Scipio Africanus: Rome's Greatest General | 
 enlarge | Author: Richard A. Gabriel
Publisher: Potomac Books Inc.
Category: Book
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Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 212421
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 326
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 1597972053
Dewey Decimal Number: 937.04092
EAN: 9781597972055
ASIN: 1597972053
Publication Date: June 30, 2008
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Product Description
The world often misunderstands its greatest men while neglecting others entirely. Scipio Africanus, surely the greatest general that Rome produced, suffered both these fates. Today scholars celebrate the importance of Hannibal, even though Scipio defeated the legendary general in the Second Punic War and was the central military figure of his time. In this scholarly and heretofore unmatched military biography of the distinguished Roman soldier, Richard A. Gabriel establishes Scipio’s rightful place in military history as the greater of the two generals.
Before Scipio, few Romans would have dreamed of empire, and Scipio himself would have regarded such an ambition as a danger to his beloved republic. And yet, paradoxically, Scipio’s victories in Spain and Africa enabled Rome to consolidate its hold over Italy and become the dominant power in the western Mediterranean, virtually ensuring a later confrontation with the Greco-Macedonian kingdoms to the east as well as the empire’s expansion into North Africa and the Levant. The Roman imperium was being born, and it was Scipio who had sired it.
Gabriel draws upon ancient texts, including those from Livy, Polybius, Diodorus, Silius Italicus, and others, as primary sources and examines all additional material available to the modern scholar in French, German, English, and Italian. His book offers a complete bibliography of all extant sources regarding Scipio’s life. The result is a rich, detailed, and contextual treatment of the life and career of Scipio Africanus, one of Rome’s greatest generals, if not the greatest of them all.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Uphill. August 17, 2008
Seneca
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Scipio is one of the great Roman heroes and I was looking forward to this book with the hope that it would offer a biography more in historical context than earlier works. It may have succeeded but as I was unable to finish it, I'll never know. There is a good bit of theorizing about minutiae of interest only to an historian and none to me. The thread of Scipio's life eventually go so lost in interpretations and asides that I gave up.
 A strange pottage August 17, 2008
M. Cotone (Las Cruces NM)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Sharing Mr Gabriel's observation that no one has written a biography of Scipio which truly evaluates the man's place in Roman military history, and being myself something of a fan of the great Africanus, I was very much looking forward to reading this one, but could only struggle about halfway through before giving up in frustration and annoyance. The sources of both are many. While conceding that Gabriel's descriptions and speculations about Scipio's campaigns and battles are interesting--even when he overlooks his own earlier solutions to questions which he later poses--I found his projection of the modern political and military mindset onto Carthage and Rome most annoying. Both states emerge in his narrative as modern entities of some sort, in which a thought-out policy is established by the civilian government and entrusted to the military for execution. Such was certainly not the case with either city, and certainly not the case with the Barcids' activity in Spain, which was viewed with enormous suspicion by their political rivals in Carthage. Equally annoying is the author's habit of contradicting himself within a matter of lines, e.g., the Spanish city of Saguntum is identified as an independent city and half a paragraph later is said to revolt against Carthage; his obvious unfamiliarity with the Latin language and its terminology, e.g., his translation of "mare clausum" as the enclosing (instead of enclosed) sea and identification of the term "legion" as deriving from Romulus' primitive army instead of the word for "to pick" or "select"; and his tendency to the grandiose, e.g., describing the situation of Rome's allies as obliged to help her "for decades" against Hannibal, thirteen years after his arrival in Italy. Gabriel's description of the Roman army is a true pottage of information taken from works written over the past century and a half (I was surprised that he did not cite H. P. Judson's long-outdated "Caesar's Army") which describe the Republican army at different eras and stages of development, but are applied to that of Scipio's time as found convenient to whatever thesis the author wishes to argue. Likewise, he boasts of his familiarity with the German and Italian literature on Scipio and the second Punic war in his introduction, but fails to include in his bibliography two recent and noteworthy English works, viz., Adrian Goldsworthy's "The Punic Wars" and "Cannae". And how can one not mention the small things, such as the use of "legionnaires" for "legionaries" and the spelling errors ("make due" for "make do") liberally scattered about the text? While I agree with Mr Gabriel's statement that an up-to-date biography of Scipio is needed, I fear that his does not qualify.
 For the glory of Scipio? August 2, 2008
Achdulieber Augustin
6 out of 10 found this review helpful
Richard Gabriel is a distinguished military historian who writes well and in this book provides a wealth of information and speculation concerning Scipio. Most noteworthy are the logistical analyses, which in general are well researched and highly informative. There are some problems with this book, though, despite its overall high quality. The author tells us that a lot of the best research on the Second Punic War is in German, which fortunately he is able to read. Wunderbar, I told myself. But examining the bibliography at the end of the book I was surprised to discover several German titles rendered ungrammatically, a children's book by Donauer included as if it were a scholarly work, and the works of the top scholars of the Punic Wars publishing in German over the past few decades (Jakob Seibert, Pedro Barcelo, Karl Christ usw.) blatantly missing.
Gabriel's attempts to present Scipio as a "brilliant" operational commander and "brilliant" strategist greater than Hannibal fail to convince (as do equally misguided attempts by others to portray Wellington as greater than Napoleon--Napoleon, by the way, regarded Hannibal as the greatest general of all, see the Memorial de Sainte-Helene by the Comte Emmanuel de las Cases). As the author suggests, the brilliance of a general depends on the quality of his defeated opponents, but the only great opponent Scipio ever defeated was Hannibal at Zama, a victory scored by luck and the fortunate arrival of Massinissa's cavalry at the battlefield in the nick of time (even Gabriel concedes that Hannibal had the better battle plan). To boost Scipio's credentials Gabriel claims repeatedly that the incompetent Carthaginian generals Scipio defeated in Spain were actually competent, especially the bungling Hasdrubal Gisco, surely the sorriest excuse for a commander in the Punic Wars. He credits Scipio with great military innovations, but fails to mention that he copied these from the organization of Hannibal's army, which Scipio experienced at the Roman defeats at the Ticinus, Trebbia, and Cannae. Scipio's victory at Ilipa owes more to Hannibal as a model that to any ingenuity on Scipio's part. The author even tries to credit Scipio with deriving the gladius hispaniensis from the Spanish falcata, although anyone who has held a falcata and a gladius in hand can tell they are totally different weapons. The gladius was based on a Spanish sword, but it is unlikely it was the falcata. Scipio is presented as an honorable man, and unfortunately Gabriel whitewashes his atrocities in ordering the butchery of the civilians in three cities (excusing the terrorism because "it served his strategic ends"), not to mention the scourging and beheading of his own officers after they rebelled because of lack of pay, even though he had promised them clemency if they surrendered. (Hannibal, by the way, although he fought in enemy territory for 15 years without ever being defeated, during which time he often could not pay his mercenaries, never suffered mutiny, which perhaps shows which commander was better able to inspire loyalty in his forces). Gabriel attributes Scipio's refusal to engage Hannibal in Italy to some grand strategic plan concerning Rome's future security, which supposedly demanded he be defeated in Africa, when there is a much simpler explanation, namely that Scipio was afraid he would be defeated if he faced Hannibal in Italy and needed to get him to return to Africa minus his cavalry in order to have a chance of victory. Scipio was clearly an opportunist concerned with his personal glory and refused peace overtures (even betraying the Carthaginians when he pretended to consider their very reasonable proposals, and then burning their camps in a treacherous night attack). He was willing to sacrifice countless lives (of his own soldiers and those of the enemy) in order to win a triumph for narcissistic glory. Hannibal was definitely the greater commander and the better man, a patriot who sacrificed everything for his country. The notion of his being motivated by hatred of Rome is a myth created by Roman propaganda, bent upon demonizing Hannibal and the Carthaginians, This is evident in the writings of Livy and particularly Silius Italicus, a poet and not a historian, whose versified fictions Gabriel accepts as reliable historical sources. Even among Roman generals, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, and above all Ceasar far outshine Scipio. Gabriel's claim that Caesar displayed no originality or innovation in the battlefield is belied by that brilliant defense in the siege of Alesia, to mention just one example. Gabriel's book, although in many ways a significant contribution to the field, suffers of bias in his efforts to achieve "majorem Scipionic gloriam." And as to the claim that Rome's victory over Carthage was good for posterity, the reader is urged to peruse Neil Faulkner's excellent book "Rome: Empire of the Eagles" to evaluate the destructive and predatory imperialism of Rome which can be contrasted with the tolerance of Carthaginian culture, destroyed in a frenzy of genocide and ethnic cleansing by the Romans in 146 BCE.
 Hail Scipio! August 1, 2008
Publius Cornelius (Columbus, Ohio)
2 out of 7 found this review helpful
This author has written a highly-readable and thoroughly researched biography of history's forgotten genius. Such work is long overdue. For those who enjoy learning about men who were clearly ahead of their time, read this book. Genius and greatness transcend time, and Scipio's accomplishments are evidence of that. This is a must read for anyone with an interest in military history or leadership.
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