rest, seeing the horseman thus discharged without giving any offence to the general, began severally to excuse themselves and receive substitutes.  Thus Roman horsemen were substituted for the three hundred Sicilian, without any expense to the state.  The Sicilians had the care of instructing and training them, because the general had ordered that the man who should not do so, should serve himself.  It is said that this turned out to be an admirable body of cavalry, and rendered effectual service to the state in many engagements.  Afterwards, inspecting the legions, he chose out of them such soldiers as had served the greatest number of campaigns, particularly those who had acted under Marcellus; for he considered that they were formed under the best discipline, and also, from the long time in which they were engaged in the siege of Syracuse, were most skilled in the assault of towns:  for his thoughts were now occupied with no small object, but the destruction of Carthage.  He then distributed his army through the towns; ordered the Sicilian states to furnish corn, sparing that which had been brought from Italy; repaired his old ships, and sent Caius Laelius with them into Africa to plunder.  His new ships he hauled on shore at Panormus, that they might be kept on land during the winter, as they had been hastily built of unseasoned timber.

When every thing was got in readiness for the war he came to Syracuse, which had hardly yet returned to a state of tranquillity, after the violent commotions of the war.  The Greeks, demanding restitution of their property, which had been granted to them by the senate, from certain persons of the Italian nation, who retained possession of it in the same forcible manner in which they had seized it in the war, Scipio, who deemed it of the first importance to preserve the public faith, restored their property to the Syracusans, partly by proclamation, and partly even by judgments pronounced against those who pertinaciously retained their unjust acquisitions.  This measure was acceptable not only to the persons immediately concerned, but to all the states of Sicily, and so much the more energetically did they give aid in the war.  During the same summer a very formidable war sprang up in Spain, at the instance of Indibilis the Hergetian, from no other cause than the contempt he conceived for the other generals, in consequence of his admiration of Scipio.  He considered “that he was the only commander the Romans had left, the rest having been slain by Hannibal.  That they had, therefore, no other general whom they could send into Spain after the Scipios were cut off there, and that afterwards, when the war in Italy pressed upon them with increased severity, he was recalled to oppose Hannibal.  That, in addition to the fact that the Romans had the names only of generals in Spain, their old army had also been withdrawn thence.  That all the troops they had there were irresolute, as consisting of an undisciplined multitude of recruits.