Scipio, seeing that the citadel was abandoned by the enemy, and their camp deserted, called the Locrians to an assembly and rebuked them severely for their defection. He inflicted punishment on the persons principally concerned, and gave their effects to the leaders of the other party, in consideration of their extraordinary fidelity to the Romans. As to the Locrians in general, he said that he would neither grant them any thing, nor take any thing from them. They might send ambassadors to Rome, and they should experience that treatment which the senate thought proper to adopt. Of one thing, however, he said he was confident, which was, that although they had deserved ill at the hands of the Romans, they would be better off when subject to them, though incensed against them, than they had been when in the power of their friends the Carthaginians. Leaving Quintus Pleminius lieutenant-general, and the garrison which had taken the citadel to defend the city, the general himself crossed over to Messana with the forces he had brought with him. The Locrians had been treated with such insolence and cruelty by the Carthaginians since their revolt from the Romans, that they were able to endure severities of an ordinary kind not only with patience but almost willingness. But indeed, so greatly did Pleminius surpass Hamilcar, who had commanded the garrison, so greatly did the Roman soldiers in the garrison surpass the Carthaginians in villany and rapacity, that it would appear that they endeavoured to outdo each other, not in arms, but in vices. None of all those things which render the power of a superior hateful to the powerless was omitted towards the inhabitants, either by the general or his soldiers. The most shocking insults were committed against their own persons, their children, and their wives, For their rapacity did not abstain from the spoliation even of sacred things; and not only were other temples violated, but even the treasures of Proserpine, which had never been touched through all ages, excepting that they were said to have been carried away by Pyrrhus, who restored the spoils, together with a costly offering in expiation of his sacrilege. Therefore, as on the former occasion, the royal ships, wrecked and shattered, brought nothing safe to land, except the sacred money of the goddess, which they were carrying away; so now also, that same money, by a different kind of calamity, cast a spirit of madness upon all who were contaminated by this violation of the temple, and turned them against each other with the fury of enemies, general against general, and soldier against soldier.
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Pleminius had the chief command; that part of the soldiers which he had brought with him from Rhegium were under his own command, the rest were under the command of the tribunes. One of Pleminius's men, while running away with a silver cup which he had stolen from the house of a townsman, the owners pursuing him, happened to meet Sergius and Matienus, the military tribunes. The cup having been taken away from him at the order of the tribunes, abuse and clamour ensued, and at last a fight arose between the soldiers of Pleminius and those of the tribunes; the numbers engaged and the tumult increasing at the same time, as either party was joined by their friends who happened to come up at the time. When the soldiers of Pleminius, who had been worsted, had run to him in crowds, not without loud clamouring and indignant feelings, showing their blood and wounds, and repeating the reproaches which had been heaped upon him during the dispute, Pleminius, fired with resentment, flung himself out of his house, ordered the tribunes to be summoned and stripped, and the rods to be brought out. During the time which was consumed in stripping them, for they made resistance, and implored their men to aid them, on a sudden the soldiers, flushed with their recent victory, ran together from every quarter, as if there had been a shout to arms against enemies; and when they saw the bodies of their tribunes now mangled with rods, then indeed, suddenly inflamed with much, more ungovernable rage, without respect, not only for the dignity of their commander, but of humanity, they made an attack upon the lieutenant-general, having first mutilated the lictors in a shocking manner; they then cruelly lacerated the lieutenant-general himself, having cut him off from his party and hemmed him in, and after mutilating his nose and ears left him almost lifeless. Accounts of these occurrences arriving at Messana, Scipio, a few days after, passing over to Locri in a ship with six banks of oars, took cognizance of the cause of Pleminius and the tribunes. Having acquitted Pleminius and left him in command of the same place, and pronounced the tribunes guilty and thrown them into chains, that they might be sent to Rome to the senate, he returned to Messana, and thence to Syracuse. Pleminius, unable to restrain his resentment, for he thought that the injury he had sustained had been treated negligently and too lightly by Scipio, and that no one could form an estimate of the punishment which ought to be inflicted in such a case, except the man who had in his own person felt its atrocity, ordered the tribunes to be dragged before him, and after lacerating them with every punishment which the human body could endure, put them to death; and not satisfied with the punishment inflicted on them while alive, cast them out unburied. The like cruelty he exercised towards the Locrian nobles, whom he heard had gone to Scipio to complain of the injuries he had done them. The horrid acts, prompted by lust and rapacity, which he had before perpetrated upon his allies, he now multiplied from resentment; thus bringing infamy and odium, not only upon himself, but upon the general also.
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The time of the elections was now drawing near, when a letter from the consul Publius Licinius arrived at Rome, stating that "he himself and his army were afflicted with a severe sickness, nor could they have stood their ground had not the malady attacked the enemy with the same or even greater violence. Therefore, as he could not come himself to the election, he would, with the approbation of the senate, nominate Quintus Caecilius Metellus dictator, for the purpose of holding the election. That it was for the interest of the state that the army of Quintus Caecilius should be disbanded; for that it could not be made any use of under present circumstances, for Hannibal had now withdrawn his troops into winter quarters; and so violent was the malady which had infected that camp, that unless it was speedily broken up, there would not survive one man out of the whole army." The senate left it to the consul to settle these matters, as he should deem consistent with the interest of the state and his own honour. The state was at this time suddenly occupied with a question of a religious nature, in consequence of the discovery of a prediction in the Sibylline books, which had been inspected on account of there having been so many showers of stones this year. It ran thus: "Whensoever a foreign enemy should bring war into the land of Italy, he may be driven out of Italy and conquered, if the Idaean Mother should be brought from Pessinus to Rome." This prophecy, discovered by the decemviri, produced the greater impression upon the senate, because ambassadors also, who had carried a present to Delphi, had brought word back, that they had both obtained a favourable appearance in sacrificing to the Pythian Apollo, and that a response was delivered from the oracle, to the effect, that a much greater victory than that from the spoils of which they now brought presents, awaited the Roman people. They considered the presentiment which existed in the mind of Publius Scipio, with regard to the termination of the war, when he claimed Africa as his province, as corroborating the same anticipation. In order, therefore, that they might the more speedily put themselves in possession of victory, which was portended to them by the fates, omens, and oracles, they began to think what method could be adopted for conveying the goddess to Rome.
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