While injustice is reprehensible, it is, nevertheless, profitable and advantageous...while justice is estimable, it is for all disadvantageous and more capable of benefiting others than of helping those who practice it. Isocrates. On the Peace. Speech 8. Section 31.
The Continence of Scipio, or The Clemency of Scipio, is an episode recounted by Livy of the Roman general Scipio Africanus during his campaign in Spain during the Second Punic War. . According to Livy's account of the siege of the Carthaginian colony of New Carthage, the Celtiberian prince Allucius was betrothed to a beautiful virgin who was taken prisoner by Scipio Africanus in 209 BC. Despite having a reputation for womanizing, instead of the usual brutal treatment given to attractive female "barbarian" prisoners, Scipio summoned her parents and fiance, who arrived with a ransom of treasure. Scipio refused this and returned her to them, asking only that they be friends to Rome. When they offered the ransom as a present, he accepted it, only to return it immediately as a wedding gift from himself. Allucius then brought over his tribe to support the Roman armies in gratitude. In recognition of his magnanimous treatment of a prisoner, Scipio was taken as one of the prime examples of mercy during warfare in classical times. The story related by Livy in his history of Rome was followed by all later writers even though it varied from a version recorded by the earlier historian Valerius Antias.
Antias is thought by some scholars to have lived during the time of Sulla but others think he was a contemporary of Julius Caesar and wrote his annals after 50 BCE. However, he appeared to have been unknown to Cicero, and was not listed among Cicero's famous historians. Livy did use Antias as a source for some of Livy's history but was not considered by Livy to be particularly reliable. Livy criticizes his exaggerated numbers of killed and captured enemies in the Roman wars and seems to have thought Antias even invented some battles. The apparently long-winded Antias filled his accounts with sensationalism and embroidered the accounts of older historians with dramatic details, also recounting legends and miracles, although some of his casualty values compared to totals given by Polybius. Sadly, we don't know what his version of the continence of Scipio was, however, as almost all of his 75 books have been lost except for 65 fragments. Interest in the story of Scipio revived in the Renaissance and the episode figured widely thereafter in both the literary and figurative arts.
Image: The Continence of Scipio by Niccolò dell'Abbate, 1555, at The Louvre, Paris, France. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Comments
Post a Comment