Publius Cornelius Scipio

Wiser, more resolute, more devoted men do from time to time arise, and in the Punic Wars notable among them were the two great generals, Hannibal and Publius Cornelius Scipio (later Africanus).

Then, just as things looked their bleakest, a brilliant Roman general, Publius Cornelius Scipio, known to historians as Scipio Africanus or Scipio the Great, a man both resolute and clever, stepped to the fore.

They include the host Scipio (Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Aemilianus, the general who destroyed Carthage, an opponent of the Gracchi's populist program to redistribute property, and a friend of the historian Polybius and the Stoic philosopher Panaetius), and several of Scipio's friends, including Laelius (Gaius Laelius, Scipio's former military subordinate, a former consul and another opponent of the Gracchi, who combined an interest in philosophy with a practical cast of mind), Philus (Lucius Furius Philus, another former consul with philosophical interests), Tubero (Quintus Aelius Tubero, Scipio's nephew, who was a Stoic philosopher), and Rufus (Publius Rutilius Rufus, a jurist and Stoic, who is the ostensible narrator).

Publius Cornelius Scipio, better known as Scipio Africanus, was a military leader whose genius was equal to that of Hannibal.

Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus [236-183 B.C.E.] is best known for defeating the Carthaginian general Hannibal near the North African city of Zama, thus winning the Second Punic War [218-201 B.C.E.].

In the Second Punic War, for instance, the Romans fought the Carthaginian general Hannibal for eighteen long, bloody years on Italian soil before Publius Cornelius Scipio ended it by acting on an important fact: While Hannibal destroyed the Italian countryside, the carnage mounting with no clear end in sight, "Carthage itself--the center of Carthaginian political, religious, and social power--was unthreatened by any Roman soldier" (p.