ty 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.

10. 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now withdrawn his troops into winter quarters; and so violent was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