28.42
"I will
not take instances from distant lands and remote times. This very Africa we
are speaking about and the fate of Atilius Regulus form a conspicuous
example of the fickleness of fortune. "When you, Scipio, have a view of
Africa from the sea will not your conquest of Spain seem mere child's play?
What resemblance is there between them? You began by coasting along the
shores of Italy and Gaul over a sea free from any hostile fleet, and you
brought up at Emporiae, a friendly city. After disembarking your troops you
led them through a perfectly safe country to Tarraco, to the friends and allies
of Rome, and from Tarraco your route led through the midst of Roman
garrisons. Round the Ebro lay the armies of your father and your uncle,
whose courage had been raised by defeat and who were burning to avenge
the loss of their commanders. Their leader was, it is true, irregularly chosen
by the vote of the soldiery to meet the emergency, but had he belonged to an
ennobled family and been duly appointed he would have rivalled
distinguished generals in his mastery of the art of war. Then you were able to
attack New Carthage without the slightest interruption; not one out of the
three Carthaginian armies attempted to defend their allies. The rest of your
operations, though I am far from depreciating them, are not to be compared
with a war in Africa. There no harbour is open to our fleet, no district which
will receive us peaceably, no city in alliance with us, no king friendly to us,
no spot which we can use as a base of operations. Wherever you turn your
eyes, you see hostility and menace.
"Do you put your trust in Syphax and his Numidians? Be satisfied
with having trusted them once. Rashness does not always succeed and
duplicity prepares the way for confidence through trifles, so that when the
occasion calls for it, it may succeed in securing some great advantage. Your
father and your uncle were not defeated until the treachery of their
Celtiberian auxiliaries left them victims to the enemy. You yourself were not
exposed to anything like the danger from the Carthaginian commanders,
Mago and Hasdrubal, that you were from Indibilis and Mandonius after you
had accepted their alliance. Can you trust the Numidians after the experience
you have had of the disloyalty of your own troops? Syphax and Masinissa
would both prefer that they rather than the Carthaginians should be the
leading powers in Africa, but failing that, they would rather have the
Carthaginians than any one else. At this moment mutual rivalry and
numberless grounds of complaint are embittering them against one another,
because external dangers are far distant; but once let them see the arms of
Rome and a foreign army, and they will hasten side by side to extinguish, as
it were, a conflagration which threatens them both. Those Carthaginians
defended Spain in a very different way from that in which they would defend
their country's walls, the temples of their gods, their hearths and homes,
when their trembling wives will follow them and their little children cling to
them as they march out to battle. What, moreover, if, feeling quite assured of
the united support of Africa, the fidelity of their royal allies and the strength
of their walls, and seeing that you and your army are no longer here to
protect Italy, the Carthaginians should send over a fresh army from Africa,
or order Mago, who, we understand, has left the Balearic Isles and is sailing
along the Ligurian coast, to form a junction with Hannibal? Surely we should
be in the same state of alarm as we were at the appearance in Italy of
Hasdrubal, after you had allowed him to slip through your hands -you, who
are going to blockade not Carthage only but the whole of Africa with your
army! You will say that you defeated him. Then I regret all the more, both
on your account and on behalf of the republic, that you allowed him after his
defeat to invade Italy.
"Allow us to ascribe all that has gone happily for you and for the
dominion of Rome to your wise counsels, and all misfortunes to the
uncertain chances of war -the more talent and courage you claim for
yourself the more will your native country and all Italy desire to keep such a
doughty defender at home. Even you cannot disguise the fact that where
Hannibal is, there is the centre and mainstay of the war, for you are giving
out that the one reason for your going to Africa is to draw Hannibal there.
Whether there then or here, you still have Hannibal to deal with. And will
you, I should like to know, be in a stronger position in Africa, single-handed,
than here with your own army and your colleague's acting together? What a
difference that makes is shown by the recent instance of the consuls Claudius
and Livius. Where, pray, is Hannibal more likely to be supplied with men and
arms? In the most remote corner of Bruttium where he has so long been
vainly asking for reinforcements from home, or in the country round
Carthage and on the soil of Africa which is entirely occupied by his allies?
What an extraordinary idea that is of yours to fight where your forces are
reduced by one-half and those of the enemy largely augmented, rather than
in a country where with two armies you would engage only one, and that,
too, exhausted by so many battles, and such long and burdensome service.
Just think how different your plan is from your father's. On his election as
consul he proceeded to Spain, then left his province and returned to Italy in
order to meet Hannibal on his descent from the Alps; you are preparing to
leave Italy while Hannibal is actually here, not in the interest of the republic
but because you think it a grand and glorious thing to do. Just in the same
way you, a general of the Roman people, left your province and your army
without any legal authority, without any instructions from the senate, and
entrusted to a couple of ships the fortunes of the State and the majesty of the
empire which were for the time bound up with your own safety. I hold the
view that P. Cornelius Scipio was elected consul not for his own private
ends, but for us and the commonwealth, and that armies are raised to guard
this city and the soil of Italy, and not for consuls to transport to any part of
the world they please in the arrogant style of kings and despots."