Free Scipio Africanus by B.h. Liddell Hart Page B

have been prevented, which militarily was impossible. Actually, on his voyage from Gades, he attempted a surprise assault on Cartagena in the absence of Scipio, and was so easily repulsed and so strongly counter-attacked, that the ships cut their anchors in order to avoid being boarded, leaving many of the defeated soldiers to drown or be slain. Forced to return to Gades to recruit
afresh, he was refused entry to the city by the inhabitants, who shortly surrendered to the Romans, and had to retrace his course to the island of Pityusa (modern Iviça), the westernmost of the Balearic Isles, which was inhabited by Carthaginians. After receiving recruits and supplies, he attempted a landing on Majorca, but was repulsed by the natives, famous as slingers, and had to choose the less advantageous site of Minorca as his winter quarters, there hauling his ships on shore.
    With regard to the chronology of this last phase, in Livy’s account the suppression of Andobales’s rebellion is followed by the story of a meeting between Scipio and Masinissa, and then by the details of Mago’s departure from Gades, from which it would appear that this happened while Scipio was still in Spain. But for accuracy of historical sequence Livy is a less reliable guide than Polybius, and the latter’s narrative definitely states that directly after the subjugation of Andobales Scipio returned to Tarraco, and then, “anxious not to arrive in Rome too late for the consular elections,” sailed for Rome, after handing over the army to Silanus and Marcius, and arranging for the administration of the province.
    The meeting with Masinissa, whenever it occurred,
is worth notice, for here the seeds of Scipio’s generous treatment of Masinissa’s nephew years before bore fruit in the exchange of pledges of an alliance, which was to be one of Scipio’s master-tools in undermining the Carthaginian power at its base in Africa.

CHAPTER VII.
    THE TRUE OBJECTIVE.
    ON arrival at Rome Scipio obtained an audience of the Senate outside the city, at the temple of Bellona, and there gave them a formal report of his campaigns. “On account of these services he rather tried his prospect of a triumph than pressed it pertinaciously,” for the honour had never been given except to those whose services were rendered when holders of a magistracy. His tact was wise, for the astonishing success of youth had already inspired envy among his seniors. The Senate did not break with precedent, and at the close of the audience he entered the city in the ordinary way. His reward, however, came without delay. At the assembly for the election of the two consuls for the coming year he was named by all the centuries. The popularity of his election was shown not only by the enthusiasm which greeted it, but by the gathering of a larger number of voters than at any time during the Punic War, crowds swarming
to his house and to the Capitol full of curiosity to see the victor of the Spanish wars.
    But on the morrow of this personal triumph, compensation for the formal “ triumph ” denied him by a hidebound Senate, the first shoots appeared of that undergrowth of narrow-minded conservatism, reinforced by envy, which was to choke the personal fruits of his work, though happily not before he had garnered for Rome the first-fruits—Hannibal’s overthrow.
    Hitherto in Spain he had enjoyed a free hand unfettered by jealous politicians or the compromising counsels of government by committee. If he had to rely on his own local resources, he was at least too far distant for his essential freedom of action to be controlled by any manyheaded guardian of national policy. But from now on he was to suffer, like Marlborough and Wellington some two thousand years later, the curb of political faction and jealousy, and finally, like Marlborough, end his days in embittered retirement. The report got about that he was saying that he had been declared consul