Scipio Africanus was a Roman general most well-known for defeating Hannibal during the Second Punic War.

Scipio was born Publius Cornelius Scipio in Rome in 236 B.C. His father, also named Scipio, was a consul and part of the Cornelli, one of Rome's six great families. Father and son went to war against Carthage after the great Carthaginian general Hannibal attacked Saguntum, a city in Spain, in 219 B.C. They fought together, and son rescued father at the Battle of the Ticinus River in 218 B.C.

Scipio the younger was one of a few thousand Roman soldiers who survived the devastation at Cannae, Hannibal's most successful triumph. Roman losses that day totaled 50,000. Scipio and about 4,000 other survivors gathered at Canusium, and he kept the rest from deserting.

He took a position in government, as an aedile in 213 B.C. but returned to the war when both his father and his uncle died in battle, in the Baetis Valley. Rome named Scipio commander of the forces in Spain; and, in 209 B.C., he captured Carthago Nova, Carthage's Spanish base of power. The following year, he defeated Hasdrubal, Hannibal's brother, at the Battle of Baecula. In 207 B.C., Scipio convinced the Spanish people to change their allegiance from Carthage to Rome.

Romans elected him consul in 205 B.C. Despite initial opposition in the Senate, he won approval of his plan to lead an army into North Africa. Hannibal had been roaming up and down the Italian countryside for many years, unable to convince any of Rome's allies to change sides. Scipio calculated that the Carthaginian government, seeing a Roman army gathering on the North African plains, would call Hannibal back to defend the homeland. Scipio was right, and the two commanders met at the Battle of Zama, in 202 B.C.

Hannibal employed his vaunted war elephants, as he had many times before. Scipio, however, had given many of his soldiers a horn; in the face of a war elephant charge, the Roman soldiers blew their horns and the elephants panicked so much that many turned around and ran back through the Carthaginian columns. Roman ground forces got the better of Hannibal as well, and Rome won a great victory. One of Scipio's honors was the awarding of the title Africanus to follow his name. He was elected censor in 199 B.C. and then consul again in 194 B.C.

Scipio, even though he could boast of defeating the great and powerful Hannibal, could not outrun his political enemies. They brought against him and his son charges of bribery and treason, and he left the city of Rome in 185 B.C. He died two years later at home, in Liternum, Campania. He had married Aemilia Tertia; they had five children.