Polybius, Histories

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Character of P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus

Publius Scipio, in the course of an active career in an aristocratic state, secured such popularity with the multitude and such credit with the Senate, that when

Character of P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus, whose death Polybius places in this year, but according to Livy wrongly, who assigns it to the previous year (39, 52).

some one took upon himself to bring him to trial before the people in the manner usual at Rome, and produced many bitter accusations against him, he came forward and said nothing but that "It ill-became the Roman people to listen to accusations against P. Cornelius Scipio, to whom his accusers owed it that they had the power of speech at all." At this the populace dispersed, and quitting the assembly, left the accuser alone. . . . Once when there was a sum of money required in the Senate for some pressing business, and the quaestor, on the ground of a legal difficulty, refused to open the treasury on that particular day, Scipio said that "he would take the keys himself and open it; for he was the cause of the treasury being locked at all." And again, when some one in the Senate demanded an account of the money which he had received from Antiochus before the treaty for the pay of his army, he said that he had the ledger, but that he ought not to be called to account by any one. But on his questioner persisting, and urging him to produce it, he bade his brother bring it. When the schedule was brought, he held it out in front of him, and tearing it to pieces in the sight of everybody bade the man who asked for it seek it out of these fragments, and he demanded of the rest "How they could ask for the items of the expenditure of these three thousand talents, and yet no longer ask for an account of how and by whose agency the fifteen thousand talents which they received from Antiochus came into the treasury, nor how it is that they have become masters of Asia, Libya, and Iberia?" This speech not only made a strong impression on the rest, but also reduced the man who demanded the account to silence.

These anecdotes have been related by me for the double purpose of enhancing the fame of the departed, and of encouraging future generations in the paths of honour. . . .