Scipio Africanus

Publius Cornelius Scipio, later honored with the name Africanus, was a Roman general and statesman regarded as one of history's greatest military commanders and the man most responsible for Rome's victory over Carthage in the Second Punic War. Born around 236 BC into a patrician family, he took command in Spain after his father and uncle were killed in battle there, and between 210 and 206 BC he captured the strategic Carthaginian base of New Carthage and defeated Hannibal's brother Mago at the Battle of Ilipa, securing the whole Iberian peninsula for Rome. He then carried the war to Carthage's own African homeland from 204 BC, defeating Carthaginian forces at the Battle of the Great Plains before meeting Hannibal himself at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC, a decisive victory that ended the war and earned him the honorific Africanus. He later served as a legate under his brother in Rome's war against the Seleucid king Antiochus III, contributing to the Roman victory at the Battle of Magnesia in 190 BC, before dying around 183 BC at Liternum in Campania.