It is generally agreed that Scipio was beneficent and magnanimous, but that he was also shrewd and discreet with a mind always concentrated on the object he had in view would be conceded by none except those who associated with him and to whom his character stood clearly revealed.
One of these was Gaius Laelius, who from his youth up to the end had participated in his every word and deed, and who has produced the above impression upon myself, as his account seems both probable on the face of it and in accordance with the actual performances of Scipio.
For he tells us that Scipio first distinguished himself on the occasion of the cavalry engagement between his father and Hannibal in the neighbourhood of the Po.
He was at the time seventeen years of age, this being his first campaign, and his father had placed him in command of a picked troop of horse in order to ensure his safety, but when he caught sight of his father in the battle, surrounded by the enemy and escorted only by two or three horsemen and dangerously wounded,
he at first endeavoured to urge those with him to go to the rescue, but when they hung back for a time owing to the large numbers of the enemy round them, he is said with reckless daring to have charged the encircling force alone.
Upon the rest being now forced to attack, the enemy were terror-struck and broke up, and Publius Scipio, thus unexpectedly delivered, was the first to salute his son in the hearing of all as his preserver.
Having by this service gained a universally acknowledged reputation for bravery, he in subsequent times refrained from exposing his person without sufficient reason, when his country reposed her hopes of success on him — conduct characteristic not of a commander who relies on luck, but on one gifted with intelligence.
Walbank Commentary