[4] Publius Scipio, as he was referred to in contemporary sources early in his life, was adopted in adulthood through the testament of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius, consul in 80 BC and pontifex maximus.

Cato was greatly exasperated and inflamed by this, and attempted to go to law about it; but his friends prevented this, and so, in his rage and youthful fervour, he betook himself to iambic verse, and heaped much scornful abuse upon Scipio … .

[citation needed] He may have been curule aedile in 57 BC, when he presented funeral games in honour of his adopted father's death, six years earlier.

Indisputably aristocratic and conservative, Metellus Scipio had been at least a symbolic counterweight to the power of the so-called triumvirate before the death of Crassus in 53 BC.

[19] In Syria and Asia, where he took up winter quarters, he used often oppressive means to gather ships, troops, and money:[20] He put a per capita tax on slaves and children; he taxed columns, doors, grain, soldiers, weaponry, oarsmen, and machinery; if a name could be found for a thing, that was seen as sufficient for making money from it.

[21]Scipio put to death Alexander of Judaea,[22] and was acclaimed Imperator for claimed victories in the Amanus Mountains[23] — as noted disparagingly by Caesar.

[24] In 48 BC, Scipio brought his forces from Asia to Greece, where he manoeuvred against Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus and Lucius Cassius until the arrival of Pompeius.

With the support of his former rival-in-romance Cato, he wrested the chief command of Pompeius' forces from the loyal Publius Attius Varus, probably in early 47.

Facing death, Metellus Scipio achieved an uncharacteristic dignity, famously departing from his soldiers with a nonchalant "Imperator se bene habet" ("Your general's just fine").

[26] These last words elicited strong praise from the Stoic moral philosopher Seneca: Take, for example, Scipio, the father-in-law of Gnaeus Pompeius: he was driven back upon the African coast by a head-wind and saw his ship in the power of the enemy.

These words brought him up to the level of his ancestors and suffered not the glory which fate gave to the Scipios in Africa to lose its continuity.

9.11[29]), a worthy great grandson des hochmütigen, plebejerfeindlichen Junkers[30] (Münzer, RE 4.1502) who had led the lynching of Tiberius Gracchus, and a most unworthy father of the gentle Cornelia.

Only in the Imperator se bene habet with which he met death is there any trace of the nobler character of his great forebears[31] (Seneca Rhet., Suas.