Two years later, when his own father Aemilius died, and left him and his brother Fabius heirs to his estate, he again acted in a noble manner deserving of mention.
Aemilius was childless, as he had given some of his sons to be adopted by other families and those whom he had kept to succeed him were dead, and he therefore left his property to Scipio and Fabius.
Scipio, knowing that his brother was by no means well off, gave up the whole inheritance, which was estimated at more than sixty talents, to him in order that Fabius might thus possess a fortune equal to his own.
This became widely known, and he now gave an even more conspicuous proof of his generosity.
His brother wished to give a gladiatorial show on the occasion of his father's funeral, but was unable to meet the expense, which was very considerable, and Scipio contributed the half of it out of his own fortune.
The total expense of such a show amounts to not less than thirty talents if it is done on a generous scale.
While the report of this was still fresh, his mother died,
and Scipio, far from taking back any of the gifts I mentioned above, gave the whole of it and the residue of his mother's property to his sisters, who had no legal claim to it.
So that again when his sisters had thus come into the processional furniture and all the establishment of Aemilia, the fame of Scipio for magnanimity and family affection was again revived.
Having thus from his earliest years laid the foundations of it, Publius Scipio advanced in his pursuit of this reputation for temperance and nobility of character.
By the expenditure of perhaps sixty talents — for that was what he had bestowed from his own property — his reputation for the second of these virtues was firmly established, and he did not attain his purpose so much by the largeness of the sums he gave as by the seasonableness of the gift and the gracious manner in which he conferred it.
His reputation for temperance cost him nothing, but by abstaining from many and varied pleasures he gained in addition that bodily health and vigour which he enjoyed for the whole of his life,
and which by the many pleasures of which it was the cause amply rewarded him for his former abstention from common pleasures.
Walbank Commentary