For those of you not familiar with the general who defeated Hannibal, here is his biography. He was noted not only for his military excellence, but for his attention to virtue.
This painting of him celebrates his reunion of a captured maiden and her fiance, when under the prevailing law he had every right to take her as a war prize. Not only that, he gave back the ransom her parents had sent to buy her liberty.
The dude had style.
ReplyDeleteRansomed captives freed: an fine story for the last Sunday in Advent.
ReplyDeleteApparently, the bones of Scipio Africanus are not there-
ReplyDeleteThe Scipio family held high political and military positions, but its most famous member, Scipio Africanus, is absent from the tomb.
The general, who was hailed for defeating Hannibal to end the second Punic War against Carthage, was later accused of stealing public money and he left Rome for Liternum, in the modern-day region of Naples.
The epitaph on his tomb outside Rome says: "Ungrateful fatherland, you will never have my bones."