History of Rome

​To them as they came to Syracuse, Scipio prepared facts, not words, for his exculpation. He ordered the entire army to assemble there and the fleet to be made ready, as if he had to fight on that day by land and sea with the Carthaginians.

​Having received them with friendly hospitality on the day they arrived, on the following day he showed them the land and naval forces, not only drawn up in array, but also performing maneuvers, and at the same time the fleet in the harbor presenting a representation of a naval battle.

​Then the praetor and the legates were conducted to view the armories, the granaries, and the other preparation for war.

​And so great an admiration of individual things and of the whole together was inspired in them, that they fully believed that either under that leader and with that army the Carthaginian people could be conquered, or by no other. ​And they ordered him, and may the gods turn it to good, to cross over, and to make the Roman people master of the hope they had conceived on the day when all the centuries had declared him the first consul, at the very first opportunity.

​And they set out from there with minds so joyful, as if they were going to announce to Rome a victory, and not the magnificent preparation for war.

​Pleminius and those who were in the same case, as soon as they arrived at Rome, were immediately cast into prison. And at first, when they were produced before the people by the tribunes, they found no room for pity among minds already preoccupied by the disaster of the Locrians.

​Afterward, as they were produced more frequently, their anger was softened, their hatred now growing old, and the very wretched appearance of Pleminius and the memory of the absent Scipio conciliated favor toward them among the common people.

​He died in prison, however, before the judgment of the people concerning him could be completed.

​Concerning this Pleminius, Clodius Licinus relates in his third book of Roman History, that during the votive games, which Africanus, as consul for the second time, was exhibiting at Rome, he attempted, through some persons whom he had corrupted with money, to set fire to the city in several places, in order that he might have an opportunity of breaking out of prison and escaping; and that, the crime being afterward discovered, he was transferred to the Tullianum by a decree of the senate.

​Concerning Scipio, there was no action anywhere except in the senate, where all the legates and tribunes, extolling the fleet, the army, and the general in their speeches, brought it about that the senate decreed that he should cross over into Africa at the very first opportunity, and that permission should be granted to Scipio, ​to select himself from those armies which were in Sicily those whom he would take over with him into Africa, and those whom he would leave for the defense of the province.