Then while mustering the legions he chose out of them soldiers who had served for the greatest number of campaigns, especially those who had done so under Marcellus as commander, believing them to have been schooled by the best training and in particular to be most skilled [13??] in besieging cities in consequence of the long siege of Syracuse. For he was planning nothing small, but already the destruction of Carthage. [14] Thereupon he distributed his army among the towns, requisitioned grain from the Sicilian cities, spared the grain imported from [p. 211]Italy. He repaired the old ships,4 and with these5 sent Gaius Laelius to Africa for plunder. The new ships he beached at Panormus, that they might winter out of the water, since they had been built in haste of green timber.
[15] Every preparation for the war having been made, he came to Syracuse, which was not yet quite peaceful after the great unsettlement due to the war. [16] The Greeks were making their claims to properties granted them by the senate against certain Italians who were holding on with the same use of force with which they had seized the property during the war.6 [17] Thinking it of the utmost importance to keep a promise given by the state, Scipio restored their property to the Syracusans, partly by [18??] an edict, partly also by granting hearings against those who persisted in maintaining an unlawful possession. [19] This act was acceptable not only to the owners themselves but to all the communities of Sicily as well, and all the more energetically did they render assistance for the war.
In the same summer a great war broke out in Spain, instigated by Indibilis7 of the Ilergetes for no other reason than because contempt for other generals sprang from admiration for Scipio. [20] He thought that Scipio was the one general left to the Romans, the rest having been killed by Hannibal; that consequently after the slaying of the Scipios they had no one else to send to Spain, and had also, once the war grew more serious in Italy, summoned him to face Hannibal; that, besides [p. 213]having merely nominal commanders in Spain, the8 Romans had taken away the veteran army also. [21] There was nothing but confusion and an untrained mob of recruits. [22] Never would there be such an opportunity for the liberation of Spain. [23] Slaves they had been down to that time, either to Carthaginians or to Romans, and not by turns to the one people or the other but at times to both at once. [24] The Carthaginians had been driven out by the Romans; the Spaniards, if they should agree, were able to drive out the Romans, so that, free from all foreign authority, Spain might return permanently to its ancestral customs and usages. [25] By these and similar utterances he stirred up not only his own countrymen but also the Ausetani,9 a neighbouring tribe, and other peoples adjoining his territory and theirs. [26] And thus within a few days thirty thousand infantry and about four thousand horse came together in the territory of the Sedetani,10 in accordance with their instructions.