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Meanwhile the Syracusans and their allies in Sicily had brought up to the squadron guarding Messina the reinforcement which we left them preparing, and carried on the war from thence, incited chiefly by the Locrians from hatred of the Rhegians, whose territory they had invaded with all their forces.
The enemy therefore immediately retired from Rhegium. At the command of Hannibal, peace was concluded with the Locrians on these terms: that "they should live free under their own laws; that the city should be open to the Carthaginians, the harbour in the power of the Locrians.
50. ¶ The Romans on learning of the actions of the Locrians, thinking it had come about through contempt of Scipio, were displeased, and under the influence of anger immediately made plans to end his leadership and to recall him for trial. They were also indignant because he adopted Greek manners, wore his toga thrown back over his shoulder, and contended in the palæstra.
This consideration annoyed them, that they neither could venture on the business without calling in the Carthaginians to their assistance, lest they should appear to have done any thing in a manner unbecoming allies, and on the other hand, lest, if the Carthaginian general should again show himself to have been rather an umpire of peace than an auxiliary in war, they should fight in vain against the liberty of Croto, as before in the affair of the Locrians.
While the consuls were sitting in the comitium, ten ambassadors of the Locrians, covered with filth, and in mourning, and extending branches of olive, the badges of suppliants, according to the Grecian custom, prostrated themselves on the ground before the tribunal, with loud lamentations.
On the side of Sparta was arrayed the whole of Peloponnesus, except Argos and Acha'ia, together with the Megarians, Phocians, Locrians, Thebans, and some others; while the allies of Athens were the Thessalians, Acarnanians, Messenians, Plataeans, Chi'ans, Lesbians, her tributary towns in Thrace and Asia Minor, and all the islands north of Crete with two exceptions Me'los and The'ra.
Without being authorized by the Senate, Scipio had taken part in the conquest of Locri, in Southern Italy, and had left his legate, Q. Flaminius, as commander of the Roman garrison in that place. The legate treated the Locrians with such severity and cruelty that they sent an embassy to Rome to lay their complaints before the Senate.
And in favour of his own view he urges two points more: first, that the Lacedaemonians being allowed furlough for the purpose of seeing their wives at home, it was unlikely that the Locrians should not have had the same privilege; and next, that the Italian Locrians knew nothing of the Aristotelian version and had, on the contrary, very severe laws against adulterers, runaway slaves and the like.
He says, that before the first Punic war the Romans had no thought of the sea; that Sicily was the first country, out of Italy, in which they ever landed; and that, when they went to that island to assist the Mamertines, the vessels which they employed in that expedition were hired, or borrowed from the Tarentines, the Locrians, &c.
The legend associated with it, that two youths of superhuman size and beauty had been seen fighting on the battle-field in the ranks of the Romans and immediately after the battle watering their foaming steeds in the Roman Forum at the fountain of luturna, and announcing the great victory, bears a stamp thoroughly un-Roman, and was beyond doubt at a very early period modelled on the appearance of the Dioscuri similar down to its very details in the famous battle fought about a century before between the Crotoniates and Locrians at the river Sagras.
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