on their gratitude.  There was a vast number of these who had been made prisoners in the Punic war, and sold by Hannibal when their countrymen refused to ransom them.  That they were very numerous, is proved by what Polybius says, that this business cost the Achaeans one hundred talents,[1] though they had fixed the price to be paid for each captive, to the owner, so low as five hundred denarii.[2] For, at that rate, there were one thousand two hundred in Achaia.  Calculate now, in proportion to this, how many were probably in all Greece.

[Footnote 1:  19,375l.]

[Footnote 2:  16l. 2s. 11d.]

51.  Before the convention broke up, they saw the garrison march down from the citadel of Corinth, proceed forward to the gate, and depart.  The general followed them, accompanied by the whole assembly, who, with loud acclamations, blessed him as their preserver and deliverer.  At length, taking leave of these, and dismissing them, he returned to Elatia by the same road through which he came.  He thence sent Appius Claudius, lieutenant-general, with all the troops, ordering him to march through Thessaly and Epirus, and to wait for him at Oricum, whence he intended to embark the army for Italy.  He also wrote to his brother, Lucius Quinctius, lieutenant-general, and commander of the fleet, to collect thither transport ships from all the coasts of Greece.  He himself proceeded to Chalcis; and, after sending away the garrisons, not only from that city, but likewise from Oreum and Eretria, he held there a congress of the Euboean states, whom he reminded of the condition in which he had found their affairs, and of that in which he was leaving them; and then dismissed the assembly.  He then proceeded to Demetrias, and removed the garrison.  Accompanied by all the citizens, as at Corinth and Chalcis, he pursued his route into Thessaly, where the states were not only to be set at liberty, but also to be reduced from a state of utter anarchy and confusion into some tolerable order; for they had been thrown into confusion, not only through the faults of the times, and the violence and licentiousness of royalty, but also through the restless disposition of the nation, who, from the earliest times, even to our days, have never conducted any election, or assembly, or council, without dissensions and tumult.  He chose both senators and judges, with regard, principally, to their property, and made that party the most powerful in the state to whom it was most important that all things should be tranquil and secure.

52.  When he had completed these regulations in Thessaly, he went on, through Epirus, to Oricum, whence he intended to take his passage.  From Oricum all the troops were transported to Brundusium.  From this place to the city, they passed the whole length of Italy, in a manner, like a triumph; the captured effects which they brought with them forming a train as large as that of the troops themselves.  When they arrived at Rome, the senate assembled outside