Book 29
17
An audience was granted them, and the senior delegate addressed the senate in the following terms: "Whatever importance, senators, you attach to our complaints must, I am well aware, depend very largely upon your knowing accurately the circumstances under which Locri was betrayed to Hannibal, and after the expulsion of his garrison was again brought under your suzerainty. For if our senate and people were in no way responsible for the defection, and it can be shown that our return to your obedience was brought about not only with our full consent, but even by our own efforts and courage, then you will feel all the more indignation at such shameful outrages having been inflicted by your officer and soldiers upon good and faithful allies. I think, however, that we ought to put off for another time any explanation of our double change of sides, for two reasons. One is that the matter ought to be discussed when P. Scipio is present, as he recaptured Locri and was an eyewitness of all our acts, both good and bad, and another reason is that, however bad we may be, we ought not to have suffered as we have done. We do not deny, senators, that when we had the Carthaginian garrison in our citadel we had to submit to many acts of insolence and cruelty at the hands of Hamilcar and his Numidians and Africans, but what were they compared with what we are going through today? I pray, senators, that you will not take offence at what I am most reluctantly compelled to say. The whole world is waiting in feverish expectation to see whether you or the Carthaginians are to be the lords of the earth. If the choice between Roman and Punic supremacy depended upon the way in which the Carthaginians have treated us Locrians as compared with what we are suffering today from your soldiers, there is not one of us who would not prefer their rule to yours. And yet in spite of all this, see what our feeling towards you has been. When we were suffering comparatively slight injuries from the Carthaginians we betook ourselves to your commander; now that we are suffering from your troops injuries worse than any enemy would inflict it is before you and no one else that we lay our complaint. If you, senators, do not show any regard for our misery, there is nothing left which we can pray for, even to the immortal gods themselves."
