s
of stones descend, lightnings are darted from the heavens, and animals
give birth to monsters, you consider these things as prodigies. This
is a prodigy which can be expiated by no victims, by no supplications,
without the blood of those men who have dared to commit so great a
crime.

28. "Now, though villany is never guided by reason, yet so far as it
could exist in so nefarious a transaction, I would fain know what was
your design. Formerly, a legion which was sent to garrison Rhegium,
wickedly put to the sword the principal inhabitants and kept
possession of that opulent city through a space of ten years; on
account of which enormity the entire legion, consisting of four
thousand men, were beheaded in the forum at Rome. But they, in the
first place, did not put themselves under the direction of Atrius the
Umbrian, scarcely superior to a scullion, whose name even was ominous,
but of Decius Jubellius, a military tribune; nor did they unite
themselves with Pyrrhus, or with the Samnites or Lucanians, the
enemies of the Roman people. But you made common cause with Mandonius
and Indibilis, and intended also to have united your arms with them.
They intended to have held Rhegium as a lasting settlement, as
the Campanians held Capua, which they took from its ancient Tuscan
inhabitants; and as the Mamertines held Messana in Sicily, without any
design of commencing without provocation a war upon the Roman people
or their allies. Was it your purpose to hold Sucro as a place of
abode? where, had I, your general, left you on my departure after the
reduction of the province, you would have been justified in imploring
the interference of gods and men, because you could not return to your
wives and children. But suppose that you banished from your minds all
recollection of these, as you did of your country and myself; I would
wish to track the course of a wicked design, but not of one utterly
insane. While I was alive, and the rest of the army safe, with which
in one day I took Carthage, with which I routed, put to flight,
and expelled from Spain four generals and four armies of the
Carthaginians; did you, I say, who were only eight thousand men, all
of course of less worth than Albius and Atrius, to whom you subjected
yourselves, hope to wrest the province of Spain out of the hands of
the Roman people? I lay no stress upon my own name, I put it out of
the question. Let it be supposed that I have not been injured by you
in any re