In saying this Hannibal put his thought in words that might give pleasure to his listener but were not quite true. Scipio had defeated him at Zama; but no one knew better than the victor that the real triumph was not his. The forces that had defeated Hannibal were greater than those in the hand of any one man.
Had Hannibal defeated the Romans, the whole course of the world’s history might have been changed. Looking back now it seems impossible that he could ever have thought he could do so. But part of the secret of a truly great man is that he believes nothing to be impossible on which he has set his will. The power to set the will firmly, clearly, with knowledge, on some action to be done, of whatever kind it be; to sacrifice, for that end, one’s own wishes; to crush down the desire every human being feels for rest, enjoyment, comfort at the moment, and go on when the chance of success seems far away; this power is the instrument by which extraordinary things are brought about. Because of this power behind him Hannibal was a real danger to Rome, and Rome knew it. If he could have made the people of Carthage feel as he did, he would have conquered. But he could not. His will was set on defeating Rome: the will of the Carthaginians was set, not on this, but on a life of ease and comfort for themselves. And because the Carthaginians were built thus, and not like Hannibal, and he could not, by his single force, make them like himself, it would have been a disaster for the world if Hannibal had won. The Romans defeated him because they, and not the Carthaginians, had in them something of the force that moved Hannibal: they, as Polybius said of them, ‘believed nothing impossible upon which their minds were set’.
[IV]
The Scipios
Scipio, to whom after his defeat of Hannibal the name of Africanus was given by his countrymen, was a Roman of a new type. For him the interest and business of the world were not bounded by war. He read much and travelled widely in the course of his life and thought deeply on many things that had hardly begun to trouble the ordinary Roman of his time, though they were to trouble deeply the Romans who came after him. He loved Rome: but his love was not the simple unquestioning devotion of the old Romans, for whom it was enough that the city was there, and that their religion as well as their patriotism was bound up with it. He loved Rome because he believed it stood for something fine.
Of Scipio’s domestic life we do not know much: but he was a man of many warm and devoted friendships and certainly showed deep attachment to his father, to his brother, and to Scipio Aemilianus, his grandson by adoption. When young he was distinguished by his slim height and extreme fairness of complexion; a skin that flushed easily and showed the feelings he afterwards learned to conceal.
Something of his character may be seen in his bust, which shows, above the firm mouth and powerful chin of the man of action and resolute will, the questioning eyes and fine brow of the thinker. It is a stern, but not altogether a cold face; above all it is the face of a man to whom nothing was indifferent. Like most portraits of great men, it represents its subject well on in middle life, when the enthusiasms of youth have cooled and settled, but it is the face of a man capable of enthusiasm, if an enthusiasm controlled by judgement.
SCIPIO AFRICANUS
Scipio was capable of enthusiasm: but not of a kind that carried him away or made him do reckless things. The Romans of his time believed that he had been born under a lucky star, was in some sense a special favourite of the gods. Certainly the chances that destroy or make men seemed throughout his life always to turn out for good. He made mistakes, and they proved more successful than the wisest judgements could have been. But the real secret of his success was not luck but his sureness of himself. He never lost his head. He believed he could do anything he put his hand to. This belief not only inspired others with confidence; it carried him through the stages of difficulty and apparent failure in which all but the strongest are apt to give up an enterprise for lost. More than that, thanks to his belief in himself, Scipio was never disturbed by jealousy or by envy of other men’s success. Men’s praise did not excite him; his own opinion was what mattered and he knew what it was. At the same time Scipio had in his nature no tinge of what the Greeks called the ‘daemon’ in man and we the divine spark. The impossible did not beckon to him. His imagination and his desires moved among the things that could be done. He was incapable of a passion like Hannibal’s. He could never have set out to conquer the world, and held on year after year, beaten but not defeated, knowing that he could not win but refusing to give up. He was the natural leader of a successful people. Always he had Rome behind him. Hannibal had nothing behind him, in that sense. He had to create his instruments by the sheer force of his own fiery energy. Scipio could never have done this. It would have seemed to him foolish to try.