29.2
Wishing to set upon the inhabitants all at once and suddenly, when no one expected it, he sent for the ten principal men of each city, and ordered them to bring in on a fixed day whatever silver and gold they had in their houses and temples.
29.3
He also sent with each of these bodies, as if for this very purpose, a guard of soldiers and an officer, who pretended to search for and receive the money.
29.4
But when the appointed day came, at one and the same time these all set out to overrun and pillage the cities, so that in a single hour a hundred and fifty thousand persons were made slaves, and seventy cities were sacked;
29.5
and yet from all this destruction and utter ruin each soldier received no more than eleven drachmas as his share, and all men shuddered at the issue of the war, when the division of a whole nation’s substance resulted in so slight a gain and profit for each soldier.
30.1
Aemilius, then, after executing a commission so contrary to his mild and generous nature, went down to Oricus.
30.2
From there he crossed into Italy with his forces, and sailed up the river Tiber on the royal galley, which had sixteen banks of oars and was richly adorned with captured arms and cloths of scarlet and purple,
30.3
so that the Romans actually came in throngs from out the city, as it were to some spectacle of triumphant progress whose pleasures they were enjoying in advance, and followed along the banks as the splashing oars sent the ship slowly up the stream.
30.4
But the soldiers, who had cast longing eyes upon the royal treasures, since they had not got as much as they thought they deserved, were secretly enraged on this account and bitterly disposed towards Aemilius, while openly they accused him of having been harsh and imperious in his command of them; they were therefore not very ready to second his eager desires for a triumph.
