I

It would seem that, as far as Polybius was concerned, the ebb of the water from the lagoon was simply due to the effects of the tide.Footnote ⁵ Livy likewise attributed the ebb to the tide, but he also spoke of a wind which rose from the north and helped to drive the water out of the lagoon.Footnote ⁶ In both accounts, therefore, the ebb is presented simply as the result of natural phenomena, rather than anything of a divine or miraculous nature, and modern scholarship has generally sought to explain it along similar lines (instead, that is, of dismissing it as a rationalized version of a miraculous story, or simply as a story invented as it stands, which are the obvious alternatives). A number of different hypotheses to explain the ebb have been entertained over the years, including even the possibility of volcanic actionFootnote ⁷—which shows something of the sheer determination that exists to salvage the story—but more recent work has generally been less interested in the matter, and something of a consensus seems to have been tacitly reached, namely that the cause of the ebb was indeed the tide or the wind or a combination of the two. These views can now readily be found in a number of standard works and it is fair to say that they probably represent the current orthodoxy, certainly for historians who work on this period.Footnote ⁸ The problem is, neither explanation is at all persuasive, and a combination of the two does little to alleviate the difficulties. To make matters worse, some modern reconstructions are based on a questionable methodology. Quite often Polybius’ timing of the ebb (which took place in the evening, according to him) ends up being combined with one part of Livy's explanation for it (that is, the wind but not the tide). This sort of approach, which is based on the assumption that, while Polybius got the time right but the cause wrong, Livy got the cause right but the time wrong, entails a selective handling of the evidence, in which scholars not only end up blending different incompatible versions of events to create something new, but do so by picking out those details that support the argument they want to make while discarding those that do not. Under circumstances such as these, the difficulties that already exist in the ancient evidence only get compounded.

It has often been observed that the region is insufficiently tidal for the tide to have been the cause of the ebb.Footnote ⁹ Even apart from that, low tide, while predictable, does not regularly occur in the evening (or at midday, as in other versions of the story). The transition from high tide to low tide takes time too (some six hours), although this does not really feature in the ancient accounts; nor, surprisingly enough, has it received due consideration in modern reconstructions. It is most unlikely that the enemy—the Carthaginians of all people—would have been caught out by something as predictable as the movement of the tides (although they allegedly were caught out by the ebb, which was supposedly a regular occurrence and with which those who fished in the lagoon, at least, were perfectly familiar; but this is, of course, one of the very reasons to be extremely suspicious of the story). Nor would Scipio's soldiers have perceived to be evidence of divine intervention something so mundane.

As for the wind, of which Livy speaks, the explanation is even less persuasive, and yet it is perhaps the more widely favoured of the two today. This is without a doubt because the tide alone is insufficient to explain the ebb. The effect that wind has on water is governed by four factors in particular: the strength of the wind, the consistency of it, the length of time that it blows, and the size of the surface area that it blows across. A strong, steady wind that blows for a long time over a large body of water will usually generate a swell; a wind that has been blowing for only a brief time, and especially over a short fetch, will usually create only choppy conditions, and such conditions could potentially be more of a hindrance to waders than a help. Despite the fundamental importance of these several factors, they have never been taken into account in this context. A good example is provided by the biblical story of the parting of the Red Sea, which has been repeatedly adduced by Scullard, and by a good number of other scholars after him, because the waters were said to have been moved by the wind.Footnote ¹⁰ The text reads: ‘and Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided’ (my emphasis). The religious nature of the text is not relevant here; what is important is the fact that the author carefully notes both the strength and the direction of the wind, as well as the length of time that it blew. The size of the Red Sea hardly needed to be included; it is, of course, considerably larger than the lagoon at New Carthage. None of these details is, however, even mentioned by Scullard (or by those who follow him); Scullard's interest in the story is limited entirely to the simple fact that the water was said to have been parted by the wind.Footnote ¹¹

The circumstances at New Carthage do not appear to have been conducive to anything more than a disturbance of the surface of the lagoon by the wind. On any estimate, the lagoon was a relatively small body of water and, following Livy's account, the wind appears to have only arisen during the course of the day. It is impossible to gauge the strength of it,Footnote ¹² but if the wind happened to come up each day at a regular time (which, if it was the cause of the ebb, it would have had to have done, since the ebb was itself supposedly regular), then it was most likely only a land or sea breeze (one or the other, depending on the relative temperatures of the land and sea). The story of the ebb presumably requires a strong land breeze, if the wind is supposed to have blown the water out of the lagoon and out to sea, and Livy does say that the wind came up from the north.Footnote ¹³ Livy also says, however, that this happened at midday, although a land breeze is more likely to occur in the evening.Footnote ¹⁴ Even if allowances are made for the meteorological conditions of the day, which are unknown (beyond the story of the wind itself), a land breeze, and especially one that has only recently arisen, is most unlikely to have had such a quick and dramatic influence, such as is usually envisaged, on the depth of the lagoon. Two further factors also need to be taken into consideration. First, the shallower waters of the lagoon will have naturally warmed (and cooled off) more quickly than the deeper sea beyond the city; this may mean that the air pressure above the lagoon was more like that above the land than that above the sea. And second, the sea itself was on the other side of the city and its walls, which were evidently very high, if any trust can be put in the dramatic accounts of the Romans’ attempts to scale them.Footnote ¹⁵ The city and the walls may have helped to shelter the lagoon from the effects of a sea breeze and, more importantly in the present context, the sea from the effects of a land breeze (and the water in the lagoon will have needed to flow into the sea, if it were to be blown out of the lagoon).

It is also worth giving some consideration to the volume of water that would have had to have been displaced. This too, surprisingly enough, is something which has not properly been taken into account. The difficulty here is that, according to Polybius, the lagoon was already shallow and largely fordable.Footnote ¹⁶ This ought to mean that no water at all had to drain out of the lagoon to make it traversable on foot, and that the effects of the ebb were presumably largely, if not entirely, superfluous to the Romans’ crossing. If that were the case, however, why did the Carthaginians not prepare for an attack on the city from that direction, that is, from across the lagoon? Why did Scipio's men conclude that Poseidon was helping them? And why did Scipio wait for the ebb before sending his men across the lagoon?

Livy has the tide and the wind expose the shallow areas (uada) of the lagoon, so that, in some places, the water was as deep as the navels (sc. of those crossing), while in others it was barely above the knees (26.45.8). This is, unfortunately, largely unhelpful, since Livy does not say how deep the water had been beforehand. But if, in the shallower places, the water was knee-deep, while in the deeper sections (which were, it appears, still fordable) it was a little more than waist-deep, it is clear that a considerable volume of water would have had to have been moved, if those shallower sections had previously (that is, before the ebb had occurred) been too deep to cross. Less water would, of course, have been needed to make the deeper sections of the uada too deep to cross, and perhaps it would have only required parts of them to be too deep to make the entire enterprise too dangerous to attempt.

Appian's account may, at first sight, appear to be more useful. He says that the water level in the lagoon went from being chest-deep to being less than knee-deep, thanks to the influence of the tide (Hisp. 21). Such a decrease in the depth of the water easily explains the importance of the ebb, but equally supposes that a substantial volume of water had been displaced, far more than could ever have possibly been by a wind that only arose during the course of the day and consequently had not been blowing for very long at all, and by a wind that was also only blowing over a relatively small surface area. Appian, though, does not mention the wind. In his version of events, the ebb was purely tidal, but this does not solve any of the problems, as Appian's account involves a tidal range that does not appear to be typical of the region. It also presupposes that some time, probably at least several hours, had passed. That is likely to be the case, even if Appian is not referring to the conditions at high tide when he describes the water level as chest-deep and the conditions at low tide when he says that it was less than knee-deep (although, if he is not, his account would require an even greater tidal range). Furthermore, the source of Appian's information about the depth of the water is unknown, and it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that these details were designed to make the role of the ebb essential and thus solve some of the difficulties that are found in other accounts, Polybius’ in particular.

Naturally, the size of the lagoon is immediately relevant in this context. In fact, it is doubly so, if the wind is to be taken into account: the smaller the lagoon, the smaller the volume of water that would have needed to be moved to have any real effect on the lagoon's depth, but equally, the smaller the lagoon, the shorter the fetch, with all the implications that that would have for the effect that the wind could have had on it; on the other hand, the larger the lagoon, the longer the fetch, but then the greater the volume of water that would have needed to be moved. The size of the lagoon in antiquity is difficult to know,Footnote ¹⁷ and it would not have been constant anyway, on account of the fluctuation in its depth. The usual reconstructions suppose that, while not huge, it was reasonably substantial in size, as it would have needed to be, if it were to offer any sort of natural defence to New Carthage. It is not at all unreasonable to think in terms of tens of millions of litres of water needing to be moved, if not even hundreds of millions.Footnote ¹⁸

The shape of the lagoon is also relevant, although it too has never been considered in this context. Most reconstructions suggest that it was roughly oblong, with the northern and southern shores much closer together than the shores to the west and the east. This is significant since, according to Livy, the wind arose from the north. This means that it would have been blowing over a very short fetch, and so the effect that it could have had on the water in the lagoon was inevitably limited. A wind from the east or the west could have had a greater effect, but may not have helped to drive the water out of the lagoon (the sea was, after all, to the south). The idea that the wind drove the water out of the lagoon naturally depends on the water having somewhere to go as well as having an easy way to get there. The canal was to the west of the city and was, in the end, only a canal; since it flowed into the sea, the conditions at sea are also important (which is why the height of the walls is potentially so significant, as they will have naturally affected the influence that any wind from the north could have had on the waters in the harbour).

The idea, therefore, that a wind that only came up at some stage during the course of the day could blow, and in a very short period of time, a sufficient quantity of water out of the lagoon (through the narrow canal and out to sea) to make the lagoon fordable is really quite implausible, if not simply absurd. There is, moreover (and perhaps not at all unexpectedly), good reason to believe that Livy's story of the wind is without historical basis and is entirely fictitious (see section III below).

It is on account of the highly unsatisfactory nature of the traditional explanations for the ebb that various alternative hypotheses have been entertained. One more recent suggestion that works extremely well to explain the abrupt drop in the lagoon's water levels is that there were sluice-gates between the lagoon and the sea. By capturing these, Scipio was able to gain direct control over the depth of the water in the lagoon; presumably, by opening the gates, he could let the water in the lagoon flow out into the sea.Footnote ¹⁹ But, as B.D. Hoyos has demonstrated, this suggestion is, unfortunately, not really supported by the ancient evidence and ultimately raises more problems than it solves.Footnote ²⁰ As it stands, there is no plausible explanation for the ebb.

A further difficulty with the story of the ebb is that the drop in water level was presumably unnecessary for Scipio's operations, if, as Polybius claims, the lagoon was shallow and already fordable in most places. This means that the story can easily be dismissed without making Scipio's attack across the lagoon impossible. Indeed, if the story of the ebb were to be dismissed, this would also neatly address the question of why Scipio attacked early, and before the ebb had even started to occur.Footnote ²¹

Scipio's preliminary investigations evidently included inquiries into the nature of the lagoon, and it is reasonable to suppose that Scipio would have sought to ascertain if—and, if so, how—the lagoon could be crossed.Footnote ²² Having learnt that it could, his plan may have simply been to attack the city on several sides at once and thus stretch the defenders. If there were some risk involved in crossing the lagoon (if it was, for instance, not easily or safely fordable, or because crossing it left those doing so exposed to the efforts of the defenders),Footnote ²³ Scipio's initial attack on the city would then be readily explicable. When his first attempts to take the city by a more straightforward, direct assault failed, Scipio may then have decided to adopt the riskier approach of sending some of his men across the lagoon.Footnote ²⁴ All this is inevitably conjectural, but the tradition of events seems to make considerably better sense without the story of the ebb.

If the ebb was unnecessary, as Polybius’ account suggests, and if the ebb is also inexplicable, and it clearly is, then it is probably best to dismiss the story of it entirely. It is in all probability an outright invention, or otherwise an embellishment of some earlier version of events. The ebb was said to have been taken as evidence of divine intervention, and the story should probably be handled accordingly. This appears to be a miraculous story, and what is found in Polybius and later writers may simply represent an attempt—by Polybius himself or by one of his sources—to interpret the tradition of events in a rationalistic manner.Footnote ²⁵ Such a reinterpretation would certainly accord well with Polybius’ conception of Scipio as a shrewd man who exploited his knowledge and his mystique to influence those under his command (10.2.8–13; cf. also 10.4.4–10.5.9). Once the orthodox view that the ebb is historical is finally dismissed as unworkable (something which is long overdue), it becomes possible to draw a number of conclusions about Polybius, his sources and his methods (II), and/or about Scipio, his friends and the way in which they sought to present Scipio (III).

II

If what is found in Polybius does indeed represent a rationalized interpretation of a story of a miraculous event, or if it is simply a fabricated account as it stands, then it is necessary to give some consideration to the identity of the person who may have been responsible for it. Polybius’ sources at this point appear to have been several: C. Laelius (10.3.2; note also 10.9.1–5), a letter written by Scipio himself to Philip V (10.9.3), and the writings of certain unnamed historians who presented Scipio as a man favoured by fortune and so, in effect, ‘more divine’ than men who act with calculation and foresight (10.2.5–6), a presentation which Polybius himself rejected and was clearly seeking to disprove.Footnote ²⁶

The philosophical views of C. Laelius, although ultimately impossible to ascertain, have been raised in this context on several occasions.Footnote ²⁷ It may be more pertinent simply to note that, according to Polybius, Laelius had claimed that it was Publius Scipio who had rescued the elder Scipio (his father) at the engagement fought near the Ticinus River at the beginning of the Second Punic War.Footnote ²⁸ The identity of the elder Scipio's saviour was evidently a matter of some disagreement,Footnote ²⁹ and it is quite likely that the story that he was rescued by his son was simply a fabrication, one designed to flatter the younger Scipio, the man who would go on to defeat Hannibal at the end of the war. The obvious symmetry created by the story, which is particularly apparent in Livy's account, since Livy points out that the young Publius Scipio was the very same man who ended the war, is also a very good reason to be suspicious of it.Footnote ³⁰ Something comparable can be found in the story that the very day on which Scipio spoke in his own defence at his trial just happened to be the anniversary of his famous victory at Zama, a story that no one would seriously want to accept as historical.Footnote ³¹

Laelius, however, is believed to have been a good, reliable source. He was a contemporary of, and in fact a participant in, a number of Scipio's exploits, including the capture of New Carthage.Footnote ³² He was also Scipio's close and trusted friend (although that is as good a reason to be wary of his testimony as it is to have confidence in it: can it really just be taken for granted that Laelius would never have sought to embellish the tradition of his friend's achievements?). The assumption that Laelius must have been a reliable source has, naturally enough, led to a belief in the reliability of the story that the elder Scipio was rescued by his son at Ticinus.Footnote ³³ This has, in turn, led to the less plausible suggestion that it was most likely Scipio's enemies who invented the rival tradition, according to which the elder Scipio was saved by a slave.Footnote ³⁴ If Scipio's opponents wished to discredit him, there were far more obvious and considerably more important episodes to focus on, such as his alleged dealings with Antiochus, or his handling of affairs in Locri, or his behaviour in Sicily,Footnote ³⁵ not to mention his greatest achievement, his victory over Hannibal at Zama, although that success was perhaps largely untouchable. Attempting to deprive Scipio of some early and, in the end, comparatively minor exploit pales in comparison. Besides, the clear trend in the evidence is for stories to be modified or invented for Scipio's benefit (see section III below), not to his detriment.

Laelius also appears to have told the very problematic story, which Polybius similarly relates (10.4.1–10.5.5), of how the young Publius Scipio stood together with his elder brother Lucius as a candidate for the aedileship, having twice dreamt that they had both been elected to that office. The story contains a number of grave errors (Publius was not the younger of the brothers; he does not appear to have been aedile with his brother; and the year of his aedileship appears to have been different),Footnote ³⁶ and so it presents something of a hurdle for those who maintain that Laelius was a good source. In this instance, the belief in Laelius’ reliability has led to the conclusion that Laelius probably did not relate the story after all, and, happily enough, Polybius only implies that he did.Footnote ³⁷ The assumption that Laelius must have been reliable has therefore simply led to the rejection of evidence to the contrary. It goes without saying that such an approach is extremely questionable.

Whatever Laelius said about events at New Carthage, his account need not have been trustworthy.Footnote ³⁸ More significantly, since Polybius states that Laelius’ view of Scipio (namely that he was shrewd and discrete and that he always remained focussed on the task in hand) was the source of his own (10.3.1–2), it is quite conceivable that it was Laelius himself who had devised a rationalized interpretation of some miraculous story of the city's capture, irrespective of what his philosophical views may or may not have been. The only problem with this idea is that it supposes that Laelius, who presumably must have known how New Carthage had actually been captured, since he was there, preferred to tell a modified or made-up account of events rather than say what he knew or understood to have really occurred. But that is hardly an insurmountable problem; despite the various and somewhat insistent claims that his account must be accepted as factual, there is no good reason to have any special confidence in it or in Laelius’ honesty in general.

As for Scipio's letter to Philip V, it is difficult to believe that this would have offered a completely sound and unembellished account of events, although it is often supposed that that is precisely what it did contain. It is usually argued that this was a private letter written to a friend, presumably (if not necessarily, for such the argument may require) a close and trusted one, and that it was never in public circulation. Polybius was able—so the argument goes—to gain access to it, thanks to his friendship with Scipio Aemilianus, and hence he alone provides evidence for it; hence, too, Cicero's subsequent ignorance of it.Footnote ³⁹ When it comes to the question of what the letter may have contained, modern suggestions have been somewhat tendentious and have, not surprisingly, resulted in arguments that are both conjectural and circular. The common supposition is that the sensible, rational Philip wrote to the equally sensible, rational Scipio to ask about what had really happened at New Carthage, and that Scipio had then readily revealed all,Footnote ⁴⁰ and, by doing so, he also happened to reveal that he thought and acted just as Polybius said he did. But, by doing so, he must have revealed as well that his claim to divine support at New Carthage, and so by inference probably on other occasions too, was just a ruse, a trick, and one designed specifically to fool the Roman people. Hence the need for the letter to be a private one, sent presumably to someone who could be relied upon not to divulge its contents. It is not clear, however, that Philip V, a former enemy of Rome, really was on such terms with Scipio as to be worthy of such trust.Footnote ⁴¹ Nor can it be assumed that Polybius was right, and that Scipio's attitude towards the gods really was just a matter of deception and not one of personal conviction or attitude.Footnote ⁴² And, perhaps more significantly, in his discussion of Scipio's character, Polybius said that it was C. Laelius who was the source of his views (10.3.1–2). If Scipio's letter really did contain what it is often supposed to have contained, it may seem surprising that Polybius should have said that his impression of Scipio was based on what Laelius had told him, and not (or not also) on what Scipio himself had actually written in his letter to Philip.

Scullard has asserted that, ‘in view of the nature of his sources’, it is ‘unthinkable’ that Polybius himself was responsible for devising a rationalized version of events. He would, Scullard claims, ‘surely not have completely twisted a plain story told him by Laelius’,Footnote ⁴³ but this is a somewhat problematic assertion. It cannot, for the reasons discussed earlier, simply be assumed that Laelius had indeed told ‘a plain story’, and it is itself something of a distortion to suggest that finding a natural explanation for a miraculous event and offering a different interpretation of the main protagonist's plans on account of that explanation constitute a complete twisting of a story.Footnote ⁴⁴ But Scullard's trump card is, in any case, Scipio's letter to Philip, the ‘authority’ of which, he says, ‘must be final’. Scullard's argument is worth quoting in full, because it has been influential. He says: ‘if Polybius says that in it [that is, in his letter] Scipio “explained clearly that it was after making the calculations, which I have just recounted, that he undertook all his operations in Spain and especially the siege of New Carthage”, and we remember that these calculations included his learning of the ebb while he was still in winter quarters, then we must accept the ebb as historic fact and seek to explain the difficulties by other means.’Footnote ⁴⁵ This rather programmatic statement—that the evidence of Polybius (and Scipio) is unimpeachable and therefore an explanation for the ebb must be found—has arguably shaped subsequent debate on this matter,Footnote ⁴⁶ so very much of which has revolved around the question of what actually caused the ebb. This position, however, is based on a number of assumptions, about the content of the letter that Scipio—a man who, according to Polybius and Livy, encouraged the idea that he received divine inspiration and whose behaviour apparently even prompted a belief in divine originsFootnote ⁴⁷—wrote to Philip, and about the complete reliability, or perhaps only the precision, of Polybius’ statement.

What Scipio actually wrote is unknown, since his letter does not survive. It is certainly not impossible that he presented himself as the beneficiary of divine assistance—that would have been in keeping with his alleged practices elsewhere—but it is not necessary to suggest that he did. Nor is it necessary to suggest that it was Scipio himself who devised a rational interpretation of some miraculous account of events that may have been in circulation (such as the version that Philip is supposed to have questioned). Polybius also drew upon other historical works, works in which Scipio was presented in a manner that the rationalist Polybius disagreed with and was seeking to correct,Footnote ⁴⁸ so it is quite possible that Polybius himself simply rationalized material that he took from one or more of these sources. While this may not reflect especially well on him,Footnote ⁴⁹ it would none the less be in perfect accordance with the approach he adopts elsewhere in his work to the subject of Roman religion, as well as with his conception of Scipio himself (something which may, in Polybius’ view, have justified the approach).

In his sixth book, Polybius praised Roman religion, as he saw it as a means to control and restrain the masses (6.56.6–11). His interpretation is both rationalistic and cynical, but, more importantly, it is also contradicted by what Polybius himself goes on to say. For he proceeds to offer an example to illustrate his interpretation, but his example is of a Roman magistrate who can be trusted with large quantities of money and to perform his duties simply because he has sworn an oath. This is obviously not an example of the masses being controlled by religion, but of the nobility, and so it immediately undermines Polybius’ argument.Footnote ⁵⁰ Besides, during his time in Rome, Polybius must have witnessed the performance of numerous rituals, many in the public sphere, but others, perhaps more significantly, in a domestic context, and so he must have been perfectly well aware that his interpretation was not entirely accurate (even if it did happen to accord with the approach of some Romans Polybius may have known); he offered it, presumably, because it supported the case that he was trying to make. Since Polybius’ interpretation of Scipio's behaviour is not dissimilar in nature,Footnote ⁵¹ and since Polybius is clearly addressing claims made by earlier historians,Footnote ⁵² it is not difficult to imagine him doing something comparable with the tradition of events at New Carthage, that is, transforming something miraculous that he has found in one or more of his sources into an example of Scipio's shrewd planning and manipulation of religion. Such distortion, if it can even be called that, would be perfectly in keeping with the distortion (which is clearly visible and so cannot be denied) in Polybius’ interpretation of Roman religion as a whole.Footnote ⁵³

Scullard's position is that Polybius (and Scipio and Laelius too) must be trusted absolutely, and that therefore some explanation, any explanation, must be found for the ebb at New Carthage. This seems to be a somewhat perverse approach, since the ebb can actually be assessed, if it was indeed a natural phenomenon, while Polybius’ sources and his precise handling of them cannot. No satisfactory explanation for the ebb has yet been found, while it is possible to see how Polybius’ rationalistic interpretation of Roman religion has led to potentially comparable distortion elsewhere in his work, and while there are also grounds to be suspicious of his sources. It is therefore very easy to draw precisely the opposite conclusion to the one which Scullard drew (and which virtually everyone else has drawn since), namely that the story of the ebb is entirely fictitious, and that what is found in Polybius and later writers may simply be a rationalized interpretation of the miraculous elements of that story. Having said that, however, there is a second possible explanation for the story of the ebb, although it may be that the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

III

Accounts of Scipio's life and exploits were certainly not always sober or restrained. The embellishments and inventions ranged from a tale of divine conception to the fabrication of a dramatic storm at the time of his crossing to Africa.Footnote ⁵⁴ Along with the story of his heroic rescue of his father at Ticinus, Scipio may have also been falsely credited with suppressing a plot amongst the survivors of the battle of Cannae to abandon Italy following that disastrous defeat, while his own involvement in the battle itself may have been quietly left out of the account of events.Footnote ⁵⁵

The various miraculous and legendary episodes in the tradition were discussed at length some fifty years ago by Walbank in his classic and influential paper, ‘The Scipionic legend’.Footnote ⁵⁶ Walbank argued that the origins of the legend were to be found in the events at New Carthage, and precisely in Scipio's speech in which he spoke of his dream about Neptune,Footnote ⁵⁷ but if, as is argued here, the story of the ebb and all that comes with it represent later embellishment, if not pure fiction, then the whole story is most likely to be itself a part of the legend and not the catalyst which prompted its creation. This causes no problems at all when it comes to explaining the origins of the Scipionic legend, as they can very easily be found in Scipio's character, behaviour and in his victories, in Spain, in Africa and over Hannibal in particular. Indeed, his defeat of Hannibal alone would have created far more fertile ground for embellishment and flights of fancy than his capture of one city in Spain, at a time when Hannibal himself was still undefeated and still at large in Italy.

The story of Scipio's divine conception is especially significant because of the concerns and interests that it reveals. According to this story, Scipio's mother was visited in her bedroom by a snake, and it was for this reason that Scipio was believed to be a son of Jupiter. As Livy points out, precisely the same story was told of Alexander the Great.Footnote ⁵⁸ The debt is important. If the career of Alexander was a source of inspiration, and potentially even a model, for the embellishment of the tradition of Scipio's career, as the story of his divine conception suggests, then the events of Alexander's career may help to elucidate the tradition of events at New Carthage. As it happens, it has long been noted that other stories told of Scipio do appear to owe something to the various traditions about Alexander, and a number of significant parallels that are directly relevant to the tradition of events at New Carthage have recently been discussed by D.S. Levene.Footnote ⁵⁹ While some of these parallels may simply be the result of similar circumstances, others are clearly not.

There are several important parallels between Scipio's capture of New Carthage and Alexander's siege of Tyre. Both cities were inhabited by the same people, since Carthage was a colony of Tyre. Both cities were protected by water and were assaulted from both land and sea. Both generals claimed to have received omens or promises of divine assistance, and these were, in both cases, received in dreams.Footnote ⁶⁰ While Arrian has Alexander claim beforehand that all of Phoenicia would be won with the defeat of Tyre, Livy has Scipio claim that all of Spain would be captured with New Carthage.Footnote ⁶¹

Further parallels are found elsewhere in the tradition of Alexander's exploits. In Livy's account of the ebb, a wind arose from the north and blew the water from the lagoon. When Alexander and his men were advancing along the coast near Pamphylia, the sea retreated; according to Arrian, a north wind was needed to make the route passable.Footnote ⁶² In Livy's account of the crossing of the lagoon at New Carthage, the water in places went up to the navels of those wading across; in Strabo's account of Alexander's march near Pamphylia, the water similarly went up to the waders’ navels.Footnote ⁶³ Some time ago, Scullard argued against the idea that the story of the north wind at New Carthage was invented to create a parallel with Alexander; he deemed it ‘very improbable, especially in face of the evidence of the winds prevalent at Cartagena to-day’.Footnote ⁶⁴ The difficulty is that the winds to which Scullard refers are winds in the harbour.Footnote ⁶⁵ As noted earlier, in his discussion of those winds, Scullard pays no attention to their duration or strength, or to the fact that the harbour (unlike the lagoon) is part of the Mediterranean Sea and so is affected by the conditions on the sea. Moreover, Scullard's own interpretation of the wind at New Carthage imagines somewhat fancifully that the wind blew the water out of the lagoon almost instantly.Footnote ⁶⁶

Finally, Scipio's treatment of the Spanish women who had been taken hostage by the Carthaginians and held in New Carthage is also comparable with Alexander's treatment of Darius’ family, his mother, wife and daughters, and indeed several writers in antiquity drew attention to this.Footnote ⁶⁷

Not all of these details are in Polybius’ account (there is, for instance, no north wind), but more than a few certainly are. The details that appear to have been added subsequently may have been so simply on account of the general trend that was already discernible in the tradition. It is, as Levene has recently suggested (although he is not the first to do so), quite likely that the general debt to Alexander may have actually originated with Scipio himself.Footnote ⁶⁸ It is worth noting in this context that, in Laelius’ story (as Polybius relates it, at least) of Scipio's alleged rescue of his father at the battle of Ticinus, Scipio himself led a daring cavalry charge, a story which, given the various other parallels, can hardly fail to evoke Alexander.Footnote ⁶⁹

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The conclusion, therefore, is inevitable: despite the various persistent and sometimes determined efforts to rescue it, or the more general, often passive, acceptance of it, the story of the ebb of the water from the lagoon at New Carthage is simply unhistorical. What is found in the sources may amount to nothing more than an attempt to rationalize what was originally a miraculous account of events. It may also (or it may alternatively) be best understood in the same context as the tale of Scipio's divine conception, that is, in the context of the various parallels that are discernible between Scipio and Alexander the Great. But, whatever the ultimate cause of its invention may be, the story is quite clearly a part of the Scipionic legend and should be treated accordingly.

There is some evidence which suggests that the fleet may have played a bigger role in the capture of the city; if Scipio's victory did depend on an attack from across the waters around New Carthage, it may be better to look to the seaward side of the city.Footnote ⁷⁰ Although C. Laelius appears to have been involved in the naval operations,Footnote ⁷¹ that does not automatically make him a reliable reporter of events, any more than does his friendship with Scipio. Nor does Polybius’ sober and rational approach mean that his account is to be trusted entirely and without question. Polybius was, to some extent at least, at the mercy of his sources, and devising a rational explanation for a miraculous event is inevitably an insufficient solution, if the very story of the event is itself a fabrication. As for Laelius, he may have been seeking to promote or develop various parallels between Scipio and Alexander.

Scipio captured New Carthage and the victory was important. How he managed to take the city remains unknown, although it appears that it may have involved operations both on land and at sea. Anything more than that, it is difficult, if not impossible, to say. But of considerably greater significance in any case is the light that the tradition of events may shed on Scipio's self-presentation and on Polybius, his sources and his methods—all of which is missed when the historicity of the episode is insisted upon, or just accepted, as it has been for far too long.