ERICH S. GRUEN

THE "FALL" OF THE SCIPIOS

P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus had a career almost unmatched in glamor and glory. A nearly unbroken record of achievement distinguished him from his compatriots. Scipio wrested Spain from Carthaginian power, whipped Hannibal, and humbled the mightiest of Seleucid rulers, Antiochus III Megas. He had held the highest posts that his countrymen could bestow: twice con• sul, censor, and princeps senatus. None could deny his place as the most celebrated figure of his generation. Yet a cloud hung over Africanus in his last years. Accusations defamed his charac• ter and challenged his authority. The princeps senatus withdrew from public life and suffered a premature death. Africanus' brother, L. Cornelius Scipio Asiagenus, had a less spectacular career. But only by comparison with his brother. Lucius had his own distinctions and accomplishments. As consul and commander at the great battle of Magnesia, victor in the Syrian war, he led a triumph in Rome more resplendent and majestic even than that of Africanus. But his career too ended on a sour note. Prosecution for embezzlement and corruption tarnished his esteem. A subsequent effort to attain the censor• ship failed. And he endured the ignominy of removal from the equestrian order by Cato in that very censorship of 184 to which Lucius had himself unsuccessfully aspired. The Scipios, so it appears, had a mighty fall. The unseasonable demise of their political fortunes and their untimely departure from the public scene naturally provoke puzzlement. What happened? Why were such dismal finishes written to such splendid careers? The question is entangled in the ha.filing complexities that constitute the so-called "trials of the Scipios". That subject has prompted a scholarly literature that is intimidatingly vast and alarmingly disordant. To add yet another interpretation to that heap of stale hypotheses might seem folly indeed. But a different approach and a broader canvas can place the matter in a more instructive setting. 60 ERICH S. GRUEN

Studies on the trials of the Scipios have concentrated atten• tion upon certain selective subjects. They have explored the le• gal and constitutional aspects of the cases in extenso. Or they have analyzed the trials as episodes in the factional struggles between the Scipionic group and their political opponents, whether "Claudians", "Fulvians", or "Catonians." Or they have grappled bravely with the infuriating discrepancies in our evidence, a monumental job of Quellenforschung which strives to isolate the nuggets of fact from over laid distortion, exaggeration, confu• sion, and invention. 1 Each of these approaches, however, has served to isolate the trials as an individual historical problem, sufficiently challenging and provocative in its own right to re• quire no further justification. The narrowing of focus has blurred the lens. The events need scrutiny in a larger context. The aftermath of Rome's great victory over Carthage provoked serious strains in attitudes toward institutions and political behavior. Those years featured a pronounced display of Roman power abroad, the influx of staggering amounts of wealth, and a tortured redefini• tion of the relationship between individual authority and the col• lective leadership of the state. Controversies mounted in the two decades after the Hannibalic War-controversies over the extent of power wielded by Roman commanders, over the honors to which they could lay claim, and over the privileges they could exercise. The issues at stake went well beyond mere factional struggles. They involved a fundamental readjustment of political conventions to the tensions between personal aspirations and the corporate interests of the ruling class. That constitutes the set• ting within which the "fall" of the Scipios played itself out. The institution of the triumph offers an illuminating case in point. Increasing discord surfaced over the rights to a triumph and issued in a series of ultimately unresolvable tangles. The coveted prize was hotly contested, thereby provoking disagree-

1 Major studies on the Scipionic trials include T. Mommsen, Romische Forschungen (Berlin, 1879), II, 417-510; P. Fraccaro, Ofuscula (Pavia, 1956), 263-415; H.H. Scullard, Roman Politics, 220-150 B.C. (Oxford, 1973), 290-303; G. Bandelli, Index, 3 (1972), 304-342; ibid, 4 (1974-75), 93-126. For a more recent interpretation, see R.A. Bauman, Lawyers in Roman Republican Politics (Munich, 1983), 192-212.