Quintus Pleminius - Violence and Disorder

Violence and Disorder

In Scipio's absence, the soldiers under Pleminius lapsed into looting, which the military tribunes attempted to restrain. Discipline dissolved utterly, and the Roman forces divided into warring troops. The men attached to Pleminius got the worst of it, and reported to him with a display of wounds and complaints of ill treatment.

Pleminius's reaction to this breakdown of discipline was to have the tribunes arrested, stripped, and flogged. Their men then attacked Pleminius, mutilating his ears and nose. Learning of these disturbances, Scipio returned — and reinstated Pleminius. He ordered the offending tribunes sent to Rome to stand trial. "This judgment," notes H.H. Scullard, "is unexpected," and various explanations have been proffered. Scullard concludes that Scipio was "guilty of folly and of lack of humanity."

As soon as Scipio left for Sicily, Pleminius had the tribunes seized and tortured them to death, offering a "novel" justification: "No one knew how to name the penalty for a crime except someone who had learnt its savagery by suffering." They were left unburied.

With a rage that seemed unquenchable, Pleminius turned his violence toward Locrians he suspected of informing Scipio. Meanwhile, the Locrian envoys who had traveled to Rome for the senate hearing related in detail how the excesses of the Roman soldiers surpassed those of the Carthaginians. They complained of widespread rapes committed against women and boys dragged from their homes, and the sacrilegious looting of the Temple of Proserpina, the chief deity of Locri. These reports provided fodder for Fabius Maximus, nearing the end of his life, in his opposition to Scipio and his "Greek" way of life in Sicily and his plans to invade Africa. The Locrians, however, diverted any blame to Pleminius.