16. Another affair, likewise, which had been passed over in silence
for an almost equally long period, was laid before the senate by
Marcus Valerius Laevinus; who said, "that equity required that the
monies which had been contributed by private individuals, when he
and Marcus Claudius were consuls, should now at length be repaid. Nor
ought any one to feel surprised that a case, where the public faith
was pledged, should have engaged his attention in an especial manner;
for, besides that the matter appertained, in some degree, peculiarly
to the consul of that year in which the money was contributed, he was
himself the author of the measure, as the treasury was drained, and
the people unable to pay the taxes." This suggestion was well received
by the senate, and, bidding the consuls to propose the question, they
decreed, "that this money should be paid by three instalments; that
the present consuls should make the first payment immediately, and the
third and fifth consuls, from that time, the two remaining."

After this, all their other cares gave place to one alone when the
sufferings of the Locrians, of which they had been ignorant up to that
day, were made known by the arrival of their ambassadors. Nor was it
the villany of Pleminius so much as the partiality or negligence of
Scipio in that affair, which excited the resentment of the people.
While the consuls were sitting in the comitium, ten ambassadors of the
Locrians, covered with filth, and in mourning, and extending branches
of olive, the badges of suppliants, according to the Grecian custom,
prostrated themselves on the ground before the tribunal, with loud
lamentations. In answer to the inquiry of the consuls, they said,
"that they were Locrians, who had suffered such things at the hands of
Pleminius the lieutenant-general, and the Roman soldiers, as the
Roman people would not wish even the Carthaginians to experience. They
requested that they would allow them to appear before the senate, and
complain of their sufferings."

17. An audience having been granted, the eldest of them thus spoke:
"I know, conscript fathers, that the importance you will attach to
the complaints we make before you must depend, in a very great degree,
upon your accurately knowing the manner in which Locri was betrayed to
Hannibal, and placed again under your dominion after the expulsion of
his garrison. Inasmuch as if the guilt of defection does not rest
upon the public, and it is ma