From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Publius Cornelius Scipio (died 211 BC) was a general and statesman of the Roman Republic.

A member of the Cornelia gens, Scipio served as consul in 218 BC, the first year of the Second Punic War, and sailed with an army from Pisa to Massilia (today Marseille), with the view of arresting Hannibal's advance on Italy. Failing, however, to meet his enemy, he hastened to return by sea to Cisalpine Gaul, having sent his army on to Hispania under the command of his older brother Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Calvus, with instructions to hold the Carthaginian forces there in check.

On his return to Italy he at once advanced to meet Hannibal. In a sharp cavalry engagement near the Ticinus, a tributary of the Po river, he was defeated and severely wounded. In December of the same year, he again witnessed the complete defeat of the Roman army at the Trebia, when his fellow consul Tiberius Sempronius Longus insisted on fighting contrary to his advice.

Despite the military defeats, he still retained the confidence of the Roman people: his term of command was extended and the following year found him in Hispania with his brother Calvus, winning victories over the Carthaginians and strengthening Rome's position in the Iberian peninsula. He continued the Iberian campaigns until 211 when he was killed in the defeat of his army on the upper Baetis river, the same year Calvus and his army was destroyed at Ilorci near Carthago Nova. The details of these campaigns are not accurately known, but it seems that the ultimate defeat and death of the two Scipiones was due to the desertion of the Celtiberians, bribed by Hasdrubal Barca, Hannibal's brother.

He was the son of Lucius Cornelius Scipio, and he was the father of Scipio Africanus Major, whose original name was likewise Publius Cornelius Scipio, and of Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus).

A later Publius Cornelius Scipio, son of Scipio Africanus Major and Aemilia Paulla, and grandson of the consul of 218 BC, was the adoptive father of Scipio Aemilianus Africanus. This latter Scipio served as praetor in 174 BC.

• Scipio-Paullus-Gracchus family tree

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.