battles of Ilipa (now Alcalá del Río, near Seville) in 206
b.c.; and Gades (now Cádiz), which gave control of the
Spanish peninsula to Rome. Returning to Rome, Scipio
became a consul in 205 b.c., and was given control of
Sicily as his province in recognition of his victories.
Deciding not to take on his old foe Hasdrubal,
Scipio headed to Africa to attack the Carthage home-
land. Starting in 204 b.c., he began a conflict of plun-
der and conquest so complete and overwhelming that
when he took Tunis, the city neighboring Carthage, the
Carthaginians recalled hannibal, their greatest general,
from Italy, to help sue for peace. Instead, Hannibal de-
cided to fight Scipio, setting off a renewed conflict that
ended at the Battle of Zama in 202 b.c. There, Scipio
received support from Masinissa, the Numidian prince,
whose cavalry troops provided significant support to
the Roman forces. While Roman troops hit the front
of Hannibal’s army, the Numidians attacked the rear,
destroying the Carthaginians and leading to a Roman
victory. Historians have calculated that the battle was
fought at the area called Naraggara (now Saqiyat Sidi,
Tunis). The Second Punic War had ended in complete
victory for Rome and Publius Scipio, and for this he
received the surname Africanus (conqueror of Africa).
He has since been known to history as Scipio Africanus
Major, or Scipio Africanus the Elder, as distinct from his
grandson, Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, known
as Scipio Africanus the Younger.
After Zama, Scipio continued to play a part in his
country’s affairs. In 199 b.c., he was made a censor and
given the office of princeps senatus (head of the Roman
Senate); he was reelected as a censor in 194 b.c. When
his brother Lucius led the Roman war against King An-
tiochus III the Great of Syria (reigned 223–187 b.c.),
Scipio served as a legate (staff officer), aiding in mili-
tary strategy. His planning led to the Roman defeat of
Antiochus’s forces at Magnesia in Asia Minor (189 b.c.).
For this victory, Lucius was named Asiagenus.
When Scipio and Lucius returned in victory to
Rome, they found that their political enemies had ac-
cused them of taking bribes from Antiochus. The evi-
dence is murky; historians cannot say whether or not the
charge is true, but it was certainly pursued by Scipio’s
political enemies in the Roman Senate who disagreed
with his foreign policy. Shaken by the accusations, he
retired to his estate, Liternum, in Campania. A recluse
in his final years, he died on his estate in either 184 or
183 b.c., an exile from the nation he had served so well.
Allegedly he was so angered at how the Roman Senate
had treated him that he asked that his body be interred
in Liternum instead of in glory in Rome.References: Liddell Hart, Basil H., A Greater Than Na-
poleon: Scipio Africanus (London: W. Blackwood & Sons,
Ltd., 1926); Haywood, Richard M., Studies on Scipio
Africanus (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1933); Fonner, D. Kent, “After Avidly Studying the
Tactics of Hannibal, Scipio Africanus Eventually Bested
his Carthaginian Adversary,” Military History 12, no. 7
(March 1996): 10–12, 16; “Scipio Africanus,” in Com-
mand: From Alexander the Great to Zhukov—The Great-
est Commanders of World History, edited by James Lucas
(London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1988), 45–46; Ross,
Thomas, The Second Punick War between Hannibal, and
the Romanes... With a Continuation from the Triumph of
Scipio, to the Death of Hannibal (London: Tho. Roycroft,
1672); Scullard, Howard W., Scipio Africanus in the Sec-
ond Punic War (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press,
1930).Scott, Winfield (1786–1866) American general
Winfield Scott was born on his family’s estate near
Petersburg, Virginia, on 13 June 1786. His paternal
grandfather, James Scott, had seen military action at
Culloden Moor (16 April 1746), in which the Jacobite
Scottish rebellion ended in disaster with Bonnie Prince
Charlie defeated by the duke of Cumberland. James
Scott fled to the American colonies, where he settled
and founded an estate near Petersburg, Virginia. Win-
field Scott attended the College of William and Mary
in 1805, where he studied the law, but after two years
he left that institution and moved to Charleston, South
Carolina, where he worked in the law office of a David
Robinson. By this time (1808), the United States had
reached a stage of serious tension with Great Britain,
soon to break out into the conflict known as the War of- Scott left South Carolina for Washington, D.C.,
where he offered his services to the Department of War.
Commissioned as a captain of artillery, he was given the
task of raising a company of soldiers in Richmond and
Petersburg, both in Virginia. Following the completion
of this mission, Scott was ordered to move his troops to
New Orleans, where he was given the rank of captain in
the U.S. Army and served on the staff of General Wade
Hampton.
Scott, winFielD