48 Facts About Scipio Africanus

Disillusioned by the ingratitude of his peers, Scipio Africanus left Rome and retired from public life at his villa in Liternum.

Scipio Africanus's family was one of the major still-extant patrician families and had held multiple consulships within living memory: his great-grandfather Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus and grandfather Lucius Cornelius Scipio had both been consuls and censors.

Scipio Africanus's candidacy was opposed by one of the plebeian tribunes on the grounds that he had not yet reached the minimum age, but after the voters expressed such eagerness to vote for him, the tribune desisted.

Scipio Africanus was the first person to have been given proconsular imperium without having held consular office.

Scipio Africanus went to Spain with some 10,000 reinforcements and was joined by another commander, Marcus Junius Silanus, who was dispatched pro praetore and soon assumed command of Nero's army.

Scipio Africanus then forced the surrender of Mago in the citadel and rapidly switched his tune, sparing the remaining citizens and only enslaving the town's non-citizens.

Scipio Africanus then took the three hundred Spanish hostages into his custody, giving them gifts, guaranteeing their safety and that of their families, and promising them freedom if their respective communities would ally with Rome.

In mopping-up operations, Scipio Africanus captured Ilourgeia and Castulo, inflicting severe punishment on the former for having killed refugees from his army.

Scipio Africanus spent most of his consulship preparing his troops in Sicily for the invasion of Africa.

Scipio Africanus captured Locri on the toe of Italy that year, and left one Pleminius in command there.

The Carthaginians reacted to the defeat by recalling their generals Hannibal and Mago from Italy and launching their fleet against Scipio Africanus's to cut off their supply lines.

Scipio Africanus was forced into a naval battle near Utica, but was able to avert disaster, losing only some sixty transport ships.

On his return, Scipio Africanus celebrated a triumph over Hannibal, the Carthaginians, and Syphax.

Scipio Africanus let his co-consul, Tiberius Sempronius Longus, take the leading role in the fighting and returned to Rome to hold the consular elections.

The second embassy was to Asia and "should be rejected" as apocryphal: during the alleged embassy, Scipio Africanus is said to have discussed the best generals with Hannibal at Ephesus.

Scipio Africanus appointed his older brother, Scipio Africanus, as one of his legates.

Lucius Scipio Africanus adopted the cognomen Asiagenes and at his triumph brought some 137,420 pounds of silver, 224,000 tetradrachms, 140,000 gold coins, 234 gold crowns, 1231 ivory tusks, and more into the city.

Scipio Africanus's soldiers were granted bonuses of 25 denarii each, with more to officers and cavalry.

Scipio Africanus was around the same time challenged in the senate.

Scipio Africanus responded with indignation and declared that he owed no reckoning.

One story, given by Valerius Antias, indicates that one of the tribunes at the urging of Cato the Elder brought charges against Scipio Africanus alleging bribery and theft.

Antias then has Scipio Africanus respond with a rousing oration detailing his services to the republic and noting that the day is the anniversary of the Battle of Zama.

Scipio Africanus retired to his country seat at Liternum on the coast of Campania, where he died.

Scipio Africanus married Aemilia Tertia, daughter of the consul Lucius Aemilius Paullus who fell at Cannae.

Scipio Africanus was the sister of another consul, Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus.

Scipio Africanus was a man of great intellect and culture who could speak and read Greek, wrote his own memoirs in Greek and became noted for his introduction of the clean shaven face fashion among the Romans according to the example of Alexander the Great instead of wearing the beard.

Scipio Africanus enjoyed the reputation of being a graceful orator, the secret of his sway being his deep self-confidence and radiant sense of fairness.

Scipio Africanus often visited the temple of Jupiter and made offerings there.

However, the strength of this belief is evident, even a generation later when his adopted grandson, Publius Aemilianus Scipio Africanus, was elected to the consulship from the office of tribune.

Scipio Africanus's rise was spectacular and letters survive from soldiers under his command in Hispania show that they believed that he possessed the same abilities as his grandfather.

The elder Scipio Africanus was a spiritual man as well as a soldier and statesman, and was a priest of Mars.

Polybius made a case that Scipio Africanus's successes resulted from good planning, rational thinking and intelligence, which he said was a higher sign of the gods' favour than prophetic dreams.

Polybius suggested that people had only said that Scipio Africanus had supernatural powers because they had not appreciated the natural mental gifts which facilitated Scipio Africanus's achievements.

The Roman historian Valerius Maximus, writing in the first century AD, alleged that Scipio Africanus had a weakness for beautiful women, and knowing this, some of his soldiers presented him with a beautiful young woman captured in New Carthage.

The woman turned out to be the fiancee of an important Iberian chieftain and Scipio Africanus chose to act as a general and not an ordinary soldier in restoring her, virtue and ransom intact, to her fiance.

Scipio Africanus is said to have written his memoirs in Greek, but those are lost along with the history written by his elder son and namesake and his Life by Plutarch.

Scipio Africanus is considered by many to be one of Rome's greatest generals; he never lost a battle.

Livy reports that, as a Roman commissioner to Ephesus following the defeat of Antiochus III, on meeting the exiled Hannibal, Scipio Africanus took the opportunity to ask Hannibal's opinion of the "greatest commander," to which Hannibal named Alexander the Great as the first and Pyrrhus as the second.

Scipio Africanus was the first Roman general to expand Roman territories outside Italy and islands around the Italian mainland.

Scipio Africanus conquered the Carthaginian territory of Iberia for Rome, although the two Iberian provinces were not fully pacified for a couple of centuries.

Scipio Africanus did not introduce Greek ideas or art to the Romans, but his ardent support for the Greek way of life coupled with his own charisma had its inevitable impact.

Scipio Africanus supported land distribution for his veterans in a tradition harking back to the earliest days of the Republic, yet his actions were seen as somewhat radical by conservatives.

Scipio Africanus refused to accept demands for him to become perpetual consul and dictator.

The relatives of Scipio Africanus continued to dominate the republic for a couple of generations.

Scipio Africanus appears or is mentioned in passing in Cicero's De Republica and De Amicitia, and in Silius Italicus' Punica.

Scipio Africanus is mentioned in Machiavelli's work The Prince.

Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus was the title character of a number of Italian operas composed during the baroque period of music, including settings by George Frideric Handel, Leonardo Vinci, and Carlo Francesco Pollarolo.

Scipio Africanus appears in the Haemimont Games video game Imperivm III: The Great Battles of Rome, Centurion: Defender of Rome, and in the Hannibal at the Gates campaign in Total War: Rome II.