Fatalis Dux: Livy’s Depiction of Scipio Africanus
in the Second Punic War

John H. Chesley (College of William and Mary)

At 22.53.6, Livy refers to the young P. Cornelius Scipio as the fatalis dux of the Second Punic, foreshadowing his final victory over Hannibal in Book 30 of the Ab Urbe Condita.  This short authorial aside has often been used (cf. Walsh 1961) to support a common assumption that Livy manipulated his source material in order to shape his depictions of great Romans into something easily recognizable to the reader as quod imitere capias (Praef. 10).  However, the career of Scipio Africanus resists such a one-dimensional depiction.  He may have won the war for Rome, but he was repeatedly charged throughout his career with anti-civic behavior, ultimately dying in self-imposed exile after his trial for misconduct in the campaign against Antiochus.

Recent scholarship has argued convincingly for a more complex depiction of Scipio within Livy’s narrative, a depiction that encapsulates both his laudatory and anti-civic aspects (Jaeger, 198).  Particularly helpful has been Rossi’s suggestion that Livy plotted Scipio’s career out in terms of a moral metamorphosis (TAPA, 2004).  According to Rossi, Scipio’s shift from an exemplary to problematic figure appears in its incipiency when Scipio threatens to override senatorial opposition to his planned invasion of Africa by appealing to the people (28.40ff.)  I would argue, however, that the critical hurdle to such attempts to periodize Scipio’s career into an early exemplary period and a later anti-civic period is the tendency to attenuate instances where Livy is implicitly critical of Scipio’s behavior early in his career.

In my paper, I argue that Livy suggests an anti-civic element to Scipio’s character from the beginning.  Early moments of megalomania and disrespect for hierarchies of authority, such as his election to the aedileship (25.2.6-8), prefigure similar moments in his later career.  To understand Livy’s depiction of Scipio, I argue, we should employ a schema of the superlative individual used to describe the depiction of such other historical figures as Themistocles, Miltiades, Pausanias, and Alcibiades (Gribble 1999).  Similarly to these Greek figures, Livy depicts Scipio as the superlative individual capable of saving Rome, but also capable being seen as a threat and potential tyrant.  I take as my starting point the passage from Book 22 mentioned above.  Only one other figure in the extant Ab Urbe Condita is so described as a fatalis dux: M. Furius Camillus.  Camillus left Rome in exile under suspicion of aiming at domination of the state, just as did Scipio.  From this initial point, Livy develops his characterization of Scipio as both a potential savior and threat, prefiguring such later figures as Caesar and Pompey.