Part 1
Scipio Africanus stood in an arena, his hands clenched around his weapons, his mind alert, preparing for battle.
At age 13, as part of his schooling, Scipio’s father had sent him to live and train as a soldier along with 24 other boys under the renowned military trainer Maximian Corvinus. Maximian’s methods of teaching his students were quite unique: sometimes he would have his students simply fight wooden dummies, other times they would learn to shoot arrows while jumping from a ledge. After roughly six months of this training, Scipio had grown accustomed to his master’s ways and had picked up on the general pattern his daily lessons followed.
Today, however, Scipio had no idea what to expect. Maximian had simply placed him and the 24 other boys in a small, rock-built arena and ordered them to defeat whatever enemy charged through an unopened door. Now the boys stood alone in the arena, with Maximian watching from a ledge above the arena, waiting for the enemy to appear.
“Ready?” Maximian asked.
No, Scipio thought, but he and the other boys chorused, “Yes, master.”
In response, Maximian slowly turned the lever that opened the door, behind which their mysterious enemy awaited. What would they be? Catapults? Other people? Little by little, the door opened revealing not machines or men, but…
Hogs?
Yes. Grunting, fidgeting, snorting hogs, restless from their time spent cooped up behind that door. Scipio and some other boys let out an incredulous laugh. They had expected something far more dangerous, far more ferocious, far more difficult to defeat than these silly beasts.
Then the hogs charged at them.
Suddenly the laugh was gone from Scipio and his friends’ mouths and instead was replaced by cries of bewilderment and pain as the hogs rammed their heads and tusks into the boys legs, wildly running around them left and right. In vain, Scipio and the boys attempted to slash at the hogs with their swords. The hogs were too fast, and the boys were too busy bumping into each other to get firm enough footing to truly run the hogs through.
This continued for a long while, and Scipio began to grow frustrated. Boys training to one day become great military heroes should not be thrown into chaos by mere pigs! There had to be something that he could do.
But he could think of nothing. His mind was numb, unable to strategize, focusing only on keeping those beasts away from him.
Finally, in desperation, he called to Maximian, “Help! What do we do?”
Maximian calmly called out, “Remember, students. Every creature, man included, possesses a fear of walking the path fraught with hardships. Use this fear to your advantage.” All of a sudden, Scipio knew what to do.
“Form into five columns of five!” he shouted to the boys.
They complied, facing the hogs in their new formation. The hogs ran through the spaces in between the lines, allowing the boys to easily slash at them and kill them. Soon, all the hogs lay dead on the dirt floor.
Scipio breathed a sigh of relief and looked up at his trainer. Maximian simply smiled at him and walked away.
What an odd lesson, thought Scipio. I wonder why he taught us that.
Scipio Africanus sat in his tent, his hands clasped, his head bowed, preparing for battle. He, along with his army of Sicilian recruits, was about to engage in a battle with the brilliant Hannibal Barca and his Carthaginian forces at Naraggara, in Africa. If Scipio could win this battle, he would definitively assert Rome’s dominance over Carthage and thus end the Second Punic War.
Scipio was sure of his army’s superiority over Hannibal’s when it came to infantry and cavalry; however, a recent report on Hannibal’s forces from Scipio’s scouts brought a troubling new piece to the puzzle. The scouts, clearly shaken, had reported to Scipio that as they traveled to Hannibal’s camp, they heard loud trumpeting noises and felt vibrations on the ground beneath them, an experience that caused them so much fear that they promptly ran back to Scipio’s camp without endeavoring to see what had made such noises.
After hearing their report, Scipio, putting two and two together, came to the conclusion that Hannibal had brought with him a number of elephants. This significantly complicated Scipio’s plans. He assumed that Hannibal planned to send these elephants charging toward Scipio’s forces as a first wave of destruction. These powerful creatures could easily tear through his forces, nullifying the superiority of Scipio’s cavalry and infantry, thus giving Hannibal the upper hand. Scipio had to figure out a way to take down these great beasts.
There he sat, racking his mind for any solution. What would his father do? What would Maximian do? He tried to picture an elephant in his mind. Charging, trumpeting, trampling, butting into soldiers and piercing them with its horns, like a battering ram, like a possessed animal, like…
A hog.
Suddenly that day in the arena came rushing back into his head. The hogs and their wild, erratic movements. His friends’ cries of confusion and frustration as they failed time and time again to kill the beasts. His utter loss as to what to do. Maximian’s voice, clear and somber, advising him. What was it Maximian had said?
Every creature, man included, possesses a fear of walking the path fraught with hardships. Use this fear to your advantage.
Scipio knew what he had to do. He would do the same thing he did on that day all those years ago.
—
Scipio’s forces had gathered. They now stood across from Hannibal and his forces, ready to fight.
Scipio had prepared his men for the elephants by placing the base units of the army, or maniples, in single file lines as opposed to their usual staggered formation. If all went according to plan, the elephants would charge through the open spaces instead of at Scipio’s men, and the soldiers could then take down the elephants with their spears.
Scipio and his soldiers waited anxiously. They could see the elephants alongside Hannibal’s army, but they could only hope that Scipio was correct in his guess that Hannibal would unleash these elephants as his first wave.
Suddenly, they felt a great rumbling under their feet. Sure enough, the elephants charged forward as the first line of attack. Scipio’s men prepared their spears. They knew what to do now. The elephants stampeded towards Scipio and his army, and, just as Scipio had predicted, they ran straight through the empty lines. From there, it was an easy task for the soldiers and spearmen to massacre the elephants.
Scipio looked on, smiling to himself. The elephants were slaughtered. He now had the upper hand. The battle would be his.
Epilogue
Scipio went on to defeat Hannibal and his Carthaginian army with his superior numbers. Carthage lost around 40,000 men, while Rome only lost about 5,000. Carthage gave up and agreed to an oppressive peace treaty with Rome, ending the Second Punic War. None of this might have happened if not for Scipio’s wisdom and foresight.
SCIPIO
AFRICANUS
Zachary Baird,
Providence Preparatory,
Texas
Summer 2025 · Torch: U.S. · CREATIVE WRITING
18
Winning 9th grade submission, 2024-2025 NJCL Creative Writing Contest