In the case of the city of Salapia the following incident occurred.  Two men managed affairs there and were hostile to each other.  Alinius[32] favored the Carthaginian cause, and Plautius[33] the Roman; and the latter talked with Alinius about betraying the place to the Romans.  Alinius at once informed Hannibal of the fact and Plautius was brought to trial.  While Hannibal was deliberating with the councilors as to how to punish him, Plautius dared in his presence to speak again to Alinius, who stood near, about betrayal.  The latter cried out:  “There, there, he’s talking to me about this very matter now.”  Hannibal distrusted him on account of the improbability of the case and acquitted Plautius as a victim of blackmail.  After his release the two men became harmonious and brought in soldiers obtained from Marcellus, with whose aid they cut down the Carthaginian garrison and delivered the city to the Romans.

[Footnote 32:  By comparing other authors the names Alinius and Plautius are found to be the corruptions of some copyists for Dasius and Blattius.]

[Footnote 33:  [See previous footnote.]]

This was the state of Carthaginian interests in Italy.  Not even Sicily retained its friendliness for them, but submitted to the consul Laevinus.  The leader of the Carthaginians in Sicily was Hanno, and Muttines was a member of his staff.  The latter had been with Hannibal formerly and owing to the latter’s jealousy of his great deeds of valor had been sent into Sicily.  When there also he made a brilliant record as commander of the cavalry, he incurred the jealousy of Hanno as well, and as a consequence was deprived of his command.  Deeply grieved at this he joined the Romans.  First he accomplished the betrayal of Agrigentum for them and then he helped them in reducing other places, so that the whole of Sicily came again under their sway without any great labor.

[Sidenote:  B.C. 209 (a.u. 545)] IX, 8.—­Fabius and Flaccus subdued among other cities Tarentum, which Hannibal was holding.  They gave orders to a body of men to overrun Bruttium in order that Hannibal might leave Tarentum and come to its assistance.  When this had happened, Flaccus kept watch of Hannibal while Fabius by night assailed Tarentum with ships and infantry at once and captured the city by means of his assault aided by betrayal.  Hannibal, enraged at the trick, was eager to find some scheme for paying Fabius back.  So he sent him a letter, purporting to be from the dwellers in Metapontum, looking to a betrayal of the city; for he hoped that Fabius would advance carelessly in that direction and that he might set a trap for him on the way.  But the Roman leader suspected the truth of the case and by comparing the writing with the letter which Hannibal had once written to the Tarentini, he detected the plot from the similarity of the two.

Scipio for the first part of the time, however much he may have longed to avenge his father and uncle and however much he yearned for glory in the war, nevertheless showed no haste on account of the multitude of his opponents.  But after he ascertained that they were passing the winter at a considerable distance, he disregarded them and marched upon Carthage,—­the Spanish town.  Moreover no one gained the slightest knowledge of his march till he had come close to Carthage itself.  And by much exertion he took the city.