Book 4
18
There is also another celebrated act of his. Certain Petilii, tribunes of the commons, influenced they say by Marcus Cato, Scipio's personal enemy, and instigated to appear against him, insisted most vigorously in the senate Probably in 187 B.C., but the details of these attacks on Scipio are confused and uncertain. on his rendering an account of the money of Antiochus and of the booty taken in that war; for he had been deputy to his brother Lucius Scipio Asiaticus, the commander in that campaign. Thereupon Scipio arose, and taking a roll from the fold of his toga, said that it contained an account of all the money and all the booty; that he had brought it to be publicly read and deposited in the treasury. But that, said he, I shall not do now, nor will I so degrade myself. And at once, before them all, he tore the roll across with his own hands and rent it into bits, indignant that an account of money taken in war should be required of him, to whose account the salvation of the Roman State and its power ought to be credited. Accepta ferri is a technical term of book-keeping, to enter as received or on the credit side ; the opposite is ferre expensum, i, 16. 5, to enter as paid out or on the debit side.
19
What Marcus Varro wrote in his Philosophical-historical Treatise on restricting the diet of immature children.
