[84]
But is this the only monument of Africanus which you have violated? What! did you
take away from the people of Tyndaris
an image of Mercury most beautifully made, and placed there by the beneficence of
the same Scipio? And how? O ye immortal gods! How audaciously, how infamously, how
shamelessly did you do so! You have lately, judges, heard the deputies from
Tyndaris, most honourable men, and
the chief men of that city, say that the Mercury, which in their sacred
anniversaries was worshipped among them with the extremest religious reverence,
which Publius Africanus, after he had taken Carthage, had given to the Tyndaritans, not only as a monument of his
victory, but as a memorial and evidence of their loyalty to and alliance with the
Roman people, had been taken away by the violence, and wickedness, and arbitrary
power of this man; who, when he first came to their city, in a moment, as if it were
not only a becoming, but an indispensable thing to be done?—as if the
senate had ordered it and the Roman people had sanctioned it,—in a moment,
I say, ordered them to take the statue down and to transport it to Messana.
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