Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus

Reading notes

• Ad Atticum 4.16 §2 Africanus

  P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus, the conqueror of Carthage (146) and Numantia (133); the principal speaker of the De Republica, whose 'Dream of Scipio' closes the work.

• Ad Atticum 6.1 §8 with six books, as it were as sureties, I have bound myself

  The six books are Cicero's De Re Publica, in which Scipio Aemilianus (Africanus the Younger) is the chief speaker; Cicero treats the work's high ideals of provincial government as a public bond he must now live up to.

• Ad Atticum 8.9 §2 more ample than his own, than Africanus's

  Cicero compares the flattering language of Caesar's published letter to the way the elder Scipio Aemilianus (Africanus, conqueror of Carthage in 146 BC) was praised; the point is that Caesar lavished on a correspondent praise grander than any owed even to that paragon.

• Ad Atticum 8.11 §1 in the fifth book, I think, Scipio speaks

  Cicero quotes from the fifth book of his own De Re Publica (54--51 BC), where the principal speaker is Scipio Aemilianus; the passage likens the statesman's aim (the citizens' prosperity) to the helmsman's safe course and the general's victory.

• Ad Atticum 9.12 §2 than Panaetius was in Scipio's

  The Stoic philosopher Panaetius of Rhodes was the intimate of Scipio Aemilianus, the model of the cultivated patron and his learned Greek companion; Cicero says he had honoured his own runaway tutor Dionysius even more highly, which makes the desertion sting the more.

• Ad Atticum 10.8 §7 That night would not have been so bitter to Africanus, wisest of men

  The "Africanus" here is Scipio Aemilianus, conqueror of Carthage, who was found dead in his bed in 129 BC under circumstances widely suspected to be murder. Cicero's point in the exempla string is that even the wisest and shrewdest men (Africanus, Marius, Themistocles) were undone because something deceived them.

• Ad Familiares 5.7 §3 far greater than Africanus was

  Cicero casts the proposed Pompey–Cicero partnership in the mold of the famous friendship of Scipio Aemilianus (Africanus the Younger) and Gaius Laelius. He flatters Pompey as the greater Scipio and modestly takes the supporting role of Laelius the wise.

• Ad Quintum Fratrem 1.1 §23 our Africanus

  Scipio Aemilianus (Africanus the younger, 185-129 BC), conqueror of Carthage and the central figure of Cicero's De Re Publica, was famously devoted to Xenophon's Cyropaedia.

• Ad Quintum Fratrem 2.3 §3 than Africanus had been, whom C. Carbo had put to death

  Scipio Aemilianus (Africanus the Younger) died suddenly in 129 BC; rumour blamed the demagogue C. Papirius Carbo. Pompey's pointed comparison cast Crassus as a man who might engineer his death.

• Ad Quintum Fratrem 3.5 (combined with 3.6 as the single SB letter 3.5b) §1 between Africanus shortly before his death and Laelius

  The dialogue's speakers are the historical circle of Scipio Aemilianus (Africanus the Younger): his friend C. Laelius Sapiens, the jurist Philus, and others, conversing at the festival of 129 BC, the year Scipio died. Cicero gave them weight precisely because of their real eminence.

• On the Nature of the Gods §2.14 that second sun, was extinguished

  Scipio Aemilianus Africanus the Younger, destroyer of Carthage and Numantia, found dead in 129 BC. Cicero plays on a reported "double sun" portent of that year, calling Scipio a "second sun" whose death darkened Rome.

• On Duties §2.76 the destruction of Carthage

  Scipio Aemilianus (Africanus the Younger) destroyed Carthage in 146 BC, the close of the Third Punic War, and was no richer for it, following his natural father Paullus's example.

• Against Verres, Second Hearing, Book II §85 monuments of Publius Africanus

  Statues which Scipio Aemilianus had restored to Sicilian cities after the destruction of Carthage 146 BC. Sthenius's defence of them at Thermae was Verres's pretext for renouncing hospitality and turning prosecutor; the principle (that allies' restored monuments were inviolable while Roman rule stood) is the civic test Sthenius passed and Verres failed.

• Tusculan Disputations §4.50 About Africanus

  Scipio Aemilianus (Africanus the Younger), here remembered for shielding the Pelignian soldier and killing the enemy without being inflamed by anger.