Scipio Africanus Quotes

Prepare for war, since you have been unable to endure a peace.

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 96% how I react to it.

The erasure of his history was completed by the moniker placed on him by white captors. Scipio was a classic slave name, one of a catalogue of cynical, almost sneering, designations rooted in the white South’s popular fetish for the mythology of the classic cultures. It came from the name of a second-century general who governed Rome as Scipio Africanus. For the Roman Scipio, this was a tribute to his victory over Hannibal in the year 201, extending Roman control over Carthage and all of northern Africa. His reign had also seen the brutal suppression of the first great Roman slave revolt, in which on one occasion more than twenty thousand rebelling slaves were crucified.

Scipio asked Hannibal, “Whom he thought the greatest captain?” The latter answered, “Alexander . . . because with a small force he defeated armies whose numbers were beyond reckoning, and because he had overrun the remotest regions, merely to visit which was a thing above human aspirations.” Scipio then asked, “ To whom he gave the second place ? ” and Hannibal replied, “To Pyrrhus, for he first taught the method of encamping, and besides, no one ever showed such exquisite judgment in choosing his ground and disposing his posts; while he also possessed the art of conciliating mankind to himself to such a degree that the natives of Italy wished him, though a foreign prince, to hold the sovereignty among them, rather than the Roman people. . . .” On Scipio proceeding to ask, “Whom he esteemed the third? ” Hannibal replied, “Myself, beyond doubt.” On this Scipio laughed, and added, “What would you have said if you had conquered me? ” “Then I would have placed Hannibal not only before Alexander and Pyrrhus, but before all other commanders.

Can I call you countrymen, who have revolted from your country ? Or soldiers, who have rejected the command and authority of your general, and violated your solemn oath ? Can I call you enemies ? I recognise the persons, faces, and dress, and mien of fellow-countrymen ; but I perceive the actions, expressions, and intentions of enemies. For what have you wished and hoped for, but what the Illitergi and Lacetani did ?

See how cruel the whites look. Their lips are thin, their noses sharp, their faces furrowed and dis­torted by folds. Their eyes have a staring expression; they are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something; they are always uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think that they are mad." I asked him why he thought the whites were all mad. "They say that they think with their heads," he replied. "Why of course. What do you think with?" I asked him in surprise. "We think here," he said, indicating his heart. I fell into a long meditation. For the first time in my life, so it seemed to me, someone had drawn for me a picture of the real white man. It was as though until now I had seen nothing but sentimental, prettified color prints. This Indian had struck our vulnerable spot, unveiled a truth to which we are blind. I felt rising within me like a shapeless mist something unknown and yet deeply familiar. And out of this mist, image upon image detached itself: first Roman legions smashing into the cities of Gaul, and the keenly incised features of Julius Caesar, Scipio Africanus, and Pompey. I saw the Roman eagle on the North Sea and on the banks of the White Nile. Then I saw St. Augus­tine transmitting the Christian creed to the Britons on the tips of Roman lances, and Charlemagne's most glorious forced con­versions of the heathen; then the pillaging and murdering bands of the Crusading armies. With a secret stab I realized the hol­lowness of that old romanticism about the Crusades. Then fol­lowed Columbus, Cortes, and the other conquistadors who with fire, sword, torture, and Christianity came down upon even these remote pueblos dreaming peacefully in the Sun, their Father. I saw, too, the peoples of the Pacific islands decimated by firewater, syphilis, and scarlet fever carried in the clothes the missionaries forced on them. It was enough. What we from our point of view call coloniza­tion, missions to the heathen, spread of civilization, etc., has another face - the face of a bird of prey seeking with cruel in­tentness for distant quarry - a face worthy of a race of pirates and highwaymen. All the eagles and other predatory creatures that adorn our coats of arms seem to me apt psychological representatives of our true nature.

There is nothing wrong with celebrating Hannibal’s remarkable crossing of the Alps, and much is to be learned from how he amassed his many wins on the Italian peninsula. But we should not forget that he failed to deliver a decisive victory even after fifteen years of fighting, that he was ultimately defeated by Scipio Africanus, and that Carthage was not just defeated by Rome in the Punic Wars, it was wiped off the map. That Hannibal is still remembered for his brilliance, but the empire he fought for is remembered only for its complete destruction, should give us pause.

Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, for example, had been about twenty-nine

where the heart leads, the mind but follows?

General Scipio Africanus defeated the Carthaginians in Spain and North

a result of his coming battles in North Africa that the younger Scipio would obtain the name Scipio Africanus.

Sometimes the greatest honor an honorable man can do is to dishonor himself for others.

Acta non verba.

the great Numidian king Masinissa defected to the Romans, and joined Scipio Africanus

Sometimes the greatest honor an honorable man can do is to dishonor himself for others.” The

War is always filled with cruelty and suffering. That’s the nature of it.” “But not toward defenseless civilians, surely?” “On the contrary, it has always been cruelest of all toward them . . . You surely remember your classical history: ‘Carthago delenda est.’” “Carthage must be destroyed . . .” “That’s it. Carthage was a massive city. When the Romans finally seized it they killed more than four hundred thousand people and sold the survivors into slavery. Then they razed the city to the ground, obliterating it forever. Scipio Africanus gave the orders for that ‘action.’ I daresay there were officers under his command who balked at them. But they obeyed all the same.” “But

Scipio Africanus, the general who defeated Hannibal, would say that an army should not only leave a road for their enemy to retreat by, they should pave it.

He who carries a heavy load must bend to bear it. That much I have learned.

Goodness in other people naturally arouses our affection and friendship, not because it’s of some material advantage to us, but because it’s the mirror image of our own potential for virtue, and so loved for its own sake. For instance, the Roman statesman Laelius the Wise, renowned for his own exemplary friendship with Scipio Africanus the Younger, had studied Stoic philosophy under the scholarchs Diogenes of Babylon and Panaetius. In a dialogue entitled On Friendship, Cicero portrays him saying that ‘nothing else in the whole world is so completely in harmony with Nature’ as true friendship, a profound agreement in the feelings and values of two people, supported by mutual goodwill and affection.

En asuntos de guerra es vergonzoso decir: no lo había pensado

Acta non verba

Before concluding the discussion on Partridge’s connection to the Stoic tradition, I present what is probably the greatest proof Partridge was a Stoic: he suffered the public doom of one. Ironically, Partridge may have missed a powerful warning about his own fate within one of the key texts he used in his academies. A footnote within William Duncan’s translation of Cicero’s orations recalls the ill fortune of Quintus Aelius Tubero in the eyes of the people of Rome caused by his Stoic behavior at the funeral of Scipio Africanus: "[It was the same from the study of Tubero] Cicero here ridicules the doctrine of the Stoics, shows the absurdities into which it may betray a man and paints the ill consequences that often arise from it. [Quintus Aelius] Tubero, of whom he speaks here had professed himself a Stoic and resolved to regulate his conduct by the tenets of that sect. Accordingly, in an entertainment he gave the Roman people on occasion of the death of the great Scipio Africanus he made use of plain wooden beds, goat skin covers, and earthen dishes. But this ill-timed parsimony was so displeasing to the Roman people that when he afterwards stood for the prætorship they refused him their suffrages though a man of illustrious birth and the most distinguished virtue." Is there a passage more fitting for the legacy of Partridge and his Stoic behavior? Even when Partridge had built an ideal model for educating a complete virtue-driven citizen worthy of the Republic, few would find the lifestyle required appealing. Being a virtuous man with a sufficient plan for American education was not enough to guarantee his acceptance among the masses.

Scipio Africanus, the general who defeated Hannibal, would say that an army should not only leave a road for their enemy to retreat by, they should pave it. The Romans had a name for this road, the Gallic Way.