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.
As the censors were now abstaining, owing to the emptiness of the
treasury, from making any contracts for repairs to the sacred edifices or for
supplying chariot horses or similar objects, they were frequently approached
by those who had been in the habit of tendering for these contracts, and
urged to conduct all their business and let out the contracts just as if there
was money in the treasury. No one, they said, would ask for money from the
exchequer till the war was over. Then came the owners of the slaves whom
Tiberius Sempronius had manumitted at Beneventum. They stated that they
had had notice from the financial commissioners that they were to receive
the value of their slaves, but they would not accept it till the war was at an
end. While the plebeians were thus showing their readiness to meet the
difficulties of an empty exchequer, the moneys of minors and wards and then
of widows began to be deposited, those who brought the money believing
that their deposits would not be safer or more scrupulously protected
anywhere than when they were under the guarantee of the State. Whatever
was bought or provided for the minors and widows was paid for by a bill of
exchange on the quaestor. This generous spirit on the part of individual
citizens spread from the City to the camp, so that not a single horse soldier,
not a single centurion would accept pay; whoever did accept it received the
opprobrious epithet of "mercenary."
