Humanitext Reader

Livy · History of Rome §26.47.1-26.47.10

Treatment of Captives and Inventory of Spoils

Passage 842 of 1770 · Latin

Summary

After capturing New Carthage, Scipio releases the citizens while drafting artisans and youth as slaves and rowers, and confiscates a vast amount of war materials, gold, silver, and other spoils.

§26.47.1liberorum capitum virile secus ad decem milia capta.
Of the free persons, about ten thousand of the male sex were captured.
inde, qui cives Novae Carthaginis erant, dimisit, urbemque et sua omnia, quae reliqua eis bellum fecerat, restituit.
From these, Scipio dismissed those who were citizens of New Carthage, and restored to them their city and all their possessions which the war had left remaining to them.
§26.47.2opifices ad duo milia hominum erant: eos publicos fore populi Romani edixit cum spe propinqua libertatis, si ad ministeria belli enixe operam navassent.
The artisans numbered about two thousand men; he declared that they would be public slaves of the Roman people, but gave them a near hope of freedom if they should exert their industry strenuously in the services of war.
§26.47.3ceteram multitudinem incolarum iuvenum ac validorum servorum in classem ad supplementum remigum dedit; et auxerat navibus octo captivis classem.
The rest of the multitude of inhabitants, young men and strong slaves, he assigned to the fleet to supplement the rowers; and he had increased the fleet with eight captured ships.
§26.47.4extra hanc multitudinem Hispanorum obsides erant, quorum, perinde ac si sociorum liberi essent, cura habita.
Apart from this multitude there were the hostages of the Spaniards, of whom care was taken just as if they had been the children of allies.
§26.47.5captus et apparatus ingens belli: catapultae maximae formae centum viginti, minores ducentae octoginta una, §26.47.6ballistae maiores viginti tres, minores quinquaginta duae, scorpionum maiorum minorumque et armorum telorumque ingens numerus, signa militaria septuaginta quattuor.
An immense apparatus of war was also captured: one hundred and twenty catapults of the largest size, two hundred and eighty-one smaller ones; twenty-three larger ballistae, fifty-two smaller ones; an immense number of larger and smaller scorpions, and of arms and missiles; seventy-four military standards.
§26.47.7et auri argentique relata ad imperatorem magna vis: paterae aureae fuerunt ducentae septuaginta sex, librae ferme omnes pondo; argenti infecti signatique decem et octo milia et trecenta pondo, vasorum argenteorum magnus numerus.
And a great quantity of gold and silver was brought to the commander: there were two hundred and seventy-six golden bowls, almost all of them a pound in weight; eighteen thousand three hundred pounds of silver, both uncoined and coined; and a great number of silver vessels.
§26.47.8haec omnia C. Flaminio quaestori adpensa adnumerataque sunt; tritici quadringenta milia modium, hordei ducenta septuaginta.
All these were weighed out and counted to the quaestor Gaius Flaminius; four hundred thousand modii of wheat, two hundred and seventy thousand of barley.
§26.47.9naves onerariae sexaginta tres in portu expugnatae captaeque, quaedam cum suis oneribus, frumento, armis, aere praeterea ferroque et linteis et sparto et navali alia materia ad classem aedificandam, §26.47.10ut minimum omnium inter tantas opes belli captas Carthago ipsa fuerit.
Sixty-three merchant vessels were assaulted and captured in the harbor, some with their cargoes, wheat, weapons, and besides, bronze and iron, canvas, esparto grass, and other naval materials for building a fleet, so that Carthage itself seemed to be the least of all things among such vast spoils of war captured.

Notes

  1. §26.47.1virile secus — An accusative noun phrase functioning appositively to liberorum capitum, meaning "of the male sex." Overall it denotes "those of the male sex among the free persons." Secus is grammatically a neuter noun.
  2. §26.47.2publicos fore — An accusative with infinitive clause functioning as the object of edixit, with the omitted subject or referring back to eos. Publicos, along with populi Romani, serves as a predicate meaning "public slaves of the Roman people." Fore is the shortened form of futurum esse.
  3. §26.47.7librae ferme omnes pondo — Pondo, originally an ablative noun meaning "by weight," functions as an indeclinable noun meaning "pound." Here, combined with librae (nominative plural) and omnes, it means "almost all of them a pound in weight."
  4. §26.47.8modium — An archaic contracted form of modiorum, the genitive plural of modius, which is a noun of measurement (contraction of the second declension genitive plural).
  5. §26.47.10ut ... fuerit — A result clause introduced by ut. Although an imperfect subjunctive (esset) would normally be expected following the past tenses of the main narrative, the perfect subjunctive fuerit is used to emphasize the actuality of the result as a historical fact.

Cite this passage

Livy, History of Rome §26.47.1-26.47.10. Humanitext Reader, https://reader.humanitext.ai/en/text/urn:cts:latinLit:phi0914.phi001.humanitext-lat2:26.47.1-26.47.10

Please note the AI-draft status of the translation and the date accessed.

Translation, notes and summary are AI-generated drafts, revised through reader feedback.