Kitap 24
18
The government showed quite as much energy at home as in the field. Owing to the emptiness of the treasury the censors were released from the task of letting out public works to contract, and they devoted their attention to the regulation of public morals and the castigation of the vices which sprang up during the war, just as constitutions enfeebled by long illness naturally develop other evils. They began by summoning before them those who were reported to have formed plans for abandoning Italy after the defeat of Cannae; the principal person concerned, M. Caecilius Metellus, happened to be praetor at the time. He and the rest who were involved in the charge were put upon their trial, and as they were unable to clear themselves the censors pronounced them guilty of having uttered treasonable language both privately and publicly in order that a conspiracy might be formed for abandoning Italy. Next to these were summoned those who had been too clever in explaining how they were absolved from their oath, the prisoners who imagined that when they had furtively gone back, after once starting, to Hannibal's camp they were released from the oath which they had taken to return. In their case and in that of those above mentioned, all who possessed horses at the cost of the State were deprived of them, and they were all removed from their tribes and disfranchised. Nor were the attentions of the censors confined to the senate or the equestrian order, they took out from the registers of the junior centuries the names of all those who had not served for four years, unless formally exempted or incapacitated by sickness, and the names of above 2000 men were removed from the tribes and the men disfranchised. This drastic procedure of the censors was followed by severe action on the part of the senate. They passed a resolution that all those whom the censors had degraded were to serve as foot soldiers and be sent to the remains of the army of Cannae in Sicily. This class of soldiers was only to terminate its service when the enemy had been driven out of Italy.
