Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 29
Frank Gardener Moore, Professor Emeritus in Columbia University, Ed.

9. The chief command belonged to Pleminius. Part of the soldiers whom he had brought from Regium were under him, part under the tribunes. [2] Having stolen a silver cup from the house of a citizen, a fleeing soldier of Pleminius was being pursued by the owners when he chanced to meet Sergius and Matienus, tribunes of the soldiers. [3] By order of the tribunes the cup was taken away from the man. [p. 241]Thereupon angry words followed and shouting,¹ finally a battle between Pleminius' soldiers and those of the tribunes, while numbers and rioting increased in proportion as one side or the other gained a timely arrival. [4] The soldiers of Pleminius were worsted, and when they came running to him displaying bloody wounds, not without angry shouts as they reported insults that had been heaped even upon him in an altercation, he was inflamed with anger, dashed out of his house, summoned the tribunes and ordered them to be stripped and the rods made ready. [5] While time was being taken to strip them —for they resisted and called upon the soldiers to help them — suddenly soldiers, flushed by their recent victory, came running from every quarter, just as if there had been a call to arms against the enemy. [6] And when they caught sight of the tribunes' backs already welted by the rods, upon that they were indeed suddenly fired to a much more uncontrollable madness, and after roughly handling the lictors in shameful fashion, without regard even for humanity, not to say for the dignity of his rank,² they assaulted the legatus. [7] Then, having separated and cut him off from his men, they slashed him as if an enemy and, mutilating his nose and ears, left him almost lifeless.

[8] These acts being reported at Messana, Scipio a few days later sailed to Locri on a hexēris.³ Then having heard the case of Pleminius and the tribunes, he discharged Pleminius as innocent and left him in command of the same place, while the tribunes were adjudged guilty and put in chains, to be sent to the [p. 243]senate at Rome; whereupon he returned to Messana⁴ and thence to Syracuse. [9] Pleminius was beside himself with rage, thinking the wrong done to him had been overlooked by Scipio and treated as too trivial; also that no one else was capable of naming a penalty for the offence except a man who had known its barbarity by suffering. [10] Accordingly he ordered the tribunes to be brought before him, and had them mangled by every torture which any human body can endure and then put to death. [11] Not satisfied with a penalty paid by the living either, he threw them out unburied. The like cruelty was used by him against leading men of the Locrians who, he learned, had gone to Publius Scipio to complain of the outrages. [12] Then in anger he multiplied the shameful acts which, prompted previously by lust and greed, he had perpetrated upon the allies, and brought infamy and odium not only upon himself but also upon his general.