Scipio Africanus Read Free Page A

virtues ; and Livy, to whom as a Roman the artifice would appear less admirable than to Polybius, a Greek, leaves in doubt the origin of this habit of Scipio’s, developed in his after career either by reason of its success
or practice. Here is Livy’s appreciation: “ Scipio was undoubtedly the possessor of striking gifts ; but besides that he had from childhood studied the art of their effective display. Whether there was some vein of superstition in his own temperament, or whether it was with the aim of securing for his commands the authority of inspired utterances, he rarely spoke in public without pretending to some nocturnal vision or supernatural suggestion.” Livy may exaggerate the frequency, for he wrote at a later date, and legends grow round the characteristics of the great. Such supernatural claims only appear occasionally in Scipio’s recorded utterances, and he, a supreme artist in handling human nature, would realise the value of reserving them for critical moments.
    Livy continues : “ In order to impress public opinion in this direction, he had made a practice from the day he reached manhood of never engaging in any business, public or private, without first paying a visit to the Capitol. There he would enter the sanctuary and pass some time, generally in solitude and seclusion. This habit ... made converts to a belief, to which accident or design had given wide currency, that his origin was other than human. There was a story once widely believed about Alexander the Great, that his male parent had
been a huge serpent, often seen in his mother’s chamber, but vanishing directly men appeared. This miracle was told again of Scipio ... but he himself never cast ridicule upon it; indeed, he rather lent it countenance by the course which he adopted of neither wholly disclaiming such tales nor openly asserting their truth.” This last tale, incidentally, is repeated by several of the ancient writers and enshrined in ‘ Paradise Lost,’ where Milton writes :—
    â€œ He with Olympias, this with her that bore
Scipio, the height of Rome.”
    The view that this claim to divine inspiration had a religious and not merely an intellectual basis gains some support from Scipio’s conduct in the Syrian War of 190 B.C., when, because he was a member of the college of the priests of Mars, known as Salian priests, he stayed behind the army and indirectly kept it waiting at the Hellespont, as the rule bound him to stay where he was until the month ended.
    Again, modern psychologists may suggest that his dreams were true and not invented, such is known to be the power of strong desire to fulfil itself in dreams. Whatever the explanation and the source of his “ visions,” there can be no doubt as to the skill with which he turned them to practical account. And it is a supreme moral
tribute to Scipio that this power was exerted by him purely to further his country’s good, never his own. When trouble and accusation came in later days, and an ungrateful State forgot its saviour, Scipio did not invoke any divine vision in his defence. That he so refrained is the more definite and the more significant, because, with other psychological means, he showed himself still the supreme “ organist ” of the human instrument.
    Scipio’s election to the ædileship is historically important, not only because it illumines the sources of his success and influence over men, but also for its light on the causes of his political decline, the self-imposed exile from an ungrateful country, which saw a marvellously brilliant career close in shadow. It is Livy who shows that his election was not so unopposed as Polybius’s account would suggest; that the tribunes of the people opposed his pretensions to the office because he had not attained the legal age for candidature. Whereupon Scipio retorted that “ if the citizens in general are desirous of appointing me