ration.

48. Having ordered Caius Laelius with the marines to guard the city,
Scipio led back his legions to the camp the same day in person; and as
his soldiers were tired, as they had in one day gone through every
kind of military labour; for they had engaged the enemy in the field,
and had undergone very great fatigue and danger in taking the city;
and after they had taken it had fought, and that on disadvantageous
ground, with those who had fled to the citadel, he ordered them to
attend to themselves. The next day, having assembled the land and
naval forces, he, in the first place, ascribed praise and thanks to
the immortal gods, who had not only in one day made him master of the
wealthiest city in Spain, but had previously collected in it the
riches of almost all Africa and Spain; so that while his enemy had
nothing left, he and his army had a superabundance of every thing. He
then commended in the highest terms the valour of his soldiers,
because that neither the sally of the enemy, nor the height of the
walls, nor the unexplored fords of the lake, nor the fort standing
upon a high hill, nor the citadel, though most strongly fortified, had
deterred them from surmounting and breaking through every thing.
Therefore, though all credit was due to them all, he said that the man
who first mounted the wall ought to be distinguished above the rest,
by being honoured with a mural crown; and he desired that he who
thought himself worthy of that reward would claim it. Two persons laid
claim to it, Quintus Trebellius, a centurion of the fourth legion, and
Sextus Digitius, a marine. Nor did these contest so fiercely as each
excited the zeal of his own body of men. Caius Laelius, admiral of the
fleet, patronized the marines, and Marcus Sempronius Tuditanus, the
legionary troops. As this contest began almost to assume the character
of a mutiny, Scipio having notified that he should appoint three
delegates, who, after making themselves acquainted with the case, and
examining the witnesses, might decide which had been the first to
scale the wall and enter the town, added Publius Cornelius Caudinus, a
middle party, to Laelius and Sempronius, the advocates of the two
parties, and ordered these three delegates to sit and determine the
cause. But as the contest was now carried on with increased warmth,
because those high characters, who had acted more as moderators of the
zeal of both than as advocates of any particular party, were
w