History of Rome

​After Scipio came into Sicily, he organized and divided into centuries the volunteer soldiers.

​From among them, he kept three hundred young men, in the prime of their age and physical strength, unarmed about him, who did not know for what purpose they were being kept without being either organized into centuries or armed.

​Then, from the total number of young men in Sicily, he chose three hundred horsemen, leaders in birth and fortune, to cross over with him to Africa, and appointed a day for them on which they were to appear equipped and furnished with horses and arms.

​That service, far from home, on land and sea, seemed likely to bring many labors and great dangers; and that anxiety troubled not only themselves but also their parents and kinsmen.

​When the appointed day arrived, they showed their arms and horses. Then Scipio said that it had been reported to him that some of the Sicilian horsemen dreaded that military service as being heavy and hard;

​if any were so minded, he preferred that they should confess it to him then and there, rather than later complain and be sluggish and useless soldiers to the commonwealth; let them express what they felt; he would listen to them with kind indulgence.

​When one of them dared to say that he absolutely did not wish to serve, if he had the free choice of which he preferred, then Scipio said to him:

”Since, therefore, young man, you have not concealed what you felt, I will procure a substitute for you, to whom you may hand over your arms, horse, and other equipment of service, and whom you may take home with you immediately from here, and train and see to his instruction in horse and arms.”

​To him, gladly accepting the condition, he handed over one of the three hundred whom he had kept unarmed. When the others saw that a horseman had been discharged in this manner with the favor of the general, they each excused themselves and accepted a substitute.

​Thus Roman horsemen were substituted for the three hundred Sicilians without public expense. The Sicilians had the care of instructing and training them, because there was a decree of the general that anyone who did not do so should serve in person.

​They say that this excellent squadron of cavalry turned out well and assisted the commonwealth in many battles.

​Then, when he inspected the legions, he selected from them the soldiers of the longest service, especially those who had served under the commander Marcellus, ​whom he believed not only to have been trained in the best discipline, but also, from the long siege of Syracuse, to be highly skilled in besieging cities; for he was meditating in his mind nothing small, but already the destruction of Carthage.

​Then he distributed the army through the towns; he requisitioned grain from the Sicilian cities, and spared that brought from Italy; he refitted the old ships and sent C. Laelius with them to Africa to plunder; he hauled up the new ones at Panormus, because they had been hastily built of green timber, so that they might winter in a dry place.

​All things being prepared for war, he came to Syracuse, which was not yet sufficiently tranquil after the great commotions of the war.

​The Greeks were demanding back their property, which had been granted to them by the senate, but was retained by certain persons of Italian race with the same violence with which they had seized it during the war.

​Thinking that to maintain the public faith was the first duty of all, partly by edict and partly by judgments rendered even against those who persisted in retaining the injustice, he restored their property to the Syracusans.

​This action was pleasing not only to themselves but to all the peoples of Sicily, and for that reason they assisted in the war with greater earnestness.

​In the same summer, a huge war broke out in Spain, stirred up by Indibilis the Ilergetan, for no other reason than that, from his admiration of Scipio, a contempt for other commanders had arisen.

​He thought that he was the only commander left to the Romans, the others having been slain by Hannibal; and that therefore, after the Scipios were slain, they had had no other whom they could send to Spain, and that after the war in Italy became more pressing, he had been summoned to act against Hannibal.

​In addition to the fact that the Romans had only the names of commanders in Spain, the veteran army also had been withdrawn from there; everything was in alarm, like an unorganized crowd of recruits; never would there be such an opportunity for liberating Spain.

​Up to that day, they had served either the Carthaginians or the Romans, ​not alternately to these or those, but sometimes to both at the same time.

​The Carthaginians had been driven out by the Romans; the Romans could be driven out by the Spaniards if they were to agree, so that Spain, freed forever from all foreign rule, might return to her ancestral customs and rites.

​By saying these and similar things, he stirred up not only his own countrymen, but also the Ausetani, a neighboring nation, and other peoples bordering on himself and them.

​Therefore, within a few days, thirty thousand infantry and about four thousand cavalry assembled in the Sedetanian territory, where they had been ordered to meet.