58.
When the trials1 had been completed by Quintus Terentius the praetor, Hostilius and Furius, who were convicted, gave bond the same day to the [p. 203]City quaestors;
[2]
when Scipio protested that all the2 money which he had received was in the treasury and that he had no public property, they proceeded to put him in prison.3
[3]
Publius Scipio Nasica appealed to the tribunes and delivered a speech full of deserved tributes, not only to the Cornelian gens as a whole, but specifically to his own family.
[4]
The fathers, he said, both of himself and of Publius Africanus and the Lucius Scipio who was being imprisoned, were Gnaeus and Publius Scipio, men of the highest distinction.
[5]
After they had, through many years in the land of Spain, against many generals and armies alike of Carthaginians and Spaniards, increased the fame of the Roman name, not only in war but because they had given those peoples an
[6??]
example of Roman self-control and devotion, both had in the end met death for their fatherland.
[7]
While it would have been enough, he continued, to maintain for posterity their standard of glory, Publius Africanus had so far surpassed his father's praises that he had given reason to believe that he was born, not of human blood, but of divine stock.
[8]
Lucius Scipio, whose fate was now in question, not to mention what he had done in Spain, in Africa, while serving as his brother's lieutenant, had, as consul, been deemed by the senate worthy to have decreed to him, without recourse to the lot, the province of Asia and the war with King Antiochus, and had been deemed by his brother worthy to be attended to Asia by that brother as his lieutenant, after he had been twice consul and censor and had celebrated a triumph.4
[9]
There, that the greatness and glory of the lieutenant might not obscure the consul's fame, it happened that, on the day when [p. 205]Lucius Scipio defeated Antiochus in pitched battle5 at Magnesia, Publius Scipio was sick at Elaea, some days' journey away.
[10]
That army, he went on, was no smaller than that of Hannibal, with which they had fought in Africa; that same Hannibal,6 who had been commander in the Punic War, was there among many other generals of the king. And the war indeed had been so conducted that no one could find fault even with fortune; it was in the peace that ground for accusation was sought; the peace, they said, had been sold.
[11]
On this point, he maintained, the ten commissioners were likewise accused, by whose advice the peace had been concluded;7
[12]
although some of the ten commissioners had come forward to accuse Gnaeus Manlius, this charge had failed, not only to win belief in his guilt, but even to delay his triumph.
1 Livy seems to be technically correct in his terminology. The iudicium was the trial proper, as distinguished from the preliminary hearing: cf. Iv. 5 above and the note.
2 B.C. 187
3 Execution of judgment on the person of the condemned was permitted when he had or claimed to have no property and did not furnish bond.
4 Cf. XXXVII i. 9.
5 B.C. 187
6 Cf. XXXVII. xli. 1 and the note.
7 This is one of the minor mysteries in this affair: Livy's narrative shows that their dealings had been entirely with Manlius, who, as a matter of fact, had far more opportunity to convert tribute and booty to his own use than Scipio had had. The following sentence is almost conclusive proof that the Scipios were victims of political animus, regardless of their actual guilt or innocence.
Livy. Books XXXVIII-XXXIX with an English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1936: published without copyright notice.
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