1. Publius Cornelius Scipio Africānus Maior (236–183 BC), Rome's greatest general in the Second Punic War. He was the son of P. Cornelius Scipio, who was defeated by Hannibal at Tīcīnus in 218 BC. In 210 when only about 25 his exceptional military ability brought about his appointment by the people to the command in Spain, the first privatus, ‘private citizen’, to be granted the imperium of a proconsul. By 206 he had driven the Carthaginians out of Spain. He was elected consul for 205, and, managing to get the better of senatorial opposition, especially that of Fabius who thought Hannibal should be defeated in Italy, crossed over to Africa with his army. He finally defeated Hannibal at the battle of Zama in 202, and earned the cognomen Africanus.
In 199 he was elected censor and became princeps senatus, ‘leader of the senate’; in 194 he was consul for a second time. In 190, although nominally merely the legate of his brother Lucius in the command against Antiochus of Syria, he led the first Roman army into Asia. When the brothers returned to Rome, political attacks, directed by Cato the Censor, were launched against them both, accusing them of misconduct in public affairs. A series of trials resulted, and although at the last the charges were not pressed home (Scipio is said at one point to have reminded the people that the day of the trial was the anniversary of Zama) the influence of the Scipios was broken, and Africanus retired to his estate at Līternum in Campania, where he died. The Younger Seneca in Epistle 86 vividly evokes the simplicity of his life there. Like many members of his family he was an ardent philhellene; that and his military brilliance and magnetic personality prompted comparisons with Alexander the Great. He married Aemilia, sister of L. Aemilius Paullus; one of his daughters was Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi.
2. Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemiliānus, known as Africanus Minor (c.185–129 BC), Roman general and statesman. He was the second son of L. Aemilius Paullus, the conqueror of Macedonia, and was adopted by P. Scipio, the son of Scipio Africanus Major (see (1) above). He fought under his father at the battle of Pydna in 168 BC, to end the Third Macedonian War, destroyed Carthage in 146 to end the Third Punic War, and brought the long and costly war in Spain against the Numantines to a successful conclusion in 133. At his return to Rome in 132 he took the lead amongst those opposed to the radical reforms of the Gracchi but died suddenly in 129 at the height of the political unrest. It was suspected that he had been murdered, perhaps by his wife Sempronia, sister of the Gracchi. He was a great orator, the leading figure in the philhellenic circle at Rome, and a patron of Greek and Latin literature and learning; his friends included Polybius, Panaetius, Lucilius, Terence, and Laelius. His combination of intellectual and active virtues, of high culture with outstanding military and political success, moved Cicero to unbounded admiration of him as the ideal statesman. Cicero made him the central character in De republica and De senectute. His De amicitia dwells on the friendship of Scipio and Laelius.
3. Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio, consul in 138 BC, a man of strongly conservative and aristocratic views. In 133 he vigorously opposed his cousin Ti. Gracchus, and was leader of the group of senators and clients who attacked and killed him. In later times the deed sharply divided the optimatēs who approved and the popularēs who condemned it.
