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Rome’s Craftiest General: Scipio AfricanusBy James Lacey | Military History | 4 comments | Print This Post | Email This Post Given a short breather, the Romans came forward at a quickened pace, until at about 20 paces they let fly their throwing spears and drew their short swords. The advance became a rush as thousands of screaming Romans hurled themselves upon the Carthaginian line. For long minutes the issue remained in doubt, until at the peak of battle the Roman and Numidian cavalry returned to the battlefield and charged into the Carthaginian rear. With cavalry at the rear and the Triarii collapsing their flanks, Hannibal’s veterans finally did the unthinkable—they broke. Subscribe Today
Though Hannibal himself escaped, his army was lost and Carthaginian military power broken. Rome was now the uncontested master of the Western Mediterranean. Scipio’s victories earned him tremendous popular support but also numerous enemies, envious of his popularity. Though he later accompanied his brother on a war of conquest in Asia Minor, he was never again to hold real power in Rome. Under constant legal attack, he ultimately went into a bitter retirement, dying at an early age. How Rome treated its most victorious general was not lost on such future successful commanders as Marius, Sulla and Caesar. For them the overriding lesson of Scipio’s fall from grace was that if you wanted to rule, you needed to return home with your legions. For further reading, James Lacey recommends: Scipio Africanus: Greater Than Napoleon, by B.H. Liddell Hart. This article by James Lacey was originally published in the July/August 2007 issue of Military History Magazine. For more great articles, subscribe to Military History magazine today! Pages: 1 2 3 4 5Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to
            Tags: Ancient-Medieval, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures
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4 Comments to “Rome’s Craftiest General: Scipio Africanus”
There’s something I can’t figure after reading the article and another account of Zama: If Scipio went out of his way to cultivate the Numidians just to have superiority in cavalry for that flanking option on which so much depended, did he just leave it to chance that his cavalry would return on time ? Could he have instructed at least his roman cavalry commander that his job was to turn and flank after seeing the enemy horse off the field ?
By WongHoongHooi on Jul 25, 2008 at 12:53 am
Once cavalry had been ‘fired’ at the enemy, commanders in the ancient world had great trouble getting them back for another shot. This would particularly apply to Rome where the cavalry were likely to be auxiliaries from some distant province and not Romans. The normal event saw cavalry charge through their enemy and then, in its rear, lay into the enemy’s baggage train for booty. William the Conqueror could work cavalry so as to regroup them for repeated charges but he was unusually talented, but his cavalry were knights with a stake in the outcome.
By Robert Griffiths on Aug 20, 2008 at 9:25 am
“There’s something I can’t figure after reading the article and another account of Zama: If Scipio went out of his way to cultivate the Numidians just to have superiority in cavalry for that flanking option on which so much depended, did he just leave it to chance that his cavalry would return on time ? Could he have instructed at least his roman cavalry commander that his job was to turn and flank after seeing the enemy horse off the field ?”
There are several answers to that question. One is simply that war is largely about luck and an experienced commander knows that. Another is that the cavalry’s job was in fact not to turn and flank. Rome never had a cavalry tradition and the best that could be hoped for was to chase away the enemy horse. Scipio could count on his infantry to win against enemy infantry one way or another but the enemy cavalry was a wild card that Romans had long found difficult. The Numidians returning and blindsiding the Cartheginians was in fact a bonus. Furthermore for him to tell the Numidian prince how to command cavalry or that his primary mission was to help Romans would go quite a ways against cultivating him. We do not in fact know what he told him along that line but it would have likly had all the awkward compromises involved in coalition warfare. Scipios Numidians in fact likly thought of Hannibals Numidians as their primary enemy and thought of the punic wars as a background for their local power struggles. Furthermore cavalry is notoriously hard to control and there are many instances of it charging to far.
I suspect that Scipio thought of his cavalry primarily as a counter to enemy cavalry which had been so deadly earlier in the war and relied primarily on his infantry which he was familiar with.
By jason taylor on May 4, 2009 at 1:04 pm
this is obly about one problem
By Alan on Oct 29, 2009 at 10:14 pm