But it required no conjecture and no suspicion to emphasise the tragic nature of Scipio's death. He was but fifty-six; he was by far the greatest general that Rome could command, a champion who could spring into the breach when all seemed lost, make an army out of a rabble and win victory from defeat; he was a great moral force, the scourge of the new vices, the enemy of the provincial oppressor; he was the greatest intellectual influence in aristocratic Rome, embellishing the staid rigour of the ancient Roman with something of the humanism of the Greek; Xenophon was the author who appealed most strongly to his simple and manly tastes; and his purity of soul and clearness of intellect were fitly expressed in the chasteness and elegance of his Latin style. The modern historian has not to tax his fancy in discovering great qualities in Scipio; the mind of every unprejudiced contemporary must have echoed the thought of Laelius, when he wrote in his funeral speech "We cannot thank the gods enough that they gave to Rome in preference to other states a man with a heart and intellect like this".[472] But the dominant feeling amongst thinking men, who had any respect for the empire and the constitution, was that of panic at the loss. Quintus Metellus Macedonicus had been his political foe; but when the tidings of death were brought him, he was like one distraught. "Citizens," he wailed, "the walls of our city are in ruins." [473] And that a great breach had been made in the political and military defences of Rome is again the burden of Laelius's complaint, "He has perished at a time when a mighty man is needed by you and by all who wish the safety of this commonwealth." These utterances were not merely a lament for a great soldier, but the mourning for a man who might have held the balance between classes and saved a situation that was becoming intolerable. We cannot say whether any definite means of escape from the brewing storm was present to Scipio's mind, or, if he had evolved a plan, whether he was master of the means to render it even a temporary success. Perhaps he had meddled too little with politics to have acquired the dexterity requisite for a reconciler. Possibly his pride and his belief in the aristocracy as an aggregate would have stood in his way. But he was a man of moderate views who led a middle party, and he attracted the anxious attention of men who believed that salvation would not come from either of the extremes. He had once been the favourite of the crowd, and might be again, he commanded the distant respect of the nobility, and he had all Italy at his side. Was there likely to be a man whose position was better suited to a reconciliation of the war of jarring interests? Perhaps not; but at the time of his death the first steps which he had taken had only widened the horizon of war. He found a struggle between the commons and the nobles; he emphasised, although he had not created, the new struggle between the commons and Italy.