other occasions, the goddess has either defended her own habitation and temple, or has exacted heavy expiations from those who had violated it.  Our injuries she cannot avenge, nor can any but yourselves avenge them, conscript fathers.  To you, and to your honour, we fly, as suppliants.  It makes no difference to us whether you suffer Locri to be subject to that lieutenant-general and that garrison, or whether you deliver us up for punishment to incensed Hannibal and the Carthaginians.  We do not request that you should at once believe us respecting one who is absent, and when the cause has not been heard.  Let him come; let him hear our charges in person, and refute them himself.  If there is any enormity one man can commit against another which he has not committed upon us we do not refuse to suffer all the same cruelties over again, if it is possible we can endure them, and let him be acquitted of all guilt towards gods and men.”

19.  When the ambassadors had thus spoken, and Quintus Fabius had asked them whether they had carried those complaints to Publius Scipio, they answered, “that deputies were sent to him, but he was occupied with the preparations for the war, and had either already crossed over into Africa, or was about to do so within a few days.  That they had experienced how highly the lieutenant-general was in favour with the general, when, after hearing the cause between him and the tribunes, he threw the tribunes into chains, while he left the lieutenant-general, who was equally or more guilty, in possession of the same power as before.”  The ambassadors, having been directed to withdraw from the senate-house, not only Pleminius, but even Scipio, was severely inveighed against by the principal men; but, above all, by Quintus Fabius, who endeavoured to show, “that he was born for the corruption of military discipline.  It was thus,” he said, “that in Spain he almost lost more men in consequence of mutiny than the war.  That, after the manner of foreigners and kings, he indulged the licentiousness of the soldiers, and then punished them with cruelty.”  He then followed up his speech by a resolution equally harsh:  that “it was his opinion, that Pleminius should be conveyed to Rome in chains, and in chains plead his cause; and, if the complaints of the Locrians were founded in truth, that he should be put to death in prison, and his effects confiscated.  That Publius Scipio should be recalled, for having quitted his province without the permission of the senate; and that the plebeian tribunes should be applied to, to propose to the people the abrogation of his command.  That the senate should reply to the Locrians, when brought before them, that the injuries which they complained of having received were neither approved of by the senate nor the people of Rome.  That they should be acknowledged as worthy men, allies, and friends; that their children, their wives, and whatsoever else had been taken from them, should be restored; that the sum of money which had been taken