Scipio Africanus by B.h. Liddell Hart Page B

awaiting any declaration of hostilities. He thereupon prepared to assault, dividing his army into two parts, giving command of one to Lælius, in order that they might “ attack the city in two places simultaneously, thus creating an alarm in two quarters at the same time ” (Livy). Here again it is interesting to note how consistently Scipio executes a convergent assault—his force divided into independently manoeuvring parts to effect surprise and strain the enemy’s defence, yet combining on a common objective. How strongly does his appreciation of this, the essential formula of tactics, contrast with its rarity in ancient warfare, in modern also, for how often do commanders wreck their plan either on the Scylla of a divided objective or on the Charybdis of a feint or “ holding ” attack to divert the enemy’s attention and reserves from their main blow.
    His plan made, Scipio, realising the soldiers’ inherently lesser ardour against mere insurgents, strove to stimulate their determination by playing on their feelings for their betrayed comrades. He reminded them that the need for a salutary vengeance ought to make them fight more fiercely than against the Carthaginians. “ For with the latter the struggle was for empire and glory almost without any exasperation, while they
had now to punish perfidy and cruelty.” Such an urge was needful, for the men of Illiturgis, fighting with the courage of despair, with no hope but to sell their lives as dearly as possible, repulsed assault after assault. Indeed, because of the circumstances that Scipio had evidently foreseen, the previously victorious army “showed such a want of resolution as was not very honourable to it.” At this crisis, Scipio, like Napoleon at the bridge of Lodi, did not hesitate to stake his own life. “ Considering it incumbent upon him to exert himself in person and share the danger, he reproved his soldiers for their cowardice, and ordered the scaling ladders to be brought up again, threatening to mount the wall himself since the rest hesitated.” “ He had now advanced near the walls with no small danger, when a shout was raised from all sides by the soldiers, alarmed at the danger to which their leader was exposed, and the scaling ladders were raised in several places at once.” This fresh impulse, coinciding with Lælius’s pressure elsewhere, turned the scales, and the walls were captured. During the resultant confusion the citadel, too, fell to an assault on a side where it was thought impregnable.
    The treachery of Illiturgis was then avenged in a manner so drastic as to be an object-lesson of its requital, the inhabitants put to the sword,
and the city itself razed to the ground. Here apparently Scipio made no attempt to restrain the fury of the troops, though, as he was to show on the morrow of Zama, he could be generous beyond comparison to an open foe. In all his acts he evidently envisaged the future, and even in allowing the obliteration of Illiturgis he had a direct purpose. For the news so shook the defenders of Castulo, an obstacle made the more formidable because the garrison had been reinforced by the remains of the Carthaginian forces, that the Spanish commander, throwing over his allies, secretly capitulated. The moral purpose of the Illiturgis sack thus accomplished, Castulo escaped more lightly.
    Then, sending Marcius to clear up the few remaining centres of disaffection, Scipio returned to Cartagena to pay his vows to the gods, and to give a gladiatorial show in memory of his father and uncle. This deserves passing mention, for whether due to chance or, as seems more likely, to Scipio’s taste, its nature was different from the normal contest. Instead of the gladiators being slaves or captives, doomed to fight “ to make a Roman holiday,” they were all voluntary and unpaid, either picked representatives of tribes or soldiers anxious to show their