Book 29
17
Q. Pleminius was sent with a body of troops to recover Locri from the Carthaginians and was left with his troops in the city. In this officer of yours-the extremity of misery gives me courage to speak freely-there is nothing human except his face and appearance, there is no trace of the Roman save in his garb and speech; he is a wild beast, a monster such as were fabled to haunt the waters which divide us from Sicily, to the destruction of navigators. If he were content with wreaking his own villainy and lust and rapacity upon your allies, we might fill up this one gulf, deep as it is, by patient endurance, but as it is, he has been so eager to spread licentiousness and wickedness indiscriminately that he has made every centurion and every private soldier into a Pleminius. They all alike rob, plunder, beat, wound, kill, outrage matrons, maidens and boys torn from their parent's arms. Each day witnesses a fresh storm, a fresh sack of our city; everywhere, day and night, it is echoing with the shrieks of women who are being seized and carried off. Any one who knows what is going on might wonder how we are able to endure it all, or why they have not become weary of their crimes. I cannot go into details, nor is it worth your while to hear what each of us has suffered; I will give you a general description. There is not a single house in Locri, I venture to assert, not a single individual who has escaped ill-treatment; there is no form of villainy or lust or rapacity which has not been practiced upon everyone who was a suitable victim. It is difficult to decide which is the worst misfortune for a city, to be captured by an enemy in war, or to be crushed by force and violence by a sanguinary tyrant. All the horrors which attend the capture of a city we have suffered and are suffering to the utmost; all the tortures which ruthless and cruel tyrants inflict on their down-trodden subjects Pleminius has inflicted on us, our children and our wives."
