55.
Servius Sulpicius then brought up the question of what praetor they wished to have conduct the investigation under the Petillian law, and the Fathers selected Quintus Terentius Culleo.
[2]
Before this praetor, either so friendly to the Cornelian family that those who say that Publius Scipio died and was buried at Rome —for this too is reported —have put it on record that, wearing the cap of freedom, just as he had marched in the triumphal procession,1 he walked also before the bier at the funeral, and at the Porta Capena2 served wine and honey to those who attended the funeral, because he had been rescued from
[3??]
the enemy by Scipio, along with the other prisoners in Africa, or, on the other hand, so hostile that on account of his well-known unfriendliness the faction which was opposed to the Scipios chose him in preference to anyone else to conduct the investigation;
[4]
at any rate,3 before this praetor, too well or [p. 193]too ill disposed, Lucius Scipio was immediately4 arraigned.
[5]
At the same time the names of two of his lieutenants, Aulus and Lucius Hostilius Cato,5 were both brought forward and accepted, and that of his quaestor, Gaius Furius Aculeo, and, that everything might seem infected by a conspiracy for peculation, also those of two clerks and an orderly. Lucius Hostilius and the clerks and the orderly were acquitted6 before the trial of Scipio took place; Scipio and his lieutenant Aulus Hostilius and Gaius Furius were convicted:
[6]
the charge was that, in order to secure more favourable terms of peace for Antiochus, Scipio had received six thousand pounds of gold, and four hundred and eighty pounds of silver more than he turned in to the treasury,
[7??]
Aulus Hostilius eighty pounds of gold and four hundred and three of silver, the quaestor Furius one hundred and thirty pounds of gold, two hundred of silver. These amounts of gold and silver I have found recorded in the writings of Antias.
[8]
In the case of Lucius Scipio, I should myself prefer to see an error of the scribe rather than a falsification of the historian7 in the amounts of gold and silver;
[9]
for it is more probable that the greater weight would have been of silver and not of gold and that the fine assessed would have been four million sesterces rather than twenty-four million,8 the more so because there is a tradition9 that an
[10??]
accounting for just this [p. 195]sum10 was also demanded in the senate from Publius11 Scipio himself, and that, when he had directed his brother Lucius to
[11??]
bring the account-book, he had himself, with his own hands, torn it up, being angry
[12??]
that after he had brought two hundred millions into the treasury he should be asked to account for four millions.12
[13]
With the same self-confidence, they say, when the quaestors did not dare to take money from the treasury13 contrary to the law, he demanded the keys and said that he would open the treasury who had brought it to pass that it was closed.
1 Cf. XXX. xlv. 5. The pilleus was the conical cap worn by newly-manumitted slaves.
2 Cf. lvi. 4 below. The tomb of the Scipios, still to be seen, is close to this gate.
3 Livy becomes so involved in his discussion of the partisanship of Culleo that he has to make a fresh start in his sentence.
4 B.C. 187
5 They have not been mentioned before as legati of Scipio.
6 They were discharged for lack of evidence by the praetor at the preliminary hearing; there seemed to be a prima facie case against the others.
7 Livy is more charitable than on other occasions towards the vagaries of Antias; it is not quite clear what the annalist said about the fine.
8 Reckoning one pound of gold as 4,000 sesterces and one pound of silver as 336 sesterces, 6,000 pounds of gold, leaving the silver out of account, would be 24,000,000 sesterces; reversing the figures, 480 pounds of gold (1,920,000 sesterces) plus 6,000 pounds of silver (2,016,000 sesterces) would produce approximately 4,000,000 sesterces to be recovered by the fine. (I have borrowed these calculations from Weissenborn- Müller, from Mommsen and Hultsch.)
9 This other tradition (Polybius or another annalist) may be the actual source of this criticism of Antias. At any rate, Livy appears at this point to abandon Antias, whom he has followed from 1. 5 above, in favour of another authority. He appears also to go back to Antias at chap. lviii. below.
10 That is, 4,000,000 sesterces.
11 B.C. 187
12 This anecdote is told also by Polybius (XXIV. ix; he has also the following story), Gellius (IV. xviii. 7-12), Auct. De Vir. III. (49. 17), all with small variations. Polybius alone mentions definite sums, substituting 3,000 talents and 15,000 talents for those given by Livy. Under the circumstances it seems useless to try to determine whether Polybius or an annalist, probably Claudius, is Livy's source. The following chapter well illustrates the uncertainty which still exists regarding these events.
13 No pre-Livian source for this anecdote is known except Polybius; he makes it clear that this episode had nothing to do with the preceding. The impossibility of equating the sums given by Polybius (see the preceding note) with those of Livy leaves it doubtful still whether Polybius is the source for both anecdotes. The second means, of course, that it was due to Scipio that there was any money to be guarded in the treasury.
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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