Scipio Africanus - Lost Sources

Lost Sources

Scipio is said to have written his memoirs in Greek, but those are lost (perhaps destroyed) along with the history written by his elder son and namesake (adoptive father of Scipio Aemilianus) and his Life by Plutarch. As a result, contemporary accounts of his life, particularly his childhood and youth, are virtually non-existent. Even Plutarch's account of Scipio's life, written much later, has been lost. What remains are accounts of his doings in Polybius, Livy's Histories (which say little about his private life), supplemented with the surviving histories of Appian and Cassius Dio, and the odd anecdote in Valerius Maximus. Of these, Polybius was the closest to Scipio Africanus in age and in connections, but his narrative may be biased by his friendship with Scipio's close relatives and that the primary source of his information about Africanus came from one of his best friends, Gaius Laelius.