Scipio Forces the Senate's Hand: The Africa Strategy
Scipio was elected consul in 205 BC at about thirty and had to fight the senate to be allowed to invade Africa. He had already taken Spain from the Carthaginians with a proconsular command granted to a private citizen, which was itself irregular, and he came home arguing that Hannibal would leave Italy only if Carthage itself were threatened. The senate disliked the argument and the man. Fabius Maximus, who had spent fifteen years refusing battle in Italy, opposed the plan as a reckless gamble by a young man who wished to fight a war of his own, and the compromise reached was characteristically Roman: Scipio was given Sicily as his province with permission to cross to Africa if he judged it in the public interest, and no troops. He was allowed to take volunteers, and the two legions he found in Sicily were the survivors of Cannae, in disgrace and unpaid for years. He trained them for a year, obtained ships from the Sicilian cities, and crossed in 204 BC. The campaign was decided by a night attack in 203 in which he burned the Carthaginian and Numidian camps and killed tens of thousands, having sent envoys during a truce with instructions to memorise the layout. Carthage recalled Hannibal from Italy after sixteen years, and the two met at Zama in 202 BC. Scipio won by opening lanes in his line for the elephants to run through. He was voted the surname Africanus and then prosecuted for corruption by Cato's faction a decade later, tore up the accounts in the senate house rather than answer, and retired to Campania. He asked to be buried there rather than in the city that had done it.
- Year: 205 BCE
- Category: Military
