A Greater than Napoleon by Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart

After being for eight of the most critical years of Rome's life the central figure, Scipio, for the remainder of his life, comes only at intervals into the limelight of history. He had saved Rome physically, and now by retiring into private citizenship he sought to save her morally. If a man who had attained such unapproachable heights of fame could sink his own ambition and interests, and show that the State was greater than the individual, the example might influence later generations. Supreme self-sacrifice has been one of the greatest moral forces in the civilisation of the world. But the force of Scipio's example was unhappily to be submerged by the self-seeking of such men as Marius, Sulla, and Cesar.

To trace the latter and longer part of his career is difficult-the curtain is raised only on a series of brief scenes. We hear of him concerned with the resettlement of his soldiers; to each of his Spanish and African veterans is allotted land in the proportion of two acres for every year's active service. Then three years after Zama he was elected censor, an office which was not only one of the higher magistracies, but regarded as the crown of a political career. As the title implies, the censors, two in number, conducted the census, which was not merely a registration but an occasion for checking the condition of public and private life. It was then that the censors issued edicts concerning the moral rules they intended to enforce, then that they punished irregularities of conduct, and then that they chose fresh members of the Senate. The censors were immune from responsibility for their acts, and the only limitation was that re-election was forbidden, and that no act was valid without the assent of both censors. Scipio's period of office seems to have been marked by unusual harmony, and a clean sheet as regards punishments.