torn apart
stone by stone, and either executed or deported its four thousand
citizens. Thus Rome's dominion in Spain was established beyond
question, and Scipio returned to Rome for a second triumph in 132 and
the additional surname Numantinus.
Last years
In
the meanwhile, Rome had been shaken by a constitutional crisis. His
cousin and step-brother, Tiberius Gracchus (the elder of the Gracchi),
then Tribune of the Plebs, was undermining the established order.
Tiberius Gracchus introduced a bill for the distribution of public
lands among the poor of the city. His disregard of constitutional
procedure and custom in forcing through his bill had provoked the
Senate to use force to crush him and his supporters and thus initiated
a period of increasing political upheaval and revolution
Scipio
encouraged Ti. Gracchus' enemies, especially their mutual cousin,
Scipio Nasica. In 133 a group of senatorial soldiers, led by Scipio
Nasica clubbed Tiberius Gracchus to death on the steps of the Capitol
along with some of his followers. Scipio Aemilianus publicly condoned
the murder, and even though he had not yet returned from Spain, he was
often credited with the deed.
Absent
in Spain during the crisis, Scipio was spared the necessity for
actively taking sides. In view of his friend Laelius' earlier attempted
land law, it may be conjectured that he would not have opposed the bill
as such. But surely he did not approve of Tiberius' methods; when
forced to give a public opinion he quoted Homer's line, �So perish all
who do the like again,� and he admitted that Tiberius �had been killed
justly.�
By
his anti-Gracchan attitude Scipio lost much popularity, the more so
when he helped to defeat a bill to legalize re-election to the
tribunate. He then took up the cause of the Italian allies of Rome, who
were discontented with the effects of Gracchus' land bill; he took some
action to modify its working, at least as far as it concerned the
allies.
Suddenly
one morning (in 129 BC), at the age of 45, when he was due to make a
speech on the Italian question, he was found dead in his bedroom . His
death remained an unsolved mystery. Various eminent people were
suspected at the time or later e.g. Gaius Gracchus and even his wife,
Sempronia, (sister of the brothers Gracchi) or Cornelia (mother of the
Gracchi), but murder is not likely; suicide is possible, but a natural
death is more probable.
He
was cultured and was the patron of Polybius and other Greek prisoners,
as well as of the poets Lucillus and Terrence. He had all the virtues
of the old-fashioned Romans. He was a gifted orator. Politically, he
was moderate, supporting neither the Gracchi nor the Senatorial party.
Assessment
As
a soldier Scipio contributed much to the maintenance and extension of
Rome's power in the world. For some 20 years he was an outstanding
figure, but he had many political enemies, and his leadership was
seldom unchallenged. His political aims and ideals have been variously
assessed. Stern, upright, and conservative, he sought to maintain
Rome's traditional virtues, which he felt were being undermined. He was
also, however, a man of culture whose so-called Scipionic circle of
friends and advisers included Laelius and Polybius. Through his support
of such leading intellectual figures as the poet Terence, the satirist
Lucilius, and the Stoic philosopher Panaetius, Scipio exerted much
influence on the development of Latin literature and also upon the
blending of Greek and Roman thought, not least in the adapting of Stoic
ideas to Roman needs. To many later Romans, especially to Cicero, he
was an ideal statesman, personifying in his personal virtue, cultural
patronage, and aristocratic moderation the golden days of the republic.
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